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<h2>9</h2>
<p>"She just never came home. Her dinner was in the oven because
she'd phoned to say she'd be an hour late getting home. She had a
couple of things to do. Buying Christmas presents and wrapping
paper. Just to make sure she had something for everybody." All the
short sentences came out in brief bursts.</p>
<p>The woman's hands were shaking and her eyes were wide with the
glazed and certain look of a mother who has lost a child.</p>
<p>"She's dead, I know she is. Something awful's happened to her. I
can feel it." The voice started to break up into a gabble of
choking sobs. Helen Lamont waited until they had subsided. Winifred
Marsden's husband put his arms tentatively around his wife's
shoulder and patted her gently before drawing her close. She turned
his head into his shoulder, like a child seeking comfort. He did
what he could, but there was no comfort for Winnie Marsden and
there was no warmth in her husband's eyes. He was looking into the
far distance, seeing his daughter run through the flower beds as a
tiny child and overlaid on that picture, in awful stark colours of
red and black, he saw her sprawled in some alley or under a hedge,
ravaged and ravished and stone cold.</p>
<p>"She always came home, or if she was staying out she'd always
call," Winnie said. She was a tall woman with silvering hair that
had once been blonde. She wore no make up, or it had been washed
away by tears and dabbed off by wet handkerchiefs. Her nose was red
and her eyes puffy, but Helen could see the underlying elegance of
the woman. Her hands, though shaking, were slender and smooth and
her nails long and varnished. Two days ago she'd have turned heads
in the mall. Now she was a weeping middle-aged woman with a
dreadful knowledge in her eyes and despair eating her from within.
She was forty six years old and looked sixty.</p>
<p>"And she did call to say she'd be late?"</p>
<p>"Yes, she did." John Marsden replied. "It was me who answered
the phone and Virginia was surprised that I was home. I was early
that day." He was a handsome man with wavy brown hair and strong,
capable hands, one of which enveloped both his wife's hands when
she finished dabbing her eyes. "She said she was going down to the
shopping centre for some last minute bits and pieces. She always
had a thing about Christmas. Made sure everybody got something, you
know."</p>
<p>Helen nodded. "And she never came home."</p>
<p>"That's what we told the police yesterday. Night before
yesterday in fact. They should have done something about it then."
Helen could see the pressure of anger build up in the man's eyes.
He was keeping himself under tight control for his wife's sake, and
for his own sake too. "I mean, we knew she was missing. We checked
with all her friends, and with Tony."</p>
<p>"Tony?"</p>
<p>"Her boyfriend. They're thinking about getting engaged. We
checked with them all, but nobody saw her after she left the
office. That's when we called the police, but they said there was
nothing they could do."</p>
<p>"Yes, that's right. We have to give it twenty four hours at
least unless it's a small child."</p>
<p>"But we knew she was missing, didn't we. We told the police
that. She always comes home."</p>
<p>"Yes, I understand."</p>
<p>"Do you?" John Marsden demanded.</p>
<p>"I hope so. But I know I do want to help," Helen said. She did
not even feel anger under the focus of the man's brimming emotion.
His voice was tight and hissed through clenched teeth and a vein
had risen on his temple. It was better for him to vent the pressure
now, before something burst.</p>
<p>"It's not her fault, John," Winnie Marsden said placatingly. She
turned her eyes on Helen, trying to apologise over the distance
between them. "She wasn't there."</p>
<p>"Most young people do turn up, if it's any help," Helen said.
"Ninety nine percent of the time they've spent the night at friends
or boyfriends or at a party. Honestly, it's true." Helen tried her
best but it did not help these people. It was odd, but their
certainty that their daughter would have come home no matter what
unless she had been physically prevented, was strong enough to
convince her that something really had happened to Ginny Marsden.
She had sat with many parents before, listened to them telling her
how their boy would never run away from home, how their daughter
could not possibly consider leaving, and seen them proved wrong.
