She called to him, gently. He stirred and sucked his teeth but didn't wake. She called again, a little louder. He sighed and woke, his eyes searching the room until they found her face. For a moment he looked bewildered, as though her presence there didn't fit with the dreams he had been having. Then he recovered his confidence, smiled his sweet smile and sat up.

Tess smiled back. 'Sorry to wake you. But it's a beautiful day outside.'

'Is it?' Martin yawned and stretched. Tess moved over towards the window, but he said, 'Whoa, hold on. One step at a time, eh?'

He reached out and switched on a heavily-shaded lamp which stood on the bedside table, then he leaned back and stretched himself again.

Tess cleared a chair and pulled it up beside his feet. 'Your mother's bringing us breakfast,' she said. 'Well, lunch, actually.'

Martin laughed and rubbed his bleary eyes. 'I was out until nearly dawn, but the pickings were mean. I hope she's making a fry.'

Tess made no answer and there was an awkward silence for a few minutes. Then Martin sighed and cuddled himself back down into the bedclothes.

Tess looked over at the mop of red hair which shaded his marble-green eyes and felt a sudden surge of affection for him. He couldn't be that bad, he just couldn't. He was only a boy, after all.

'You didn't tell me that your father died,' she said.

Martin shrugged, pulling the covers tight for a moment over his toes. 'Did my mother tell you that?'

'Yes. Just now. Downstairs.'

'She tells everyone about it. She thinks it's like, some kind of big tragedy in my life which made me go wrong. She thinks it explains everything, but it doesn't. It doesn't explain anything. It didn't make any difference to me at all.'

'I find that hard to believe. How could you lose your father and not be affected by it?'

'How could you, you mean?' Martin's voice had a sharp edge that Tess hadn't heard before. 'You're talking about yourself,' he went on, 'not about me. Everyone does that. You'd miss your father so you a.s.sume everyone else would, too. But I didn't, not one bit. I didn't miss him 'cos I hated him.'

His face wore a sullen, bitter expression as he spoke, and his eyes were like glinting granite when he turned to Tess and said, 'Do you understand?'

Tess kept her face straight, determined to hide the unease his words had produced in her heart. 'Not really,' she said.

'Do you want me to tell you about it?'

'If you want to.'

'It's very gory. Do you like gory stories?'

Tess shrugged, torn between ghoulish curiosity and what she liked to think of as her finer sensibilities. 'I don't mind.'

'No, I'm sure you don't.' Martin's tone was sarcastic. 'But I'll tell you anyway. I like talking about it. I've talked about it to every shrink in Dublin, so it doesn't bother me one bit.'

He stopped, listening. There were slow footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later his mother elbowed the door open, struggling beneath the weight of a heavily-laden tray. Tess jumped up and unloaded the plates, then, while Martin's mother got her breath back, reloaded the tray with yesterday's empty cups and dishes.

'I'll bring it down for you,' she said.

'No. You stay here and have your chat. If you need anything else, give me a shout, all right?'

When his mother was gone, Martin began tucking into his plate of rashers and black pudding.

'We used to live in the countryside, you know. Just outside Dublin.'

'Did you?' Tess thought he had changed the subject, but he went on, 'Yes. We had a run-down old cottage and a few acres. My dad used to breed greyhounds and sell them to people from England. That was all he thought about: greyhounds, greyhounds and greyhounds.'

He paused for a minute to chew, then went on. 'It was a weird kind of life. One minute we'd be living on bread and margarine, wondering how we were going to last another week, and the next thing, he'd sell a dog or a pup for silly money to some English trainer and we'd be rolling in it. New clothes for me and my mother, Chinese takeaways every night of the week, him off to the pub buying rounds for the parish. Then back to bread and margarine again. I didn't mind, though. At least it was exciting.'

Tess poured out tea and handed him a cup. He took a few sips, then perched it on the bedside table beside the lamp and returned to the fry.

'Then what?' said Tess.

