Erin crossed the room slowly and when she reached the window, she parted the blinds to peek outside. A slither of sunlight cut through the gloom for a second before she dropped her hand and the blinds closed once more. She didn’t turn around. She remained staring at the blinds as if she could see through the window despite them.

Ben said nothing. He stood in silence, hoping that she would elaborate on the statement she’d made about Theo murdering her brother.

Erin sighed and then rewarded Ben’s patience by starting the story. “I was always close to my brother, Peter. Our absent parents showed us little to no interest. Our father was always away on business.” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “And our mother was always buried in a book. She barely looked up from the pages to see what was going on in the real world. So, my big brother raised me. And when I was old enough, I tried to look after him too. When our parents died we hardly missed them.”

Erin reached beneath her blouse and fingered the jewellery that hung from her neck. The pendant was concealed beneath the fabric, but Ben presumed it was something to do with her brother. A locket he had given her perhaps.

“Then came the Great War. World War One. The war to end all wars.” She snorted derisively. “Peter was called up to fight and for the first time, I was left completely alone.” Another long pause whilst Erin stared wistfully across the room. “I waited for him to return, but he never did. For a year after the war, I waited. He was missing in action. Presumed dead. They told me to move on and find a nice husband to take care of me.”

“Who told you to do that?” Ben asked.

“Everyone I knew. That’s how it used to be. The longer I remained by myself, the less desirable I became to all the men. All the heroes who had returned from the war.”

“What did you do?”

“What I had to. I got married. I didn’t want to get married. I could hardly stand the pathetic little man who badgered me every day for nine months until I agreed to give him a chance. Some men just can’t handle rejection. You know something about that, don’t you?” Her eyes flicked his way and he was relieved to see amusement rather than bitter accusation.

“I only wanted a bit of blood. I wasn’t trying to tie you to me until death do us part.”

“And yet I still can’t shake you off. You’re still bothering me days after you got what you wanted. Sounds like a husband to me.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. “Before the war I’d been involved with the suffragettes. We won in the end but there was still work to be done so after a while, I started speaking up again. My husband was furious, but he never had a hope in hell of controlling me.”

Erin smiled to herself. Ben couldn’t picture her as the obedient wife of a bygone era, and he was not at all surprised to learn that she’d been bold and rebellious from the very start.

“My friends and I arranged a protest. Nothing too big, not like the old days. We didn’t want it to turn violent like it so often had before the war. Our husbands had other ideas. They were sick to death of being humiliated by their disobedient wives. They interrupted our protest. My husband and his friends dragged me into a nearby alley and beat the living hell out of me. He wanted to be sure that I learned to obey him.”

Ben gasped. he couldn’t imagine somebody doing that to the person they was supposed to love above all others. “Didn’t anybody call the police?”

A bitter smile crept onto her face. “The police were there. They joined in. I wasn’t the only woman who was dragged down an alley that day. Some of the things those women went through… Let’s just say that I was one of the lucky ones.”

“You got away then?”

Erin responded with a vile cackle. “No. My dear husband’s friends got carried away. It was like they’d been waiting their whole lives to be able to beat a woman and when they finally got the chance they were making the most of it. They beat me to the point of death. I would have died that day. Properly, I mean. But it turned out that my brother had returned from the war. And that was the day he made himself known.”

“How long had he been back?” Ben asked.

“About a week. He was gravely injured on the battlefield. He should’ve died.”

“He met a vampire,” Ben said. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened and why his body had never been recovered.

Erin nodded. “A vampire masquerading as a French soldier. He was claiming victims on the battlefield, but Peter gave him a fight. He was so impressed that he turned Peter instead of finishing him off. Then he took Peter with him and kept him in his service.”

“Doing what?”

Erin shrugged. “Nothing too horrid. He just had him do his dirty work; he basically turned my brother into an undead henchman. After a year of it, Peter saw an opportunity to escape, and he took it. He didn’t kill the vampire. He said the vampire saved him from death and by sparing his life he had returned the favour. I would’ve killed him to make sure he never came after me.”

