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It is a cry that pierces the dark sky before silence once again falls. The beast lays slain.
    A young Jake stares in terror as out of the mist a man slowly approaches. The limp he tries to disguise lends him an unusual gait, and as he closes the young Jake stares up at him, up at his saviour. It’s Trent, two decades younger. He stands in front of Jake and Max, his eyes burning brightly and slowly holds out his hand. He smiles as Jake reaches up to take it -
     
    - In the abandoned graveyard Jake’s eyes snapped open. He glanced round, wiping absently at the beads of sweat half frozen to his face. Trying to calm himself, his breath coming in short bursts, he could still feel the strong hand of friendship, offered to him that night by Trent, and instinctively he looked down at his palm as if there should still be some physical mark present.
    Jake considered what Trent had done and how he had helped him. He was the man who he had come to love as a father, the man who had saved his life as well as that of his brother all those years before. Then he thought of his real father and an immense feeling of guilt rushed through his body making him feel dizzy. He pushed the thoughts far away, deep down into the recesses of his mind. Tears stung at his eyes, but he refused to cry, instead he focused on his breathing and then, feeling calmer, he slowly stood.

Chapter 6
     

The City of Life and Death
     
    A city street: full of noise, weak lights and huddled figures, moving, talking. People bustling around in worn, thick woollen coats, their scarves pulled tight across their faces in a vain attempt to keep out the cold. Every so often a figure glides down the street – a vampire. People all around lower their heads as the unearthly beings glide past.
     
                  On the corner of West 49 th Street down in a basement a dozen men sat round a long, worn and scratched table. They represented the committee of what was known as the Human Support Council. It was a group that Overlord Karick had started in order to try and get the humans onside. Their remit was simple; provide representation for the humans within the ‘sanctuary’, but in return communicate the rules set by the vampires and help maintain compliance. Being part of the group had earned them certain privileges and, as is often the way, its members had begun to start to think of themselves as a cut above the rest of the human race. Now there was a significant debate about how much they actually provided fair representation for the human survivors and how much they actually just did things for themselves.
    The air wa s filled with stale tobacco smoke and rude laughter. At the head of the table sat the man in charge, large and overweight, his name Tom Cooper. As the head of the Human Support Council he reported directly to the vampire Overlord himself. The title given to him by Karick was that of Mayor. Many would say, correctly, but not that loudly and certainly not within ear shot, that being the Mayor of the City was little more than being a puppet or weak figurehead. The people knew that only the vampires held any real power and although Mayor Cooper would never admit as much, he knew it too. However he had quickly come to the conclusion that being the Mayor, even without any real power in governance was better than not being Mayor at all.
    It wasn’t that he was delusional in any way, but Mayor Cooper had developed a very thick skin, something he’d had a head start in from a very early age. Now he didn’t worry about the people who thought of him as nothing more than a servant to the vampire Lords. From his perspective it was better to be sitting beneath the thumb of the demons if it meant you were, in turn, able to look down on the rest of humankind.
    Mayor Cooper sat back in his chair, the back creaking under his prestigious weight and scanned the room. He was dressed immaculately, flamboyantly even, as he blew a think ring of cigar smoke into the