'Where was I? Oh, yes. I was into top gear by that time with this animal thing. What did you call us? Switchers, that's right. Well I used to be off in the woods and fields every spare minute trying out all kinds of things. I suppose it was good while it lasted. Then one of our neighbours gave me a donkey foal. Have you ever seen one?'

'Only in the zoo.'

'Yeah. Not many people keep donkeys these days. But the foal was ...' He felt silent, staring ahead of him, and for a moment Tess fancied that he was vulnerable, that his guard had finally dropped. But if it had, it wasn't for long.

'Fact was that I was dead soft in those days. I doted on that little donkey like a right eejit. Spent half my time out in the shed with it, sometimes being another donkey, sometimes just being myself.'

'Bet you didn't tell that to the shrinks.'

Martin laughed. 'Be a lot more probable than some of the things I did tell them. They wouldn't know the difference anyhow. I didn't meet a single one who was the full shilling. I don't know how they're supposed to cure anyone else.'

He gave his full attention to his breakfast until Tess said, 'Go on. About the donkey.'

'There's not much to tell. Except that my dad said we had to get rid of her.'

'Why?'

'He said he needed the shed for his hounds. And she couldn't live out on the land because he sold the hay every year and then exercised the dogs there. He said I could have a pup from the next litter instead of the donkey and it would be worth twenty times what she was, but that wasn't the point. Not then, anyway.'

Martin stopped to finish his breakfast. Outside, the birds were beginning to tune down as the short day drew towards an end, and Tess wished that she could see a last glimpse of sunshine. She looked over at the curtains, then decided against it, unwilling to disturb the atmosphere.

Martin wiped up the last of the grease with a piece of soggy toast, then put his plate down beside the bed, balancing it on his upturned trainers.

'So, anyway,' he said, wiping his mouth on the hem of his T-shirt, 'one evening my dad borrowed a cattle trailer and we brought the donkey out to some friends of his in Naas. Fifteen quid is all they gave me for her. It wasn't that, though. I didn't care about the money. The worst thing was that they had greyhounds, too, and I was sure they only wanted my donkey for dog food.

'I wouldn't care now, but it bothered me then. There was nothing I could do about it, you see. I felt completely helpless. And then they got down the bottle of whisky and my dad sat there the whole evening drinking and laughing his head off. Have you seen people get drunk? Have you seen how stupid they look, and how clever they think they are?' Martin's sour expression accentuated the anger he was feeling. 'I hated him. I hated him so much I wished he was dead.'

He gulped down his tea and held the cup out to Tess for a refill. 'Ready for the gory bit?'

She nodded, putting aside her half-eaten fry. Martin's face held a strange kind of delight as he started up with his story again.

'It was pitch-dark when we started home that night, and there was only one headlight working on the van. My dad took the back roads home because he didn't want to run into the cops with all that drink in him. He was driving too fast, as usual. I always wore my seat belt when he was driving, never with my ma. He didn't wear his, specially since they brought in the law that said you had to. He wasn't a violent man, but he'd go out of his way to get on the wrong side of the law if he could. That was just the way he was.

'So when this black cow appeared in the middle of the road, he didn't have a chance. I don't remember hitting her. I just remember seeing her on the road, coming out of nowhere, then waking up in the van with blood all over the place.'

Martin looked over to check Tess's reaction, but she was giving nothing away.

'I didn't know if the blood belonged to Dad or to the cow, and to tell you the truth I didn't care. The van was on its side in the ditch, and Dad's door had swung open during the crash and bent double under the wing. That was how the light came to be on inside the cab and I could see all the blood. Dad was covered in it and he wasn't moving. I was hanging over him, caught in the seat belt. All I could think of was getting out. I didn't care what had happened to him. I was really cool and calculated, manoeuvring myself around so that I could get a foot on the gear housing and lever myself out without standing on him. In the end I managed it. Then I just stood on the road for ages-hours, maybe-watching this sticky mess of a cow thrashing about on the road. And all I could think was that I didn't care. I had wished he was dead and now I didn't care whether he was or not. I knew then that I was a bad lot; always had been, always will be.'