But for some inexplicable reason, this was different.</p>
<p>Virginia Marsden was twenty two years old and worked in a
lawyer's office near the Riverside precinct of the city which had
been made into a walk-way some years back. She liked to play
badminton and had joined an aerobics class. She sang in the choir
on high days and holy days and she never forgot a birthday or an
anniversary. She was studying business administration at night
school and was determined to carve out a real career for herself.
She had everything to live for. She loved her parents. She always
came home.</p>
<p>Helen knew that when she turned up, <em>if</em> she turned up,
then the parents would be stunned and happy and would accept any
explanation, no matter what. On the other hand, if she didn't, then
the real questions would start and John Marsden would be put
through the wringer. Every statement would be calibrated and
measured, every photograph would be assessed and evaluated. They
would turn him inside out to see if his love for his daughter was
just what he said it was, or if it was something more than that,
something darker and deeper. He would jump from one hell to another
and his wife would see him peeled like an onion, layer by
layer.</p>
<p>And the boyfriend would be opened up just the same way, so that
he would not know himself and for the rest of his life would always
question his motives and he would always wonder if he <em>had</em>
done something terrible.</p>
<p>That was if she did not turn up. Police investigations are
dreadful diggings into dirt and motive, a necessary function of the
protection of life and property.</p>
<p>Helen Lamont hoped the girl would walk through the door. If not,
the hell for the Marsdens and those close to them was just
beginning to get stoked up.</p>
<p>"So she called just before she left to say she had errands to
run?"</p>
<p>"Yes," John Marsden told her. "Christmas shopping. I'm sure that
was it. I was watching the news at the time and Winnie was in the
kitchen. She said she was going with Celia, I think. The television
was on and I missed some of it, but Ginny was in a bit of a hurry,
so I just told her we'd put the dinner in the over. It was
lasagne."</p>
<p>"Couldn't have been Celia," Winnie said. Her eyes seemed to
focus down from their gaze on the far horizon and her slack brow
tightened into a frown of concentration. It took some effort.
"Really it couldn't."</p>
<p>"Why's that Mrs Marsden?"</p>
<p>"Because Celia's gone on holiday. They wanted Ginny to come
along, but she didn't want to go. Said she'd never been away from
home for Christmas. I told her, John and I told her that it was
fine and she should just go and enjoy herself, because he'd worked
so hard this year, but she said she always looked forward to
Christmas dinner. That's just how she was. She would never leave
without telling us."</p>
<p>Helen filed this for future reference. She'd have to check every
friend and acquaintance.</p>
<p>She stayed with the Marsdens for two hours and when she left,
she'd a clear picture of their daughter, plus a good colour print
taken only a month or so before. It showed a slim girl, quite tall
and with blonde, wavy hair tumbling down to her shoulders. She had
a long dark coat that came almost to her ankles, the very coat she
had been wearing two days ago when she left for work. She had her
mother's elegant looks, the same high-cheeked bone structure. The
difference was in the eyes. Ginny's expression was bright and
alert, right on the cusp of a smile as she focused back at the
camera. Helen was sure that three days ago, Winifred Marsden would
have looked something similar, just a bit older. Now she sagged
emptily, her mother-love twisted and shredded under the appalling
pain of fear and loss.</p>
<hr />
<p>David stayed up with his copy of the file on Thelma Quigley.