“The vampire was Theo,” Ben said, putting the pieces together.

Erin shook her head. “No. Theo doesn’t enter this story until later.”

“Oh. So, did the vampire ever come after him?”

“No. Well, not that I know of. Maybe he did and Peter killed him. Peter never told me. Peter didn’t come to me straight away because he didn’t know how I’d react to what he was. He spent a week watching me, seeing what I’d done with my life in the years he’d been away. When my husband and his friends attacked me it forced Peter into action. It was the middle of the day and he was weakened by the sun, but my brother still risked everything to save me.” Erin smiled reminiscently and Ben wondered what it might have been like if he’d had a brother or a sister. But he was an only child and had only ever known what it was like to be alone.

“He only needed to kill one before the others fled. But he was too late to save me. I’d been beaten too badly and my internal organs were beyond repair. Those men must have been so angry about us protesting. Or maybe they were just too stupid to understand the damage they’d done. It hardly matters now. Peter was faced with a choice, either he could watch me die or turn me into a vampire. His decision is pretty obvious.” She stretched out her arms presenting herself to Ben.

“And I’m thankful for the choice he made,” Ben said, raising an imaginary glass to toast Peter’s decision.

“Typical man, only thinking about how it benefits you.” Ben couldn’t tell if she was joking or being serious. Given the context of the story, it was not easy to figure out.

“Together, we hunted down the remainder of those men and killed them all. We saved my dear husband until last. Oh, the joy I felt in introducing him to my big brother.” Her eyes shined with joyful malice. “You wouldn’t believe how many times a man can apologise in the space of a minute. I’ll remember his screams for eternity.”

Seeing how pleased Erin was, Ben wondered if he’d been too noble in not taking any real revenge on Lewis Pratt for all the years of abuse he’d suffered. Maybe releasing his frustrations on the bully would make him feel as good as Erin looked. Or maybe it would just turn him into a monster.

“And then Peter and I lived happily ever after. Until World War Two. I’d never seen my brother angrier than when they announced the war. He never wanted to fight in the first one, but they’d forced him to. He’d lost a lot of friends in that war. He’d seen savagery that he could never forget. He never stopped having nightmares about the things that he’d seen, and he always refused to tell me any of the things that plagued him.”

Erin looked so sad that her brother had refused to divulge the things that he’d seen that Ben felt compelled to speak on his behalf. “He probably didn’t want you to have to carry the weight of the things he’d seen.”

“I’m not some delicate little flower that can’t handle the gloom,” she snapped. With a heavy exhale she calmed down again. “We were siblings. We were closer than any pair of people I’d ever seen. He should have shared his burden with me. I could have helped him shoulder it.”

She began picking furiously at a loose thread on her jeans as if the thread had done something to personally affront her. “They told him—they told everyone—that the first war was the war to end all wars. That was the justification for all the bad that had happened. And not even thirty years had gone by when they were all at it again. He refused to fight. He refused to have anything to do with what he described as “petty human squabbles”.”

“Putting a stop to the evil Hitler was doing can hardly be described as petty human squabbles,” Ben said.

Erin made a small hissing sound. “Why don’t you lose all your friends in a war that achieved nothing and see how you feel about it,” she spat.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” Ben’s cheeks blushed at her reprimand.

Erin waved his apology away like it was an annoying fly. “I know how important fighting Hitler was. Hell, even Peter did. But he’d lost too much and the promise of no more war had been hollow. He took matters into his own hands.”

“How?” Ben sat up straighter. Surely if Peter had done anything significant it would have made its way into the history books in some form.

“By being a bigger monster than the monsters who caused all the wars. He started making his own plans and building his own armies. All through that war, there was a constant influx of wounded soldiers returning home, no longer able to fight. They’d lost so much. When Peter offered them a chance to put things right they joined him without hesitation.”

“He turned them.”

