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distance, he heard nothing.
    There were plenty of signs that people had followed this path recently, but all the footprints in the mud could easily just be locals passing through. Did vampires go for strolls in the woods? Some of them had dogs to walk, so he supposed they probably did.
    He realised that he didn’t even know what he was looking for. Would feral humans have shoes, even? Maybe he should be looking for the imprints of bare feet. Shut off from civilisation, these feral humans might be savages. Perhaps that was why the doctor had been so fascinated by Ben...
    By late in the afternoon, Ben was hungry and dispirited.
    He remembered watching television programmes about how you could survive in the wilderness, living off nature. They showed people scraping about for roots, finding leaves that could be boiled into tea or soup, finding berries and mushrooms. It looked easy on the TV.
    But in reality Ben had seen no mushrooms. The only berries he had found were a few hard green blackberries that were nowhere near ripe. He didn’t know which plants were safe to eat and which would poison him.
    Hungry or not, he would have to find somewhere to sleep.
    Remembering the programmes, he found a fallen branch and dragged it so that it leaned against a tree. He should be able to balance smaller branches against it, and smaller ones against those and so on until he had a shelter.
    It didn’t work like that, though. The thing kept collapsing.
    He decided that it wasn’t worth it. It looked like being a dry night in any case. He would just have to take his chances with the weather.
    ~
    He found an open area where he could see the stars through a gap in the trees. The undergrowth was thicker here, and he was able to pull loose grass together with fronds of bracken to make a kind of nest for himself.
    The vegetation broke the hardness of the woodland floor for a while, but soon Ben was uncomfortable. The ground felt hard and cold. His jacket would have helped him stay warm but he’d lost that in Kirby. He was exhausted, but sleep remained a long way off. He couldn’t shake the images of the last two days from his mind. The bright red smears across Lenny’s face. Rachel smiling at him, laughing. The man with PURE OF BLOOD where his eyebrows should have been and the stink of beer and smoke on his breath. Most disturbing of all was the eagerness in Doctor Macreedie’s expression, the anticipation.
    If Ben hadn’t taken his chance to escape he knew it would be all over by now: the doctor and the policeman would have bled him dry.
    Or perhaps not. Perhaps they would have held back, keeping him alive so that they could come back for more of his blood another time, and another... another...
    Woodland sounds broke through his dark thoughts. Scuffling and creaking sounds came from all around. The movement of the trees? The sounds of animals?
    At one point, a sudden yelping sound startled him out of not-quite-sleep. A fox, he decided. A badger, maybe.
    He wondered if the animals here drank each other’s blood, too, or if it was purely a human thing.
    ~
    Later, he woke to cool drops of rain on his face. He opened his eyes and stared up at the night sky. Clouds were hiding the stars and everything was pitch dark. He raised an arm and there was a sudden stabbing pain across his shoulders and back.
    Cautiously, he rolled onto his side, his body aching from sleeping awkwardly on the woodland floor.
    He wiped the moisture on his face with the back of a hand, and paused to gather his senses.
    He rose and moved across into the shelter of the trees, stumbling on the uneven ground and the tangle of bracken and long grass. He leaned against a tree, then sat, but the ground was muddy and the wetness instantly soaked through the seat of his trousers.
    He went deeper into the trees. He found another place to settle against a tree, testing the ground with a hand before lowering himself.
    He had no idea what time it was, but he sensed that there were