Scott Cruden would be pressing him for something on the case,
anything at all just to get a tab on the dead woman and clear her
away neatly. It wasn't as if she'd committed a crime or was wanted
by Serious Crime or Special Branch or SO 13. She was just somebody
who died, someone they would call a Jane Doe on the other side of
the Atlantic. Already David had heard the expression a couple of
times in relation to this case and thought it was better than
simply <em>dead person</em>. It gave a corpse a name, even if only
a temporary one, but it turned a corpse into a human, somebody
who'd had life. The two simple syllables were also easier to type
onto the report form.</p>
<p>If he'd been asked he'd have said he wanted to clear up this
case and get back to real police work, but that wouldn't have been
the whole truth. The mystery snagged him and he wouldn't let it go
until he knew all the answers. He'd brought the files home to go
over them on more time before driving through to Edinburgh to find
a connection. Inspector Cruden hadn't been overjoyed at the news,
but since his own boss had sanctioned the effort, he went along
with it.</p>
<p>When David left the office, still thinking about Helen Lamont
and her offer of a date - and that had taken him by surprise too,
and he didn't know if she was kidding or not - he'd dumped the file
in the back seat and gone up to June's place on the Westland Hill
near the university. She lived in a narrow avenue close to the old
canal which meandered round the parkland where the trees stood bare
and gaunt. The welcome he got on her doorstep was just as bleak as
the winter view.</p>
<p>"So what happened to you?" The interrogation began as soon as
she opened the door to his knock. She'd obviously watched for his
car was ready for him. He had hardly touched the knocker when the
door swung wide. June was a pretty girl, small and neat, with short
fair hair and even teeth. She'd have been prettier if she'd been
smiling. She wasn't. She stood there, legs braced apart, eyes
flashing. She had one hand on the door and the other on the wall,
unconsciously barring entry. On her feet she was wearing outsized
slippers that looked exactly like pink bunny rabbits with huge
eyes. For a strange, unreal moment the he saw the scene from two
different perspectives. Part of his mind took in the incongruous
stance and the anger in her eyes, coupled with the contradictory
ridiculous appearance of the novelty carpet slippers.</p>
<p>And another, deeper part of his mind took in only the fact that
they were furry animals, just like the ones in the boxes in the
Jane Doe's apartment, the ones he had seen in his dream come
tumbling down from their pyramid heap, somehow alive and
threatening, to smother him under their warm weight.</p>
<p>He took a step backwards, momentarily wrong-footed.</p>
<p>"I...." he started.</p>
<p>"Yes?"</p>
<p>"I could stand out here if you like and let all the neighbours
hear." He refound his balance and said the right thing. She lived
in one of the old tenements that had been renovated and sandblasted
and gentrified. The empty stairway outside her door would carry
every whisper up to the top landing.</p>
<p>"You'd better come in then," she conceded, dropping her arm. He
could see the tension in her and right at that moment, his
annoyance drained away. It was not her fault and it was not his
fault. He passed her by, stooping to give her a kiss on the cheek.
She let him, though he sensed her stiffness and wished it could all
be easier. In the kitchen the coffee smelled good and there was
something tasty cooking in the oven. He slung his coat over the
back of a chair. She picked it up and hung it in a hall cupboard,
the way she always did. He sat down, inadvertently scuffing the
chair on the floor tiles, wincing reflectively and uncomfortably at
her own irritated wince.</p>
<p>"You could at least have made an effort," she started, carrying
on the phone conversation as if she'd never stopped.</p>
<p>"I could and I did," he said, not entirely truthfully. "I was
busy, you know that. Donal Bulloch put me onto something and when
he does that, you don't hang around. Anyway, you know what the
job's like."</p>
<p>"But we had Peter and Jean round. I told you about it on
Tuesday, remember?"</p>
<p>David went through the motions, feeling dreadfully
uncomfortable. They had been seeing each other for two years and in
the past year he'd begun to run out of excuses for not getting a
flat together. She'd been prepared to give this place up, albeit
reluctantly, but she would have done so and moved in with him. He'd
countered that because of his irregular hours, the late night
call-outs, that wouldn't be a good idea, but the pressure was on
and he recognised it.</p>
<p>Most of June's friends were married and those that weren't were
engaged. Her biological imperative was beginning to crank up to a
crescendo. She wanted to get married. She wanted to settle down and
be able to go out on foursomes and six-somes. All she wanted to do
was get married and have children and live happily ever after.</p>
<p>He was fond of her. For a while, he'd been sure he was in love
with her and now he wondered about that. He'd kept his own place
where he had his books and his darkroom and his rock music and
blues tapes from way back. One of these days he'd make a good
father. One of these days, one of these years he'd make a damned
fine father. Very possible. Sometime.</p>
<p>But not yet.</p>
<p>There were things to do and hills to climb and rivers to cross,
physically and figuratively. He wanted to take his camera equipment
to the wilds of Burma and Borneo, following in the trails of David
Attenborough and Peter Scott and Flora Spiers while he still have
the chance. He wanted to climb in the Alps and the Himalayas while
his muscles were good and firm.</p>
<p>After that, he'd maybe get the urge to settle down. Maybe.</p>
<p>For now, he was running out of reasons. She was a good girl and
he realised, despite the fact that he couldn't quite understand the
drive within her body and her mind, the great hormonal shunt of
reproductive need, that he was not being entirely fair. He didn't
understand it, but he recognised it and he realised he could not,
or would not, be able to give her what she needed.</p>
<p>She'd made a casserole and dished it out, talking all the while
about the couple who'd been over the previous night, how
disappointed they were that he'd not been there and how Jean had
given her meaningful looks which she'd taken to be condescending.