Erin nodded. “My brother had always been a big thinker but this… He was going to build his own army and take control of all the world’s governments. With the power of mesmerisation and an army of super-strong vampires at your back, there isn’t much anybody can do to stop you. Especially back in those days. Peter was going to take control and he was going to make sure there were no more wars.”

Ben was momentarily stunned. Erin’s brother had plotted to take over the world in order to stop all wars. “Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing that tends to start wars?”

Erin snorted. “You don’t need to tell me that. Peter had lost it. The First World War had broken him more than I had realised. Until that moment. But he wouldn’t listen to me. All I could do was stay by his side and try to protect him from his own ideas.”

“So what happened?”

“Theodric of the Black Veil. It turned out that was exactly the kind of thing that the Black Veil was against. Theo was sent to put a stop to it. He tried being polite, but my brother was beyond reason. Theo ordered Peter’s organisation to disband. Anybody who refused to walk away was killed on the spot. Including Peter.” She swallowed hard and fell silent, trapped, for the moment, in her own memory.

“What about you?” Ben asked when the silence had stretched on for long enough.

“He showed me mercy. He’d seen me try to convince Peter to stand down. And he said I was too pretty to kill.” Her lips curled in disgust and she shuddered. “He put me in his version of prison for eighty years.”

“What is his version of prison?” Ben asked.

Erin shook her head. “That’s a story I will not tell and you should pray that you never end up there.”

Ben wanted to press her for a real answer but he knew she was in too volatile a mood after reliving all those painful memories. She’d probably tear him to pieces if he wound her up too much. “So, that’s why you want revenge on the Veil.”

“Not the Veil. Just Theo. The Veil was justified in stopping Peter. But Theo did not have to kill him. Certainly not in such a brutal way. He will pay for what he did. I will destroy him and I will make it hurt, just like he made Peter hurt.”

Ben looked around the room, not wanting to look into her bitter, pained eyes. After hearing her story, and after what had happened when he’d met Theo, Ben was absolutely sure that he wanted to take Erin’s side. However, he had a few reservations.

“How exactly are you going to hurt him? No offence, but I don’t really see this silver nitrate trap working. Even if it did go flawlessly, do you really think it would keep him down?” Ben asked.

Erin didn’t seem offended by his criticisms, instead, she seemed to agree with him. “That much silver nitrate solution should be enough to at least hurt him. Then whilst he is writhing around and screaming, I’ll stab him full of it using the syringe. Even a vampire as old and powerful as he is can’t withstand silver coursing through their veins.”

“And then what?”

“Then I strap him to that bed, hook him up to the pump, and set it to pump silver into his veins continuously. He’ll be too weak to escape. He’ll be my prisoner and I am going to make him sorry that he ever laid his ratty little paws on my brother.” She stared at Ben, eyes narrowed. “The only potential problem here is you.”

“You mean you need me to help you instead of Theo?”

“If you don’t then I’m just going to kill you when you try to disable my traps,” she admitted.

Ben nodded, appreciating her honesty. “What happens if you do take him down? Won’t the rest of the Veil come after you?”

Erin raised her hands in a “who knows?” gesture. “I heard bits and bobs whilst I was a prisoner. Theo is not a Veil member. He’s a minion. Like a bobby on the beat.”

“A bobby on the beat. What does that mean?”

“A beat cop. A police officer on the streets.”

“Oh, sorry, I think your vernacular is a little out of date.”

“The point is, there’s a chance nobody sent him here. He could be investigating off his own initiative. If that’s the case then the Veil doesn’t know he’s here and they won’t know that we are responsible for his disappearance.”

Ben had learned in his not-so-long life, that if a situation sounded too good to be true, then it probably was. He wanted to believe that Theo’s presence in Maidstone was unknown to his superiors, but he’d need a bit more evidence before he did so.

Ben’s arms were being twisted on both sides. Whichever side he chose, it seemed death waited in the wings. The only real choice he had was who got to kill him.

