I stood alone in the playground, my body weak and my mind dazed.

Everything had happened so fast that I was still trying to process it when Jess, Dee and Forrest came running towards me. They raced down the small set of steps, past the doors I’d destroyed and into the playground. Their faces were a mixture of fear and concern.

“It’s gone,” I said, waving at them weakly

“Gone? Gone where?” Dee asked.

I was too tired to try to lie and couldn’t see a good reason to, anyway.

“Some military types were here, in helicopters. They caught it and took it away.”

“Just like that?” Dee asked.

“Yeah. Just like that. It was mental. They had these gun things that fired nets and…”

I waved my hands in the air to explain the rest. I had no intention of going into my whole ‘powers’ incident or the way I’d fought it off. The other three’s fear was first replaced with relief, but then their concern turned to anger.

“That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, Ethan!” Jess said, her voice sharp.

Dee nodded in agreement. “Seriously dumb, man. What the hell were you thinking?”

Dee seemed the angriest of them all, which threw me.

“What? Hang on a minute, I just…”

I’d been expecting a hero’s thanks and praise. Instead, my friends were having a go at me.

“They’re right,” Forrest chimed in, “Going up against that thing alone was dangerous, Ethan.”

“I was just trying to...”

“It could have killed you!” Jess said, her voice raising up another notch

“Well, it didn’t,” I replied, getting annoyed now. I understood they were jittery, but would a ‘thanks for saving our lives’ have hurt? No, it wouldn’t have.

Jess was carrying the cloak I’d thrown in the hall and moved to put it around my shoulders. The trembling was slowing down and I could feel the wounds on my chest knitting together. Most of my vampire face paint had run off due to sweat. I wiped the rest off with the cloak.

“Are you injured?” Jess asked, seeing the blood on my torn shirt.

“It only scratched me. It’s nothing.”

“Uh-uh,” Jess said, “We need to get you to the hospital. There’s no telling what diseases that thing could have been carrying. I mean, what was it? Some kind of mutation?”

I shrugged.

“Your guess is as good as mine. It looked maybe alien to me? Perhaps there’s a flying saucer around here or something?”

“Rogue government experiment, of course,” Forrest said, “This is exactly the sort of thing they’re cooking up in their war labs. You’d be amazed at what they can do with genetics and cross-breeding these days.”

“Demon hound from another dimension,” Dee said. “That makes much more sense.”

Forrest looked at Dee as if he’d said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

“Demon hound from another dimension makes more sense than a genetic mutation, government experiment or aliens? Really?”

Dee scowled. “It’s just a theory.”

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“It doesn’t matter now. It’s gone. It’s over.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong about that, as it turned out.

All of this was just the prelude to what would be one of the longest and most terrifying nights of my life.

“Hospital,” Jess said firmly, and dialled emergency services on her phone. I grabbed the phone out of her hand and hit ‘end call’. I could feel the wounds healing. I really didn’t want anyone to get a look at them.

“I’m fine, honestly.”

Jess looked at me with her unimpressed face. I handed her phone back and waved her off, not wanting to fight with her but also not wanting a doctor anywhere near me. By the time I got looked at the wounds would have healed and I couldn’t risk my secret getting out. I’d seen enough television shows about kids with powers being experimented on by shifty government scientists to know that keeping quiet was the smartest thing to do. If anyone found out what a freak I was, it’d be a lifetime of being locked up and experimented on.

I tried to change the topic of the conversation. Something else had been bothering me, anyway. Forrest, unlike everyone else, was dressed in a sharp suit and tie and carrying a briefcase. He looked like he was about to head to Wall Street.

“Forrest, where’s your costume?”

“This is it,” Forrest said, “I went as the most terrifying thing I could think of.”

“What?”

“A straight white guy.”

“Oh good grief,” Dee said.

Jess facepalmed. I actually thought it was quite funny, in a Forrest kind of way.

I shook my head and tried to make sense of what had happened. Everyone else, seeing that I wasn’t dead, started to calm down and stopped chastising me. Which was, you know, nice.

I was convinced that the thing was connected to my powers. That moment in the hall when it had been sniffing the air, trying to catch a scent and then had come for me – that hadn’t been my imagination. It had been tracking me. It was about the only thing I was sure of.

So: A mutation, a genetic experiment, an alien creature, or a thing from another dimension? If it was any of those things, what did it have to do with me? And what did that make me?

Or was it something else entirely?

On the one hand, I wasn’t in a rush to dig any deeper into this - I had just nearly died, after all. On the other hand, the need for answers was overwhelming. The mysterious woman, Victoria Pryce, she’d known a lot more than she’d had time to explain. I cursed the fact that I had no way of getting in contact with her.

Would it have been too much to get her phone number?

I hoped that she’d be true to her word and would ‘be in touch.’

Another thought hit me, and I felt a sudden stab of panic.

What if that creature wasn’t the only one? What if there are more of them, and they’re all tracking me?

“Are you kids alright?” a voice called out. It was Mr Andrews, the headmaster of Archway.

I was brought out of my sudden worry and back to the mundanities of being a sixteen-year-old school pupil talking to a teacher.

“We’re fine,” I said, “It’s gone. It ran off.”

Mr Andrews looked relieved. I pulled the oversized cape around me, hiding my bloodied shirt to avoid another conversation about going to the hospital.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr Andrews said. “What was it?”

He was as stunned as the rest of us and didn’t know what to say. The ‘How to Run a School’ handbook clearly didn’t cover stuff like this.

“Genetic mutation,” Jess said.

“Alien from another planet?”

“Aliens are from other planets by definition, Ethan. No, it was a government military experiment. Definitely.”

“Oh, shut up Forrest. I’m telling you, demon hound from another dimension. I bet you I’m right.”

“Ten quid,” Forrest said.

“Twenty,” Dee shot back, sticking his chin out stubbornly.

The two of them glowered at each other, then shook hands on the wager.

“Done,” Forrest agreed. “Anyone else want in on making me some easy money?”

Jess and I waved them off.

“Well, those are all theories, I suppose,” Mr Andrews mused. “I was thinking perhaps a robot gone rogue? Maybe a special effect for a film that got out of control? That seems much more likely, doesn’t it?”

Mr Andrews was a decent type, but he was clearly struggling with making sense of what had just happened, and was desperate to find a rational sounding explanation.

“Sure,” Dee snarked, “Because Stroud is such a hub for the film industry. I even heard they’re making the next Star Wars trilogy here...”

Mr Andrews ignored Dee’s sarcasm. “Well, either way it looked a bit fake, didn’t it? I thought so, at any rate. It couldn’t have been real. Definitely not real. Have you seen anyone of the other pupils?”

“Everyone else ran,” Jess said. “I think we’re the only ones left here.”

“Right, well. No-one seems to be injured, so that’s something at least.”

I shot Jess a warning look. She pursed her lips and kept quiet.

“I’d like to go home now,” I said, “And sleep for three or four days.”

“You’re sure it’s gone?” Mr Andrews asked again.

“Yeah,” I repeated, “It’s gone. It’s over.”

Right on cue, there was the sound of screeching tyres on tarmac.

Three black Ford Transit vans, their windows kitted out with riot shields, raced towards us and skidded to a halt. Their full-beam headlights blinded us and we all stepped away until our backs were against the school wall.

In the middle of the vans was a black Jeep, also fitted with riot shields and topped with loudspeakers.

“Do not move,” a voice called out. “This school is under military jurisdiction. If anyone attempts to leave, you will be shot without hesitation. Repeat. Do not move.”

Oh well this is just terrific, I thought.

The goon squad had arrived.