David tried to tell her that if her friend was like that she wasn't
much of a friend. She had just got engaged to Peter who was
something in hospital management and David, who'd grown up in
Kirkland with three brothers sharing a room, was working class
enough to take a dislike to him just for that reason. Peter was a
suit who smelt of expensive aftershave and spent a lot of time
talking about how the personnel didn't understand the problems of
the unit and it had taken David half an hour to realise that he was
talking about nurses and hospitals. Units and personnel. After
three years on the beat before his transfer to CID, David had seen
enough hard working nurses push themselves to the far edge to widen
that dividing line between life and death on a rough Friday night
in this no-mean-city on Clydeside.</p>
<p>As he ate the casserole, which was, as usual, another of June's
triumphs, he mentally noted that he'd been right in the first place
and he was glad he'd had other things to do. Shaking down Carrie
McFall and dumping her on the sidings down by the river might not
have been anybody's idea of fun, and wading through the reek in the
dead woman's apartment had been no Sunday picnic, but, in
retrospect, it had been better than a night with Peter the suit and
Jean with the sparkly engagement ring flashing in front of June's
mesmerised eyes.</p>
<p>He did his best to placate her, not willing to get involved in
an argument, but half-way through the meal he realised his thoughts
kept drifting back to the mystery that had landed in his lap. When
he thought of the trail of the dead woman, he thought of Helen
Lamont and saw her dark eyes flashing up at him. Later, in his own
living room, he felt another pang of guilt at how he'd declined
June's invitation to stay over. He could have made the effort, he
told himself. He just wasn't sure that he wanted to.</p>
<p>He switched on the television, made himself a coffee which he
knew he would regret in the dark hours as he tried to get to sleep,
and watched the news which was full of doom and despondency and
nothing of particular interest to anyone. There was a game show or
sport on every other channel, so he automatically reached for the
remote for the video and began to play something he'd taped. It was
one of the natural history series he'd missed the previous year and
was now collecting as it re-ran, adding to his library of nature
films. The familiar presenter's voice came out in a whisper as the
screen showed a naked and shivering hatchling in a nest of grass
and moss. As David opened up the file on the real Thelma Quigley,
the motion caught his eye.</p>
<p>The tiny bird, shivering with cold and effort, its huge eyes
still shut blind and its skin bare and pink and vulnerable was
squirming in the nest, bracing its skinny legs on the edges,
twisting and turning against the nearest egg. It took several
tortuous minutes and at every stage the hatchling stopped,
exhausted, panting with exertion. Finally it got the egg onto its
back and carefully raised itself up until it was in danger of
toppling out of the safety of the nest. It was the egg which
dropped.</p>
<p><em>And the baby cuckoo will continue until the other pipit eggs
are disposed of,</em> the famous voice intoned, <em>thus ensuring
it has a monopoly on all the food its foster parents will bring,
and ultimately, it's own survival.</em></p>
<p>David watched the whole operation, fascinated at the effort and
the evolutionary imperative that made the cuckoo a successful brood
parasite, even to the extent of mimicking the colour of the eggs in
the victim's nest. As a ten-year-old, using his uncle's camera,
he'd managed, more by luck than design, to get a picture of a
cuckoo sitting on a Robin's nest in his own back garden, and had
been overwhelmed with pride when the photograph had been used in a
nature magazine.</p>
<p>For a while he sat at the table, the papers momentarily
forgotten, as he watched the cuckoo's progress as it grew and grew,
demanding more and more food from its exhausted foster parents who
could do nothing but respond to its yellow gape and shrill
cries.</p>
<p>Finally he switched the television off and turned to the file