“If I help you then your plan might fail in which case, Theo will kill me for attacking him. If we do succeed and you inflict a horribly painful death on him, then the rest of the Black Veil probably come to kill us both. But if I side with Theo then you’ll kill me as soon as I arrive here tonight. And I thought being a vampire was going to be fun.”

“Well, I did try to stop you from becoming a vampire. Since you stole my blood I think it’s only right that you take my side now. You know, return the favour and all.”

“Hold on, you tried to kill me. I think we’re even already.”

“I disagree. And I will try to kill you again, this time successfully if you don’t do as I say.”

Ben looked up at the trap hanging from the ceiling. “Is that seriously the best you’ve got?” He would feel a lot better about taking her side if she had a more convincing plan. So far, her traps just screamed amateur. Not that he could think of a better one.

He thought about the conversation he’d had with Izzy in his old apartment. She’d warned him that he would have to make some difficult choices, but he doubted that she had anticipated this. Still, he tried to figure out what she would do in this situation. Theo seemed to stand for law and order in the vampire community, but that didn’t mean he was in the right. In fact, nothing about Theo seemed right. He was the stereotypical menacing vampire, right down to the false front of the well-mannered gentleman that he projected.

Erin didn’t seem to be particularly nice either; she had murdered innocent hospital patients. But when Ben weighed the two vampires against one another, Theo gave him the worst vibes. Erin was acting out of grief and pain. She wanted justice and revenge. Theo was just a snooty murderer.

Erin jumped to her feet, eyes focused and alert. Ben opened his mouth to ask what the problem was, but she waved a hand to silence him. It didn’t take long for him to hear what she had heard. Footsteps. Slow and careful ones. Somebody was trying to creep down the corridor toward them. Whoever it was had seriously overestimated their own abilities at being stealthy. That ruled out Theo. Ben had no doubt that he could creep up on them if he wanted to. Ben also doubted that he would bother. He was strong enough to fight both Erin and him in a fight.

The two vampires waited patiently until the creeper arrived in the doorway. Only then did Ben realise what he had forgotten. Theo’s visit had completely pushed from his mind the rest of last night’s events.

Standing in the doorway, with both hands wrapped around a Glock 17, was Detective Inspector Castling.

Castling’s eyes darted between Erin and Ben before he ultimately decided to point his weapon at Erin. She raised an unconcerned eyebrow as she took a step forwards

“Do not move!” he commanded. “My name is DI Castling, I’m with the police.”

Erin laughed but obeyed his order. “I didn’t think the police had guns in Britain.”

“It’s not police issued,” Castling said with a sour grin.

Ben backed up slowly, eager to be out of the firing line. Vampire or not, he did not want to get shot. For all he knew a bullet wound could inflict serious damage during the day.

“I think this matter is a little outside of your jurisdiction,” Erin said.

‘Why, because you’re a vampire?’ He spoke the word like it was poison.

Erin showed genuine surprise, but no fear. “So the police deal with vampires now?”

“No,” Ben said, drawing their attention to him. “If this was a police matter he wouldn’t have come alone. This is personal.”

“Aren’t you a clever boy?” said Erin.

“And a snake,” Castling said. “Came here to warn her I was coming, did you?” Castling looked betrayed as if he'd expected Ben to hold some kind of loyalty to him.

“You knew? What were you distracting me?” Erin’s eyes darkened as she levelled him with a vicious glare.

“Actually, I had forgotten. Theo seemed like the bigger threat,” Ben said quickly, trying to alleviate some of the anger that was being directed at him.

“Where is Theo?” Castling demanded. Ben noticed the strain on his knuckles as he tightened his grip on the gun.

“You know Theo?” said Erin. The conversation was turning chaotic, and with a gun in the room, that could only lead to disaster. Since Castling was the only human in the room, the disaster was most probably going to be his.

“I know of him. And when I find him he’ll know me very well,” he said, making his grudge clear to Erin.

