So here it comes, the sound of drums, here come the drums, here come the drums. Baby baby baby, you are my voodoo child.

            The flashing lights and the press of dancing bodies combined with the throbbing music to send Justin spiraling into an ever increasing euphoric high and the scent of hot blood pumping pushed his adrenaline further until he felt heady. He dropped to one knee, extending his hand above his head and the girl he was dancing with did a circuit of him. He stood, catching her other hand. The black tattoos that wound down their arms seemed almost to meet and cross to one another through their fingers. He could feel the base vibrating through the soles of his feet as they did their routine, drawing the appreciative attention of many of the other club-goers.

            Don’t say maybe maybe. It’s supernatural. I’m coming undone.

            They were both tall and athletically built, with pitch-black hair and shining green eyes. Their twisting tribal tattoos only added to their exotic aura. One man out of the crowd caught his attention. He was dancing with a group of friends, blond hair and a wiry build. He was wearing tight jeans and a white shirt held on with just one button. Barely twenty-one, he guessed from the looks of him.

            Their eyes caught for a moment and then the boy blushed and looked away. Something prodded Justin in the side and he started. He’d stopped dancing and the girl looked at him impatiently. He grabbed her hand and whispered in her ear.

            ‘Let’s go to the bar. I want another drink.’

            You’re like voodoo baby. Your kisses are cold. Feel your poison running through me, let me never grow old.

            At the bar, she touched his arm gently. ‘You sure you want another? It’ll only be more to throw up tomorrow.’

            He ignored her and ordered two shots for each of them. While he waited, he turned and leaned his elbows back against the bar. Quickly he scanned the crowd for the blond boy and found him. He lifted thoughts from the surface of his mind and then mumbled under his breath, ‘Elliot Harper.’

            As if hearing his name, the boy suddenly turned his head to look in his direction. Their eyes locked again.

            This time, it was Justin who looked away as a growl from his side pushed into his attention. He looked at the girl and then rolled his eyes. ‘Oh hush. I just think he’s cute.’

            She curled her lip. ‘Yeah, real yummy, I’m sure.’

            He looked at her in surprise. ‘I wasn’t even thinking about that!’

            Their drinks arrived in a line and they knocked their glasses together before shotting the first round.

            He looked up to see the blond boy moving away from his friends. He took up a place further down the bar near the back wall and waited for a free bartender.

            ‘Anyway,’ Justin said, turning again to his female companion. ‘I ate recently.’

            They took up their second drinks and clicked them together. But when she raised her glass and knocked it back, he froze and his breath caught. He heard a voice in his head, a plea, ‘Help me!’ and he looked around. The girl touched his arm.

            ‘Justin? You OK?’

            He set his drink down hard on the counter and turned on the spot, scanning the room once more. He heard it again, and then he saw the walls of a dark alley flashing past on either side. The blond boy was missing. Again, a vision filled his mind. This time, he saw the blond boy knocked against a wall. A fist struck him across the face and then in the belly, making him double over in pain. Justin flashed back to the club around him. He barely managed to squeeze out the words ‘fear-feeder’ before he left her, dashing through the crowd and out the back exit.

            The girl looked at his abandoned shot on the bar, then after him, then back at the shot. ‘Fuck it,’ she cussed and downed it as well before rushing after him.

            The night had been going so well for Elliot. It was his first night out since turning twenty-one, and everyone was having a good time. He’d even caught sight of an attractive young man checking him out across the dance floor. With hopes that maybe he’d manage to hook up, he’d gone to the bar to order a drink. That was when things had taken a turn for the worse. As he’d leaned over the bar to catch a waiter’s attention, the man next to him had craned out and started deeply inhaling near his neck. Elliot had arched his shoulder and slid further away from him. Disturbing behavior from drunks wasn’t exactly uncommon.

As soon as he’d been served, he moved back across the dance floor, skirting the crowd to find his friends again. But as he’d passed the rear exit of the club, something grabbed his side and bodily propelled him into the door. His side hit the release bar and he stumbled sideways as it swung open under his weight.

He dropped his bottle as his body was knocked against the opposite wall of the back-street and his head cracked against the bricks. He groaned, but the guy was all over him before he could resist. Hands ran across his body, slipping inside his open shirt, caressing and scratching him at the same time. He tried to tear free, and then the man backed up. It was the one from the bar. His head reeled as a fist caught him across the jaw and he staggered sideways.

            The man only laughed as he started running, heading further up the alley. He called out for help as he ran, bit there was nothing around him save for pieces of rubbish blown in by the wind. He screamed again for help as something caught his arm.

            The man spun him around and struck him across the face again. He tasted blood in his mouth. Another blow to his stomach caused him to double over. The man just laughed at him again, and when Elliot grit his teeth and tried to fight back by swinging out his fists at his attacker, he kicked him hard, sending the boy sprawling.

            Elliot scrambled to his feet again, crying out for help as he tried to escape by running blindly away. He rounded a corner and crashed into a metal fence. He turned to go back and ran straight into the man who somehow was already standing behind him.

            He tried to scream again, but it was cut short as the man grasped his esophagus and squeezed. He let out a strangled rasp and flailed his limbs at his unflinching assailant. He clawed at the hand with his fingers, but it was like a vice, hard and unrelenting, squeezing tighter and tighter.

            There was no flashback of his brief life as he’d expected. No great revelations came to him, no epiphanies. Just an overwhelming knowledge that he was going to die. All in all, it was somewhat disappointing. His only emotion was a desperate feeling of disappointment.

