“I’m sure,” said the voice. “Why? What do the results say?”

Matt looked back at the two words at the bottom of the document, as if he was afraid they might have disappeared in the second he had taken his eye off them.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “Thanks. I have to go.”

He hung up the phone, and took a deep breath. There was an unfamiliar feeling spreading slowly through him, one that it took him a moment to identify.

Hope, he realised. It’s hope. My God. This could change everything.

Max Wellens strolled through quiet streets, whistling a tune he had been trying to place all evening.

It was maddening; he was sure it was a television show theme, most likely from his childhood in the 1980s, but none of his friends had been able to identify it, not even Sam, whose knowledge of popular culture was usually encyclopaedic. It was a simple melody – duh-duh-duh-da-duh-dum-duh-da-daa – and it had settled comfortably into Max’s brain, with no sign of it leaving any time soon. The only consolation, as far as he was concerned, was that he had successfully managed to pass the earworm on to his friends; both Dan and Barry had left the pub humming it, cursing him as they went.

Max smiled at the memory as he turned off the high street and headed for the park gates. It had been a good night: United had won in the Champions League, the special had been pulled pork burgers, and everyone had been on good form, laughing and joking and mocking each other, as they had been doing for the fifteen years since they met on the first day of senior school. But, as it always did, the walk home from the pub filled Max with pre-emptive nostalgia; he had at least a couple of years before he needed to worry, but he knew there was going to come a time when his youthful appearance was going to raise questions that he could no longer answer with claims of yoga and a balanced diet. When that time came, he would leave Nottingham for somewhere nobody knew him and start again; he knew he would have the strength to do it, but the prospect, unavoidable as it was, nonetheless tightened his chest with sadness.

Part of him believed he should simply tell his friends the truth; he was sure they wouldn’t judge him, and it was far from an uncommon problem these days. But he knew it would change things. And he didn’t want things to change; he never had.

The sound of the cars and the yellow glow of the street lights on the main road faded away as he walked into the park, his footsteps clicking rapidly across the tarmac of the main path. Trees towered above him on all sides, and Max could hear the movement of animals in the undergrowth and the rustling of branches as they swayed in the gentle night breeze. He followed the path round the lake, past the boats tied up to a small wooden jetty, and out across the football pitches, their rusting goalposts gleaming in the moonlight. On the far side of the field, Max heard voices and laughter coming from the playground. He headed towards it, knowing what he would find: teenagers drinking cheap booze and smoking cheap cigarettes, exactly as he and his friends had done in a dozen similar parks when they were the same age.

“Mate, you got a fag?”

The voice came from the swings at the centre of the park, and Max turned towards it. There were five teenagers clustered round the metal frame and three actually sitting on the seats, as clear a social hierarchy as it was possible to imagine. The boy who had spoken was in the middle, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a thick hoodie, and staring at Max with an expression that he no doubt thought looked hard.

“Don’t smoke,” said Max. “Sorry.”

The teenager looked at him for a long moment. “Prick,” he muttered, the volume of his voice clearly intended to be audible to Max. Two of the girls giggled in approval, and one of the standing boys, clearly a member of the lower order of the playground hierarchy, clapped him on the back.

Max stopped. He had no doubt they were harmless, just as he and his friends had been, but he was full of a sudden urge to teach them a lesson, to make them realise that there were things in the night that were far more dangerous than kids full of cider-inflated bravado. And on a gut level, in the base part of himself that he kept hidden from everyone, he was hungry.

“What?” asked the teenage boy, getting up from his swing. “You got a problem?”

Max stared at him, feeling the first flush of heat behind his eyes. The boy’s acne-ridden face was pale in the moonlight, his mouth curled into an arrogant smile.

Don’t rise to it, he told himself. There’s eight of them. Too many.

“No problem,” he said. “Have a good night.”

He walked along the path towards the west gate without a backward glance, knowing the boy would stare daggers after him until he was out of sight; it would be no less than his friends would expect. Max strode through the gate and into the quiet estate where he’d lived for the last five years; his house was a square brick box standing behind a paved drive and a small lawn that he only mowed in the evenings. He unlocked the front door, hung his coat on the hook rack in the hall, and walked through to the living room where he flopped down on to the sofa, put the TV on, and was asleep within a minute.

Thud. Thud thud.

Max’s eyes flew open, his heart racing in his chest. He had dreamt of her again, the same dream as always: the trees, the blood, the screams, the freezing water. He sat up on the sofa, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the one that had been his mother’s.

Two forty-three, he thought. Almost three in the morning.

He got unsteadily to his feet. Something had woken him, something that had managed to penetrate the fabric of his dream and engage his conscious mind. Max went to the window, slid open the curtains that were always closed, and peered out at the dark street.

Thud. Thud thud thud thud.

He jumped. The sound was coming from the front of the house.

Someone was knocking on his door.

Max pulled his phone from his pocket and checked its screen. No messages. No missed calls. Slowly, his heart pounding, he walked out into the hallway and turned on the lights. A dark silhouette loomed outside the front door, clearly visible through the pane of frosted glass.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, and heard a tremor in his voice.

“Nottinghamshire Police, sir,” came the reply. “Open the door, please.”

Max frowned. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“We’ve had a complaint of a disturbance at this address, sir.”

“There’s no disturbance here,” said Max. “You must have the wrong house.”

“Sir, we’re required to follow up on all complaints,” said the silhouette. “Please open the door.”

Max hesitated, then slid the security chain on the back of the door into place. He unlocked the door and pulled it open a few centimetres. “I’d like to see your identification,” he said.

“No problem, sir,” said the man. A gloved hand pushed a leather wallet through the gap between the door and the frame. Max opened it and found a plastic warrant card in the name of Sergeant Liam Collins of the Nottinghamshire Police.

He breathed a silent sigh of relief, and pushed the door shut. “I’m sorry, officer,” he said, as he slid the chain back. “Can’t be too careful, you know?”

“I understand, sir,” said the man, as the door swung open. “There are a lot of dangerous people out here.”

Max had just enough time to see a circle of glass gleaming in the moonlight. Then a searing beam of purple light blinded him, and his face burst into flames.

He fell backwards, screaming incoherently and beating desperately at the fire erupting from his skin and hair. The pain was unthinkable, far beyond anything he had ever known, enough to drive reason from his mind; all he knew, on an instinctive level, was that he had to put the fire out, had to stop himself burning. His fangs burst involuntarily from his gums, slicing through his tongue and transforming his screams into high-pitched grunts. One of his eyes was empty blackness and awful, sickening pain, like someone had tipped boiling water over it. Through the other, he saw billowing smoke as he clawed at his face and head, and the dreadful sight of two men dressed all in black stepping into his house and shutting the door behind them.