“If you point that silly little gun at him, the only thing he’ll know is what your insides look like. If you’re lucky he won’t keep you alive to find out for yourself.”

“Is that a threat?” Castling shoved the gun forward to remind her that he was armed.

“Let’s all calm down! Nobody here is a fan of Theo!” Ben said loudly, trying to dispel the tension before rose to uncontrollable levels.

They both ignored Ben and focused only on each other. Apparently, he was irrelevant.

“Keep pointing that gun at me and see what happens,” Erin warned him as she took another step forward.

“Do not come any closer!”

“Oh, enough!” Erin strode forward. Castling squeezed the trigger. The roar of the gun was deafening, and Ben hit the deck, hands clamped over his ears.

Erin didn’t even bother trying to get out of the firing line and when the bullet tore into her shoulder she screamed the same way any human would after being shot. She fell to her knees, smoke rising from the wound.

“Silver bullets,” Ben said under his breath. He should’ve known Castling’s gun wouldn’t be loaded with regular bullets, not after his altercation with the copper in the interrogation room.

“I told you not to move,” Castling growled.

Erin writhed on the floor as her shoulder started to sizzle and burn. Grinding her teeth in an attempt to control the pain, Erin stuck her fingers into the little burning hole and began digging around inside herself for the bullet.

The situation was only going to get worse and it seemed that Ben was the only one who could stop it now. The blind was closed, the sunlight blocked. Ben should be able to use his powers at least a bit, even if using them would sap his strength. He didn’t see any other choice. If he stood in the corner then somebody was going to get killed.

Seizing the opportunity whilst Castling was focused solely on Erin, Ben darted forward, using as much speed as he could muster. It was less than half the speed he could achieve at night, but still faster than Castling could keep up with. Ben reached the police officer, grabbed the gun by the barrel and snatched it out of his grip.

Castling’s face twisted in surprise as his weapon was pulled away from him. Using his foot, Ben kicked Castling in the stomach. Castling doubled over and stumbled backwards, falling over himself and crashing down to the floor. Ben then kicked the door closed, and leaned up against it, shutting everybody inside.

Just as he finished, Erin dropped the crumpled piece of silver on the ground and stared murderously at Castling.

“Everybody listen to me,” Ben said. “Theo is the problem. We all hate Theo. Does it not make sense that the three of us all work together to kill him?”

Castling and Erin both looked at each other, their gazes were filled with suspicion mingled with a desire to believe what Ben was saying. Unfortunately, Castling had just shot Erin which soured any potential for an alliance.

“Theo is stronger than any of us. If we don’t all get on the same page then we’ll all be dead before tomorrow morning,” Ben said, trying to drive the point home that there really was no alternative option here. Fighting each other would just be helping Theo out. “And Castling can give us something we didn’t have before.”

“And what’s that?” Erin asked, not taking her eyes off the detective inspector. She still had one hand on her injured shoulder.

“The element of surprise. Theo doesn’t know about him. He’ll be wary of me turning on him, but Castling is a completely unknown entity. He could be what we need to make this whole trap work.”

Erin and Castling both remained silent as they looked each other up and down. Neither one of them struck Ben as being stupid so he hoped that they would see the logic of his suggestion. If not, the room was likely about to become very bloody.

“If you’re going to be on my team then I need to know why you hate Theo,” Erin said. She stood up, her shoulder now healed.

“I’m not joining your team. I am considering a temporary alliance with you, however. An alliance of equals.”

Erin shook her head impatiently. “Whatever. Stop wasting my time and tell me why you want Theo dead.”

Castling swallowed and his tongue flicked out to wet his dry lips. “He destroyed my family.”

“You’re going to have to elaborate on that,” Erin said.

“Give him a minute!” Ben snapped. It was obviously a tender subject and the man needed time to tell it at his own pace. Erin’s antagonist attitude would do her no favours.