and the pile of papers he'd found in the woman's apartment. He went
through the Quigley file again, skimming the words for anything he
may have missed and then reached for the 1967 diary. As he did so,
his hand nudged his half-empty coffee cup and in trying to prevent
it from spilling its contents onto the papers, he dropped the
diary. It tumbled, fluttering to the floor and landed with the
pages fanning the air. A piece of paper tumbled out and landed on
the carpet nearby. David bent and picked it up.</p>
<p>It was another newspaper cutting.</p>
<p><em>HOPE FADES IN HUNT FOR MISSING WOMAN.</em></p>
<p>The headline was grey against the yellow of the paper which was
so thin and dry it looked as if it would crumble to dust. The title
was not evident but a part of the date, just the six and the seven
told David it had to be from the same hear. The paper had been
stuck in against the back cover. He unfolded it carefully, moving
slowly in case it shredded, and managed to get it spread out on the
table.</p>
<p><em>Police hunting for missing secretary Heather McDougall fear
she may have been abducted and killed.</em> The story read.</p>
<p><em>And they believe she could be the victim of the brutal
killer of Thelma Quigley whose mutilated body was found in a
shallow grave near Duncryne Bridge in March.</em></p>
<p><em>Miss McDougall, who vanished two weeks ago, worked in the
same whisky brokerage as the murdered girl and they were the close
friends. The disappearance, months after the murderous attack on
Thelma Quigley, who was set for a glittering stage career and had
just landed a major part in a musical show, has led to speculation
that Heather McDougall is the latest victim.</em></p>
<p><em>And if this is the case, although no body has been
discovered, then it is almost certain that the two women knew the
killer.</em></p>
<p><em>While police have claimed that such speculation is not
relevant to the case, local people have been quick to spot the link
between the killing and Miss McDougall's disappearance. Both of
them worked together for several years. They often went out
together and even travelled abroad. They were in the local
Treadboards Theatre Group where Thelma Quigley starred in Calamity
Jane only months before the murder.</em></p>
<p><em>It is also clear that the police have made the connection,
because a massive search has been in operation for the past week in
the heavily wooded area around the bridge and the stream. Teams of
tracker dogs have spread the hunt up over the north side where the
public paths lead to a well-known lovers lane.</em></p>
<p><em>Miss McDougall's mother Catriona was unable to comment, but
her aunt, Mrs Janet Ferguson said: "There doesn't seem much hope
now, after what happened to Thelma. Heather is a very quiet girl
and she would never have gone off without saying anything. My
sister fears the worst."</em></p>
<p><em>Superintendent Philip Cutcheon, leading the investigation
said: "At the moment this is a missing person operation. Anything
more is pure speculation."</em></p>
<p><em>Mr Cutcheon's men have already spent several days in the
Duncryne Bridge vicinity after the recent horrific accident in
which woman was injured and a baby killed when it was thrown from
its pram into the river below. The tragedy happened two weeks ago
when spinster Greta Simon was struck by a lorry. The baby in her
care is believed to have fallen into the gorge. Its body has not
been recovered. Police are also trying to trace the parents. The
search continues....</em></p>
<p>The story ran on, regurgitating all the malevolent facts of the
body-in-the-woods murder, as it was described back then, and more
details of the horrific accident back in the sixties. It carried a
photograph of Thelma Quigley which was instantly recognisable, but
of much better quality than the one on file and another of a shy
looking chubby woman with thick, dark hair. Heather McDougall was
not looking at the camera. She was not pretty, but she was
attractive in a moon-faced way. Three small moles lined her
cheek.</p>
<p>David put his hands on the paper, flattening it down to the
surface of the table, and sat thinking for a while. He'd just been
