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keep lying to yourself that you haven’t? Naomi’s tattered body leaking all over the parquetry floor that was her mother’s pride and joy.
    Then something else bubbling up out of the depths: old debts require old magic to keep them in check. The oldest there is. The most powerful of all. Sealed in blood.
    Another chestnut from Monty. Some of the last words he’d said to Dave in the flesh. Just before Dave had clubbed him and the cops had kicked the door in.
    After events had so quickly spiralled out of control.
    But I could put it right. Dave’s pen froze in mid-scrawl as the image of the boy he’d chosen flashed into his head. The boy from the cubicle two down from his that he saw every day on his trips to and from the foyer. It would be easy enough to do. Mother’s sick. Shock or something. Down for the count. Boy’s not going to last long anyway, fending for himself. Couldn’t see any of the others lending a hand. Just another mouth to feed…
    He even looks like the other one. The original… Dave’s thoughts stalled as another flash hit. Of him, down on the ground with a cop kneeling on his back – it was hard to blame them, at that point they’d had no idea what was going on – his nose pressed into the sticky bluestones as they slapped the cuffs on and the weeping boy was carried from the room. The cop screaming something in his ear as Dave twisted his head to see three cops were playing stacks on with Monty even though the old man was still reeling on the ground.
    A snapshot from just after he’d made the worst decision of his thirty two years.
    And although he tried he wasn’t able to clamp down on it this time. Instead, as the pen clattered to the floor beside him and his hands flew to his temples, Dave felt himself going backwards as it all rushed in.
    Back past the slaughter in the streets and the panicked shepherding of survivors into the skyscrapers in Melbourne’s CBD. Falling fast. Past the horrified news reports as they shifted from rumour mongering to outright doom saying. The first hints appearing. The first of the disappearances. Past the all too brief flurry of adulation he’d received for his heroism during events at Hent. Back past there even. Before the horrific day itself, back before he even pulled the Tiida into the car park of the Gallo’s Hotel in the pouring rain.
    And Dave gave it one last burst of his familiar lament: should have killed the goddamned kid, as he went right back to the very beginning. Where everything had gone wrong…
    … When Naomi had turned and said the last words she’d ever spoken to him before she stormed out of their flat. You’re a fucking cunt. A fucking poisonous person.
    It had been a night of firsts for Dave.
    First time he’d ever heard her yell.
    First time he’d ever heard her swear.
    First time it dawned on him that there’d be no forgiveness this time.
    The first time he'd honestly felt like his heart had just fragmented into a million different pieces.
    The first time that words alone were enough to send him weak at the knees.
    Everything had gone awry so quickly afterwards that Dave often wondered how different things would be if that night just hadn’t happened. If, for once, he’d just said no when Timbo had made the glasses up gesture from across the office. He’d been on the verge of refusing – the blow up the previous week being front and centre in his mind – but then he’d seen that clock hit five thirty and the smile spread across Timbo’s face.
    He clearly remembered thinking: a couple of pints, that’s all. Surely she can’t object to a couple of pints, what’s the harm?
    What possible damage could a couple of pints do?
    Dave had to shake his head ruefully from his position in the hoarded office furniture.
    Only unleash a fucking apocalypse.
    It sounded ridiculously ridiculous but he could link it back.
    Minus the pints and he wouldn’t have travelled to Hent alone. Minus the pints and he wouldn’t have been