'I don't believe that,' said Tess.

'Then you're a fool,' said Martin. He looked straight at her, the cold shadow of his night-time self at the forefront of his eyes. 'After it happened my mother couldn't bear to live out there any more. She sold the house and the land; turned out to be worth a fortune as a development site. We moved here. Too soon, perhaps, some of the shrinks said. I didn't speak to anyone for weeks, maybe months. I do now, though. I'll talk to anyone who wants to listen to me. Why not? It makes no difference. No one can touch me.'

Tess could think of nothing to say. For a long time they sat in silence until at last the gloom became too much for Tess.

'Can I open the curtains now? At least take a look at the day before it gets dark?'

Martin nodded. 'I was waiting for you last night,' he said. 'Where did you get to?'

Tess shrugged and went over to the window. 'Nowhere in particular. I went to sleep. Had to get up early this morning to go and see the phoenix in the zoo.'

'Oh, yes. Your phoenix. I keep forgetting about him.' Martin winced as Tess began to dismantle the blanket barricade and daylight lunged into the room. 'How is he?'

'He's ...' Tess dried up, lost for words which would describe the glorious experience of the morning. 'He's perfect,' was all she could think of.

'That's good,' said Martin.

'But you should go and see for yourself. We haven't got all that much time; they're planning to move him to America at the end of the week, so you'd better go as soon as you can. There's an awful crush there at the moment, but if we got up really early in the morning ...'

Martin cut across her words. 'Naa. I don't think I'll bother.'

It was the first direct blow, and Tess felt her sense of well-being begin to diminish. She turned, her back to the window. 'What do you mean, you won't bother?'

Martin's face was screwed up against the light at Tess's back. 'I won't bother,' he said again. 'Why should I?'

'Why should you?' said Tess. 'Well, there's two reasons, actually. One is that the phoenix is probably the most beautiful thing you'll ever see. It'll change your life, I guarantee it.'

Martin nodded complacently. 'And the other reason?'

'The other is that you promised me you'd help me get him out. You have to come and look at where he is, so we can work out a plan.'

Martin shook his head with an expression of disdain. 'I didn't promise you anything.'

'Yes you did. You said that you'd help me if I tried your way first. I did that; I kept my side of the bargain. Now it's your turn.'

But again the boy shook his head. 'I didn't promise anything. I said that I might consider it, that's all. And I still might.'

Tess waited expectantly as Martin swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, taking his time.

'But I won't,' he said.

It was like being kicked in the teeth. Tess turned away to hide the fury that was rising like a rush of blood to her face. The phoenix light within her was eclipsed by that rage, and she floundered between enemies, one without, the other within. He was playing with her, teasing her, that was all. He had never had any intention of coming towards her way of seeing things; not one single step.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

TESS COULDN'T FACE MARTIN'S mother now that she had failed so miserably in her mission. Instead she slipped quietly down the stairs, out of the front door and away down the street.

The last of the sunlight held no warmth, but it had that sweet, golden hue of evening which made it seem more substantial than it had been earlier in the day. Tess was reminded of the light emitted by the phoenix, and she tried to settle her thoughts and recapture her earlier mood.

She had left Martin's house in a hurry, not because she was afraid of him but because she was afraid that her own feelings of anger and betrayal would overwhelm her. As she warmed to the stroll through the darkening streets, the strange contradictions of her situation began to become apparent to her. She was being swung like a pendulum between two opposing forces, one dark and bent upon nothing more than satisfying its own desires, the other light, peaceful, beyond human yearnings and frailties. The first saw itself as all-important, with others being no more than a means of satisfying its needs, while the second had no need of others, but was perfect within itself. The choice ought to have been simple, according to the morality that Tess had been taught both at home and at school, but when faced with those opposites in reality, was far from being so. Because the phoenix, for all its light-giving qualities, was powerless when faced with opposition. How otherwise could it be caught so easily and held captive, at the mercy of those who held the keys? It might continue; it might rise again from its own ashes, and again, and again. But what use was that if it couldn't move about freely and spread its influence?