handed another mystery.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>He was changing</em>. The change was deep inside, a growing
thing, a sense of alteration. The panic had flared again when his
outreach senses told him of their approach in the old nesting
place. He would have felt the vibration, but his questing sentry,
his mental radar had touched them as they came nearer and the fear
of exposure had shocked him awake.</p>
<p>He had reached out, eyes wide in the dark, while the mother
slept fitfully, dreaming her jumbled visions. He had stretched and
made contact, just a light stroke at first, on the warmth of
another female. He pulled back instinctively, stretched out again
with his mind, and touched once more. There had been two of them, a
female, a potential mother - he tasted her automatically, like a
dog sniffing the air - and then scraped on the surface of the male,
sensing danger there as always. Males were different, unpliable,
deadly, he knew from the depths of his instinct. He felt the danger
and he had woken her then, roused her with a jittery mind-squeal
and she had slammed awake. There had been no time. He simply
stabbed her with his need and she picked him up and moved to the
back of the house. He always ensured he had a nest with an escape
route. That was as natural as breathing, as instinctive as the
suckling reflex. He made her move and she pushed out into the cold
air. He huddled from it, burying himself close to her heat. He made
her move, trying to pick a direction to travel, taking pictures
from her mind, urging her on. The approach, the warm one -
<em>could she be a mother? There was something in that brief
slither of contact that had jolted him -</em> and the deadly male,
receded, but still he had to hurry fast, to find another nest
place.</p>
<p>After all this time of suckling and feeding, he was changing at
last. The new sense of transition was burgeoning all through him,
quickening all the while. He could feel it spurt and stretch and he
was he carried helpless on its bow-wave.</p>
<p>It was a huge thing after all this time and instinctively he
knew it was right. Tiny tremors rippled through flesh that was
beginning to toughen, bones that were starting to lengthen. Sinews
pulled and hauled, testing themselves. Where there had been gristle
and cartilage, new bone was forming and as it happened his hunger
grew. He needed more now, more than just the milk and the leechings
of blood.</p>
<p>He would need a place to shelter and stay quiet until the change
was complete. Down below, in the room where he had made the mother
carry him, he could sense the movement and noise while inside the
new mother he could hear the steady pound of her heart as the hot
blood raced inside her, carrying his essence along with it. It
would change her as he was changing, but for the now it was not
easy. Too much of him, too much of his mind and his energy was
invested in the new thing, the metamorphosis, that she was not
completely subdued, not completely transformed to be his mother.
That would take time. He could feel her mental bayings and her
rational terror as she kicked and heaved against his goad. It would
take time and he did not know if he had the time to take.</p>
<p>Down inside the mother, the blood was hot and fine but she was
resisting, constantly resisting and he had to use energy and
strength to direct her. This one was different, he realised now. He
had blundered, caught unawares and vulnerable. When the old one had
fallen he had sensed only his own need and the new one's potential,
smelled her scent as she had smelled his and he had reached and
grabbed in panic and fear.</p>
<p>That had been the mistake, because this one was different. She
had fought him, squirming and twisting to wrench out of his
control. Whatever thing he touched inside the other mothers, it was
somehow different in this one. He had snatched her because she had
been close at his moment of greatest need, instead of choosing her
because he could reach inside and alter her to suit his needs.</p>
<p>It was too late now do anything but wait. He had invested too
much in her to reject her and find another. He needed her to last
