Beryl snorted and shifted in her bed, the thick duvet pulled a little tighter around her in the chill night air. Alexis, lay still in her own bed, eyes wide open as she stared at the ceiling in the darkness, her thoughts seemingly unable to quieten enough for her to sleep.

It had been an eye-opener of a day and she had been barraged with a great deal of new information that she struggled to make sense of. For her, the world had been a bleak, yet boring, place. More than that, it had been an entirely mundane one.

What she had learned in the past twenty-four hours went against everything she had learnt in her seventeen years of life. Trying to mesh the old, mundane, world with the new supernatural one was proving difficult to do.

Alexis picked her phone up and tapped the screen, the bright light illuminating her face as it flared to life. Two in the morning and she had to be awake for breakfast then her first lessons by seven at the latest.

She let her head fall back to the pillow and stifled a soft sigh. There were no messages on her phone, no missed calls from people wondering where she was. That alone was depressing, but even if there had been someone who cared enough to ask, what could she tell them?

Not that she had walked through a magical portal to a school for witches somewhere near the City of York. Still in England, sure, but a hell of a distance away from the tube station in London where she had been just a day before.

Another look at her phone and another sigh. The urge to pee that she had been trying to ignore, hoping to fall asleep before it became a big enough problem that she needed to find the lavatories in the dark, well, that was becoming an issue.

She threw aside the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The old iron radiators in the room didn’t provide enough heat to fully banish the cold in the old building and she regretted having so few choices when it came to bedclothes.

Beryl, being the sweet person that she was, had offered Alexis some of her pyjamas and Alexis, being who she was, had staunchly refused the offer, seeing it as charity which only fed into her already substantial insecurities about her status amongst the students in the academy.

As a result, she wore just a thin pair of shorts and a black t-shirt she had picked up outside the O2 stadium after a concert. The Bands logo had long since faded and she had been drunk and a little high that night, so wasn’t entirely certain she could remember who she had gone to see.

She ran a hand through her hair, brushing it as best she could with her fingers before she rose and padded softly across the floor to the door. It opened soundlessly and she slipped out into the hallway beyond.

The student accommodation was in a number of large and very old buildings on the far end of the campus. Each building had three storeys, with rooms on each floor that each held two people. At the end of the long hallway on each floor were the showers and toilets.

It was to these that she headed, using the torch on her phone to light the way rather than attempting to find a light and possibly waking everyone else on her floor.

A short walk and she pushed open the door to the washrooms. The fluorescent lights flickered to life as she came in and she turned off her torch before nipping into the nearest stall to pee. Once done, she crossed to the central row of sinks and washed her hands.

It was as she turned off the tap that she heard the soft whimper, barely loud enough to be heard over the buzzing of the lights. She turned her head towards the showers and tilted it to the side as she listened, sure that she had misheard.

There it was again, a definite whimper, a sound of misery and fear that sent a shiver down her spine. Phone in hand, she took a tentative step towards the showers before stopping and glancing back to the washroom door.

She wondered if she should go find help, but she dismissed that idea. For one thing, she had no idea who to wake up to ask and for another, she didn’t want her first real introduction to her schoolmates to be waking people up for an emergency that wasn’t real.

No, first she needed to find out what the problem was before deciding on how to fix it. So, with that thought uppermost in her mind, she took another step towards the showers.

Another whimper was followed by the scratching of what sounded like dozens of nails being tapped against tile. Alexis hesitated, mouth dry and a lump of fear in her throat. The scratching moved from one side of the room to another, then stopped as a sob sounded, a gasp of fear and panic released in one burst of sound.

She forced herself forward, pausing at the open space in the wall that led through to the showers. Tile covered every surface, slick and wet as though the showers had been running. Alexis pressed herself back against the cold tiles of the wall and slowly leant forward, peering into the room.

A girl sat on the floor, back pressed against the tile and limbs limp and lifeless. Her head was raised and her eyes moved rapidly, side to side as though searching the room as tears ran down her cheeks.

Blood pooled beneath her and coated the front of the white west that she wore, while beside her stood a man. He was young, and good looking, with short dark hair swept back from his face and well-muscled torso showing through the open shirt that he wore.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Alexis demanded, stepping out from around the corner. The girl’s eyes flicked to Alexis and she tried to speak, though little came out of her mouth but incoherent sounds. The man, turned, a mild look of surprise on his face. “Get away from her!”

“I have not harmed her.” The man’s voice was surprisingly calm, the tone even as if it were not unusual to be standing above a young woman bleeding.

“Then step away!” Alexis snapped, and the man had the audacity to smile as he raised his hands in mock surrender and stepped back, first one pace and then another.

The girl on the floor was making more noise, her head flopping back and forth as her mouth worked ineffectually. With one eye on the strange man, Alexis crossed quickly to her and knelt down beside her.

“It’ll be okay,” she murmured. “What the hell happened?”

No response from the girl that Alexis could understand, and her limbs remained still as Alexis reached to lift her shirt. A squeal of pain issued forth as the material was pulled away from a nasty wound in her stomach, the skin torn and puckers, the flesh beneath ripped and oozing blood.

“How the hell are you alive?” Alexis murmured, not expecting a reply. She looked over at the man and arched a brow. “Why isn’t she bleeding more?”

“The venom that has paralysed her limbs also clots the blood, slowing the loss,” he said, almost conversationally. “It slows the process of dying.”