The vampire, on the other hand, would always be free to stalk the earth, even if it was restricted to the hours of darkness. It had the power to mesmerise, to bring others under its control. And in a confrontation, as Tess had found out, the only defence that existed against the creature was to become as he was. This had happened to her in the street under the trees, and in a slightly different way it had just happened again. The only response Tess had found to Martin's coldness was a coldness of her own, despite all her good intentions. Under threat, the phoenix force had diminished and the vampire force had grown.

Tess tried to remember what Lizzie had said. 'It's not what we are that needs changing but what we thinks.' Was that it? In any event, the words made no sense. Tess felt as though the seams of her mind were about to give way under the stress of the inner conflict. She wished that she had never met Martin, or Kevin either. She wished for the first time in her life, that she had never discovered her power to Switch and that she was safely on the course that her parents wanted for her; towards a good education and a secure job. Life would be so simple, then; the only choices she would be faced with would be her Leaving Cert subjects.

She felt like screaming and began to run, trying to drown out the pursuing voices, both the light and the dark. When she got back to the house she barely greeted her mother, who was frying burgers in the kitchen, but went straight through to the sitting room and turned on the TV. A children's programme was on; it seemed fatuous, but lulled her like an old song and, exhausted from the excitement of the day and from lack of sleep, Tess dozed off.

She dreamt that the room was full of rats, a moving carpet of silky grey-brown. The rats were trying to get her attention, sending out strange picture calls, but she was refusing to listen. They were becoming more and more agitated, and some of them had begun to climb up on to her bed.

She woke and opened her eyes on to darkness. For a moment she didn't know where she was, then the familiar shape of the bay window reminded her that she had fallen asleep in the sitting room. One or other of her parents had brought down her duvet and pillow; she was snug and warm, wrapped up on the settee. She glanced at the luminous hands of her watch. Three a.m. With a sense of relief, she turned round to go back to sleep.

Something wriggled on the settee beside her. At the same time, something small and heavy ran across the top of the duvet. This was no dream. Tess threw off the cover and sat up, reaching out blindly for the switch of the standing lamp beside the settee. In the dim orange glow cast from the street lights outside the window, she could see her duvet moving on the floor as the rats beneath it squirmed around, looking for a way out. As her initial terror pa.s.sed off, Tess relaxed, and was immediately bombarded by rat minds throwing images at her. It hadn't been a dream. The rats had come, and they had brought a message from their master.

For a long moment, Tess considered refusing his demand. She was afraid of what she might discover; afraid of the vampire's night-time power. But something stronger than fear lured her. Whatever her final decision might be, she needed to know everything there was to know.

She rea.s.sured the clamorous rats and sat for a while trying to compose herself; trying, without success, to draw upon the residual serenity somewhere within. She failed to find it, but discovered instead a small corner of her heart which still hoped to save not only herself, but Martin as well, from the eternal alienation of a vampire existence.

Despite the anxiety which wrenched at her guts there was no question of changing her mind. She took a deep breath and Switched, hating the transition as always but welcoming the alertness of the rat, and the vibrant certainty of its being.

The others led the way. There must have been about fifty of them, steaming down through a hole in the floorboards that Tess was sure wasn't there yesterday. One by one they dropped down through the joists beneath the floor and on to the uneven, muddy shale of the foundations. It was the last bit of open s.p.a.ce that they were to see for quite a while, for the next minute they were underground, racing nose-to-tail through a newly-dug tunnel.