through his new phase, whatever this was. Instinctively once again,
he knew it was momentous and powerful and that he would be
strong.</p>
<p><em>Maybe he would not need a mother.</em></p>
<p>That was a new thought.</p>
<p><em>Maybe he would be able to feed for himself.</em></p>
<p>The concept was so colossal that it sent a shiver of excitement
through him, causing him to rasp against the skin. Immediately,
without any conscious thought, he clamped his mouth on the feeder
and sucked. Automatically, he shot out his tongue onto the smooth
swelling of the skin to let the tiny denticles on the surface to
abrade a layer so he suck the blood up through the straining
capillaries, but his tongue was changing. It was smoother now than
before, unable to scrape at the skin.</p>
<p>A small tumult of panic lurched within him but he forced it
away. In his gums, there was a gnawing pain, throbbing under flesh
hardened from a lifetime of suckling. Already the skin was swollen
tender and beginning to break. He could feel the tiny slivers
pushing through, sharp and close set. Reflexively he turned his
head and pressed down with strengthening neck muscles.</p>
<p>She groaned in her sleep and tried to turn.</p>
<p><em>He had woken hungry in the night.</em></p>
<p>The craving came on him fierce now, more savage than before. It
was all different and he could feel the change inside and out. His
skin was tight and dry and pained him when he moved. The new joints
had grown quickly and they tensed and flexed, needing to try their
strength, needing to move. His leg kicked involuntarily, striking
the mother on the thigh. She grunted in half-sleep. The room was
dark, but there was light outside, not the harsh light of day that
seared his eyes, or the lights in the street that caused him to
flinch, but the white moonlight catching the frost on the widow and
limning the room with an eerie blue. He could feel the pull of the
moon on the tides within and knew his time was near.</p>
<p>He had struggled to get his mouth to the teat and snagged it
with his dry lips. The skin was peeling on the top edge and he
could feel the swell of new flesh underneath. The milk and his own
essence came welling up into him, filling his mouth and he suckled
noisily, grunting his new, deeper sound of satisfaction. He sucked
harder and the mother shivered in the sudden pain, turning against
the pressure. The fabric surrounding them pulled on his skin and
rustled like dry leaves. He turned away from his own discomfort and
opened his eyes wider to savour the blue light of the moon. His
legs twitched again, flexed and bent. His toes spread wide and
there was a pulse under his armpits where new pressure squeezed at
him.</p>
<p>The excitement of it made him twist his head as he nuzzled,
drawing back his dry lips. He sensed the tracery of heat under the
mother's skin, and followed it, letting the nipple slide out of his
mouth. It made a faint popping sound which he ignored and followed
the deep stream of heat, clambering over the mound of swollen
breast to the vein which throbbed temptingly. He got his mouth over
the spot and nuzzled in again, driving his head down. It took a
while. There was some resistance as the surface pressed away from
him and then a faint <em>tick</em> of release.</p>
<p>An instant gush of taste flooded his mouth.</p>
<p>The mother whimpered in her torpor, twisted as if trying to
wriggle away from pain but he held on, held her with his
concentration while the flavour of her gushed into his mouth and
down his throat in spurts of intense ecstasy. The heat and energy
suffused him, sending trails of fire deep down inside him and then
radiating it outwards to tingle on his skin. His eyes widened as he
let the sensations surge inside him, the taste and essence, the
pull of the moon, its wan and perfect luminance, the surge of new
blood and the inescapable change in his own body.</p>
<p>It would be soon.</p>
<p>He nuzzled closer and another strange sensation impinged itself
on his mind.</p>
<p>Down below, between his new limbs, the caudal appendage had
begun to shrink and shrivel while the buds formed themselves into
jointed legs way a tadpole's tail shrinks as it develops its limbs.