“We don’t have a minute. Theo will be here as soon as the sun sets. Every minute spent listening to his sob story is another minute we could be strategising.”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t wasted so many precious minutes on your sob story,” Ben said. Not that he meant it; her sob story had been one he was glad to have heard.

Erin took a threatening step toward Ben. His grip tightened on the gun, preparing to shoot her if she resorted to violence. “If we fuck up tonight, rest assured you will have your own sob story to tell if you survive until morning.”

Ben turned back to Castling, not wanting to give Erin the satisfaction of knowing she’d got to him. “If you could tell us the short version…” he said.

Castling nodded. “He murdered my eldest daughter. Drained her one night. He left her body thrown in a bush in a park.”

The blood fled from Ben’s face leaving him feeling tingly and cold. “What park and when?” he said. His mind flew back to that night sixteen years ago. The night that had set him on his vampiric trajectory.

“Sixteen years ago this summer. James Street Park,” he said quietly, clearly not wanting to revisit the memory.

Ben let out a feeble sigh and the gun slipped from his grip and clattered noisily on the ground.

“You shouldn’t drop a firearm like that,” Castling said automatically.

“What’s your problem?” Erin demanded.

“I saw it happen. I was ten years old. I watched Theo…” Ben trailed off. He didn’t want to vocalise exactly what he’d seen because he knew it would wound Castling to hear it.

Castling looked up, his eyes wide. “How?”

Ben explained how he had seen the entire event play out from his bedroom window. He knew he’d recognised Theo from somewhere but only now did the jigsaw pieces slide into place.

“Did…did it look like she…did it look like it hurt?”

Ben shook his head. “No.”

“Vampire bites tend not to hurt. Our saliva numbs the area,” Erin explained. “So he killed your daughter and now you want revenge. He killed my brother. We’re like two peas in a pod.”

Castling shook his head. “He didn’t just kill my eldest daughter. He took my other daughter too.”

“Well that’s just bad luck,” Ben said without thinking. He instantly regretted his words the moment he heard them leave his mouth.

Thankfully, Castling didn’t seem offended.

“Luck had nothing to do with it. My second daughter, Mia, believed a vampire had killed her big sister. I don’t where she got the idea from, but research was always her strong suit. When she got a bit older she threw her whole life into finding the vampire who took her sister.” Castling shook his head and looked down at the ground shamefully. “I never believed her.”

“What changed your mind?” asked Erin. Her hostility had fallen away now and her voice was gentler.

“When she went missing, I looked through all her internet accounts. I saw all the conversations she’d had. She had spoken with several people who claimed to be vampires. None of them would talk to me. I tracked one of them down and I saw the truth of the matter for myself. I saw a vampire feeding on a helpless human. I felt his strength. I saw his speed. And I believed.”

“Hang on, I’ve been researching vampires since I was ten years old and she was the first one I ever found and even that was by chance,” Ben said as if his failures were Castling’s fault.

“Who’s she, the cat’s mother?” Erin demanded.

“What? What does that mean?” Ben asked, confused by the peculiar expression.

“All I can see is that you must be very poor at research,” Castling said, halting their ridiculous exchange before it could take off. “I absorbed all of Mia’s research. Her obsession became my obsession. My wife left. She didn’t believe any of it. I let her go. All I cared about was revenge. It’s all I care about now. All I had was a name. Theodric. Mia had learned the name of the vampire who had murdered her big sister. She was going after him when she vanished. It was all in her journal. He killed my daughter and then when her sister dared to go looking for him, he killed her too.”

Castling fell silent, his story told. His eyes were red with emotion. Looking at him Ben could see that he was not just driven by revenge. Castling was driven by his own guilt. He was a police officer. It was his duty to protect people and he’d failed to protect his own family.

“Okay then, Detective Inspector. Let’s be allies,” Erin said.

Castling held out his hand for his gun, and only after getting approval from Erin, did Ben hand it over. Then the three of them sat down and planned out exactly how they were going to trick, and ultimately kill, Theo.