It was more like something a mole would dig than a rat and Tess remembered the little piles of earth she had seen in the park. Here was the answer to that mystery, at least. The earth that had been excavated would have to have been put somewhere. Below ground, the tunnels were economical, just wide enough for a rat to pa.s.s through at full stretch with no concession made for whiskers. Every few feet, subsidiary tunnels branched off the main one; some going up, some going down, some heading off on the same level, at right angles. As they sped along, the rats explained the system to Tess; how it had been devised so that every patch of ground beneath the city and the park could be searched. They would not, however, describe for her what they had found, despite their obvious excitement.

For the most part, the journey was easy going, if a little dull and claustrophobic. But on two occasions the entire party was brought to a halt by subsidence in the tunnel ahead. When that happened, the lead rat had to dig a way through, pa.s.sing the fallen earth back from rat to rat until it reached the end of the line or the entrance to an excavation tunnel, whichever came first. The delays only served to heighten Tess's sense of expectation, so that by the time they eventually arrived at their destination, about half a mile from the edge of the park, she was bursting with curiosity.

The first she knew of their impending arrival was when the file turned in to a subsidiary tunnel on the right-hand side. It ran along straight for a few yards, and a single tip-head pa.s.sage forked off to the left, sloping gradually upwards. Soon afterwards, the route began to slope downwards, gently at first, then more sharply. The earth was quite wet at that depth and the tunnel, which was clearly well-used, had turned into a mud-slide. The rats at the front tried to use outstretched paws to brake their descent, but the pressure of those careering down behind added to their speed, so that when they reached their destination they went shooting out into s.p.a.ce like champagne corks.

Rats are hardy creatures, however, and take no notice of the occasional tumble. One by one they picked themselves up, licked their paws, polished their whiskers and were ready for action again.

And there was plenty of it. It was pitch dark down there beneath the ground, but between the sounds she could hear and the images she picked up from the minds of the other rats, Tess was able to get a fairly clear picture of what was going on.

They were in an underground chamber of some kind. Parts of the roof were still held up by pillars which supported crossed arches, but in other places these had given way and the chamber had filled with earth and rubble. Tree roots had reached down into the cavity, and one of the predominant sounds was of rats' teeth, gnawing through them to clear them away.

It was clear to Tess's human mind that this must have been the crypt of some long-forgotten church which had once stood above it. It was a dramatic find. Tess was sure that no one knew the place existed. Her human mind was aware of a brief thrill of excitement before the realisation of what she was here for sank home. There were two or three stone tombs in the chamber. One of them, was standing in the open, the others were half buried by the subsidence of the roof. The rats were busy digging them out. Earth and small stones were flying everywhere, and the rats swore at each other a great deal as they got pelted by the debris. But despite this, the work was progressing at good speed.

Tess knew now that it wasn't treasure Martin was looking for. She knew as well that, despite what he had said, he hadn't the slightest interest in archaeology. She was just arriving at the obvious conclusion when a large shape appeared from nowhere, right there beside her. It made huge, hollow sounds with no meaning at all, and the rats' first instinct was to leap for the tunnels, which caused a great deal of useless falling around the place. The truth dawned on all their minds at the same moment. Their master had been among them for a while in rat form. Now he had a.s.sumed his own shape and was talking into the darkness in a language the rats didn't understand. They sniffed the air for a while, twitching their whiskers and pa.s.sing information backwards and forwards to each other. Then, as though of one mind, they started back to work again.

Tess stayed where she was, close to the base of one of the great stone tombs. She could sense the vampire's mind trying to search her out, and shielded herself as well as she could. She needed time to decide what to do.

One or two of the nearer rats sensed Tess's fear and asked her what the problem was. She shut out their communications and tried to concentrate. What was she going to do? The only way out was back along the rat tunnels and Tess had a dreadful feeling that if she tried to go against the tide she would meet with little sympathy from the other rats. No other alternative seemed to offer any better chance. If she became a phoenix she could flood the crypt with light, might possibly even succeed in driving the vampire back into rat form and away down the tunnels, but it would not be a permanent solution to anything. Sooner or later she would have to find a way out, and when she did they'd be waiting for her.