Between them, the boneless flesh was narrowing down, resorbed and
altered, but still a part of him. He felt it twitch and turn,
almost as if it had a mind of its own. A new centre of heat
developed within him, a new sensation of awareness.</p>
<p>The appendage uncoiled like a soft, prehensile tail, like the
tongue of a butterfly. It unravelled from its tight twist of flesh,
probed slowly and found the warmth. Without hesitation, but so
softly it seemed to simply flow, it moved inside.</p>
<p>Taste exploded all through him, the taste of his own essence and
the taste of the changes he had wrought. Here was another source,
but an infinitely richer one now. The other part of him pulsed and
flexed in a strange peristalsis that brought the new sustenance
into him. For a second he was completely suffused with the flavour
and the heat of it, his cold mind suddenly hot with new
excitement.</p>
<p>Instantly his body responded. All of his muscles quivered
uncontrollably in a spasm of ecstasy and in that surge he could
feel the change speeding up.</p>
<p>This was what he needed. He had been feeding on honey, but now
he had royal jelly to advance the transformation. His entire being
seemed to surge with new-found energy.</p>
<hr />
<p>Ginny Marsden felt the sudden pain and woke from one nightmare
to another.</p>
<p>In that moment, she knew who she was and her mind reeled in the
enormity of her fear. It was feeding on her, draining her away. It
had turned its mind away from her, removed the tight focus of its
attention and she knew who she was.</p>
<p>Yet she was paralysed. It was all over her, its mouth was on her
shoulder, close to her neck and she could feel the rasping burn
where her skin had broken. It was like a series of pin-pricks, not
much more than a scrape, but she could feel the drain of her own
blood.</p>
<p>She moved, just a shiver, a sudden quake as her body reacted to
the dreadful knowledge and the thing tensed. In the dark she could
see nothing but a faint outline in the dimness of the room, but she
could feel everything.</p>
<p><em>Oh Jesus it's in me.</em></p>
<p>Her mind shrieked. It was on and over and inside of her. The
dryness of its skin rustled and dragged over her own smoothness.
Its mouth moved on her surface and she felt the rasp of its lips
and the lap of a cold tongue.</p>
<p>And down between her legs she felt the awful peristaltic pulse
of that other part which probed deep inside and drained her from
within.</p>
<p><em>Holy mother please save me</em></p>
<p>She knew she was in hell. She was in hell and a devil was
feeding on her.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden was locked in the horror. Her body tried to react
but couldn't and her mind was split and split again in the enormous
terror of it. A part of her, an icy bubble of her own self tried to
think, tried to remember what had happened. Had there been an
accident? Had she been hit by a bus on the way to the Mall?</p>
<p>Yet another part of her recalled the dreadful dream where she
saw the woman collapse to the tiles and she remembered the
beckoning pull inside her head, the slow approach towards the old
black coach-pram. She saw herself bend and look inside at those big
baby eyes drowning her with their irresistible appeal.</p>
<p><em>No...no</em></p>
<p>She tried to shake off the memory of the huddled scurry along
the precinct. She remembered it as if it was a distant dream, as if
it had happened to someone else, yet she recalled the sensation of
the frosted air rasping in her throat an the sudden and all
encompassing nee, and deeper still, the twisting alteration inside
her even as she scurried, not knowing where she was going, where
she was being led, to the shelter they needed.</p>
<p>And now it was on her and in her and she was powerless. She
shuddered again and it tensed once more. Its fingers were splayed
on her skin and they closed slowly, nipping at her flesh. For an
instant the nuzzling stopped. The pulsing inside her slowed. There
was no sensation in the pin-prick punctures, none at all, but she
could still feel the leakage, and on her breasts the milk oozed
under her own strange internal pressure. It smelt sweet and warm,
but in it there was another smell and she knew it was the smell of
the thing that suckled at her. She felt infected.</p>
<p>It moved slowly and she could not turn her head as it turned its
own towards her . The eyes were huge and glassy, wide open and
bulging. The head swivelled and the eye reflected the pale light of
the frosted moon, just enough to cover the red-black with a silver
ice. It blinked once, making an audible snick of sound then fixed
her with its stare. It squeezed down on her, using arms and legs
and she felt the probe of its mind, like the touch of a dead but
still crawling hand, impinge on her own brain. She tried to writhe
and twist away from it, but it flexed again and the cold air was
suddenly saturated with the musky scent. Ginny Marsden reared back
from it, trying to hold on to her own thoughts, knowing she had to
get away, free herself from this nightmare, and realising under it
all that it was no dream. The scent filled her and she felt her own
self fading away. It made a grating sound, like pebbles crunched
underfoot, like the rending of metal, but she only heard the
bleating, the defenceless baby whimper of need and she responded to
it. It vibrated within her, mirroring her own resonance and she was
lost to it.</p>
<p>But in the deepest corner of her mind she was still screaming in
utter terror.</p>
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