“What did this?” Alexis paused, a thought occurring to her. “How are you even here? This is the girl’s dorm.”

Again, he smiled, which softened the lines of his face and only made him more attractive, which he no doubt knew. His eyes, a dark brown so deep as to be almost black, held hers and heat filled her cheeks.

“I… was aware of the commotion and came to see what happened,” he said.

“Well, help me get her up. We need help.”

“I cannot do that.”

“What! Why the hell not?”

He didn’t immediately reply, just cocked his head to the side as though listening. Those dark eyes of his moved, tracing a line along the tiled wall as though tracking something. He held up one finger as Alexis made to speak and simply said, “Duck!”

Alexis moved instinctively, dropping almost flat to the cold, wet, tiles as something burst from the wall beside the girl and flew straight at Alexis. She gasped at the cold and was on her feet in an instant, dashing away from the shadow of movement she caught from the corner of her eye.

“The fuck is that?” she asked, backing away, head moving from side to side as she searched the room.” Where is it?”

“A Crawler,” the man said, voice filling with something close to excitement. “It must have escaped a lab.”

Alexis just stared at him until the scratching of nails against tile came to her again. She looked around, searching for the source but couldn’t see anything. The girl was moaning, head flopping as she struggled to move and the man stood, unmoving and unperturbed in the centre of the shower room.

“Where is it?” She snapped again and the man rolled his eyes and pointed at the wall to the side of her.

Alexis turned and immediately leapt aside as something alien burst from the wall, its translucent body leaving no mark on the tiles as it flew past her. Its segmented body curved downwards as its trajectory sent it to the floor and it slipped easily through the tile, dozens of claw-like legs propelling it along.

“That was a big fucking centipede!” Alexis snapped. “How did it go through the bloody tile?”

“Not a centipede,” the man corrected. “A crawler. It isn’t fully materialised in this world, instead existing primarily in one besides our own. It can move between worlds with ease and it does so to hunt.”

“Let me guess,” Alexis muttered, moving slowly in a circle, head cocked to one side as she listened for it. “Mainly hunts people?”

“People, dogs, cats, small children. Whatever it can, really. I don’t believe they are picky.”

“Can it be stopped?”

“Of course,” the man said. “It’s, obviously, nocturnal and prefers to lie in wait for its prey. If it catches you by surprise, it will bite you and inject a venom that will paralyse you. For those aware, it can be damaged quite easily.”

Alexis glanced at the girl, understanding then what had likely happened. She looked back at the man who seemed not at all worried about the creature.

“Can you kill it?”

“No.”

“Then what bloody use are you?”

“I can show you how.”

She eyed him warily, not at all sure what to make of him. He seemed personable enough and had the sort of easy smile and charm that would drop the knickers of many a girl without much difficulty. Which is exactly why she didn’t trust him.

“There,” he said, pointing at the floor between her feet.

Alexis jumped back, head cracking painfully against the tiled wall as the crawler shot up through the floor like a rocket launched into the air. It disappeared into the ceiling and Alexis swore, realising she didn’t have much choice.

“Fine, how the hell do I kill it?”

Without replying, the man placed his hands together before him, palms flat. He curled back the forefinger and index finger of his right hand whilst doing the same with the ring finger and pinky of his left. He spoke then, a word that Alexis couldn’t understand but could somehow feel on the air.

His wrists bent, turning the extended fingers of each hand so they slipped over one another and then he repeated the word. Alexis shivered, not with the cold or fear, but with something else. A feeling of power that trembled on the air.

With an almost violent motion, he pulled his hands apart, fingers sliding across one another as he said another word, one that had her knees trembling as she pressed herself flat against the tiled wall.

“Do that,” he said, and she blinked.

“Do what? Nothing happened.”

“If you do it as I did, then something will.”

Alexis gaped at him, the skittering of dozens of claws scrabbling against tile came from above her, moving towards the wall and then down. She stepped away, turning to face that wall as she backed further towards the centre of the room.

“Now,” he said, voice soft and almost directly into her ear.

She gave a short start but didn’t look away from the wall as she pressed her hands together before her. They trembled, shaking with fear and anxiety. She curled her fingers back and spoke the word or power.

Her skin began to tingle like an electric current was running across every bit of exposed flesh. She bent her wrists, fingers sliding into place and spoke once more, as the skittering sound grew louder, moving rapidly closer.

The Crawler leapt out of the wall, arrowing towards her like it had been launched from a crossbow, as Alexis pulled her hands apart, speaking the final word.

Light flickered in her vision, heat raced through her, spreading out from her very centre of being and bursting forth from her. She dropped to her knees, gasping for air as the crawler burst, slimy green blood splattering across her face and chest.

She bent forward, arms shaking as she pressed her hands against the cold tiled floor, struggling to hold herself upright. Alexis couldn’t be sure how long she knelt there before the door to the washroom crashed open and people rushed in.

Hands gripped her shoulders and helped lift her, turning her as faces filled her vision, mouths moving but no sound coming out of them. Or perhaps there was, Alexis thought, almost giggling, but she couldn’t hear anything above the ringing in her ears.

Black-garbed men and women with silver bladed knives spread out as a wrinkled woman with hair in curlers knelt beside the injured girl. Alexis blinked, shaking her head to clear the fog that filled it.

Darkness clouded the edges of her vision and she looked around, searching the faces of the people that crowded it, looking for one in particular and wondering where he had gone.