            As if sensing this, the man loomed closer, rank breath blowing foul on his face. His attacker seemed to be getting off on his fear alone. And then his lips parted. Elliot struggled and managed to turn his face away, not willing to allow the man the satisfaction of kissing him. He felt hot lips on his bare neck, and then just for the briefest of moments, something sharp dug in. The man’s body pressed him into the fence, pinning him in place. He was growing dizzy and his body suddenly felt very lethargic. He wondered briefly, that there were the strangest sounds in that little alley—a slurping, sucking, swallowing sound, the rattle of the wire fence, the scuffle of his feet on the ground as his legs gave out, but the man wouldn’t let him fall. And then as his vision started to fade, he thought he saw a blur of a third form enter the alley. The slurping sounds at his neck broke off and the weight on him pulled away. He vaguely felt his body sag and slump down the fence until he met the ground, and then the scent of burning flesh was all around him.

            She skid around the corner to see the man in front of Justin burst into flames and crumble in a pile of ash. The black blade in his hand receded back up his arm, his tattoos twisting back into place to accommodate it once more.

            ‘Alyssa,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Help me with him. I think he’s still alive.’

            ‘What are you going to do with him?’

            ‘I don’t know, I just—He’s a good guy. He shouldn’t die here. Not like this.’ He looked around in the darkness. ‘Find me a car. We’ll take him home.’

            ‘Justin, I don’t think that’s such—‘

            ‘Alyssa, please? I don’t want him to die.’

            She glowered at him, ‘Fine! But you owe me. If you can carry him until we find a car, I’ll hotwire it.’

            Alyssa flashed her headlights as she pulled off of the road towards a seemingly derelict and impassible rig. She waved to the sentry she knew would be watching through binoculars, and waited for the rig to split down the middle, opening slowly on hinges, just wide enough to accommodate the car. She glanced over her shoulder at Justin, cradling the prone body of the boy. ‘You’re taking the heat for this one. Byron’ll be on the war path once he seems him.’

            She drove slowly down a corridor of metal shipping crates to a garage door at the end. It raised up before her and then slid shut with a rattle behind their fender. She pulled off to the side and parked the stolen car along side several others before climbing out and heading up a metal flight of stairs.

            Someone called over her shoulder and she waved her hand absently, refusing to get involved. But a rhythmic clang on the stairs told her she wasn’t to find peace so easy.

            ‘What is Justin doing?’

            ‘Nothing.’

            A hand found her arm and held her until she turned.

            ‘Tell me Justin didn’t bring a boy home.’

‘OK. Justin didn’t bring a boy home.’

A hand found her arm and held her still. ‘Jesus, Lyssa, what’s wrong?’

She rounded on him suddenly, facing up to the tall red-haired youth who was speaking. ‘There was a Fear Feeder, Shelly. OK? We were having a nice night and then it got interrupted by a Fear Feeder. Justin made me run all the way down this disgusting ally, my shoes are ruined, I hot-wired a car and I didn’t get to eat. I’m pissed off. But no, Justin didn’t bring a boy home.’

The black tattoos on her arm convulsed and expanded under his hand, forcing it off her before slipping back to her skin again and leaving her free of his grip. She stormed down the metal walk-way and slammed the door shut as she entered her room. He winced as the glass rattled.

Justin hefted the young man in his arms, pulling him from the backseat. He carried him down a grungy corridor and past windows caked with grime. When he drew abreast of a large metal door, he pressed his shoulder into the button and it rolled aside with the sound of grinding metal. He lay the boy gently on a cot, before leaving, hitting the door switch as he passed out.

            Returning to the stolen vehicle, he rounded the corner and walked into the barrel chest of an imposing black youth. He growled. ‘Justin…’

            Justin pulled on his most innocent smile. ‘Byron?’

            ‘Justin, there’s a boy in my home.’

            ‘There are several actually, me, Shelly, yourself—’

            ‘Why is there a boy in my home?’

            Justin shifted and looked about for his sister before answering. She was gone already, leaving him to fend for himself. ‘Well, uh, Alyssa and I were uh… at this club… and—There was a fear-feeder. He was chasing this boy through the alleys, just toying with him, and his mind was screaming at me.’

            Byron looked down at him. ‘Was he bitten?’

            ‘Yeah, that’s why I brought him here. I couldn’t just leave him there…’

            ‘And the fear-feeder?’

            Justin nodded. ‘I dealt with him.’

            Byron grunted but held a stony silence. Eventually he shifted his feet and turned away. ‘I’ll file a report to the authorities. Tell the others to pack up. We’re gone by tomorrow morning.’

            ‘But he could join us—’

            ‘Not a fear-spawn. Not in my home.’

            As the others packed up their home, Byron made his way to night club in the city. The barman protested briefly that they were closed, until he saw where he was headed. The man closed his mouth and made busy cleaning the counter.

            Byron moved through the red-lit gloom beyond to a leather strapped door. He knocked once and a panel at eye-level slid open. Darkness peered out at him, and then it slammed shut and the lock turned. He entered and then ascended a flight of stairs to a small office. A man in a smart suit sat behind a mahogany desk, the glow of a computer screen the only light.

            ‘You have a report to make?’

            Byron nodded and took a seat. ‘Two of my kids encountered a Fear Feeder earlier tonight.’

            The other man’s hands danced across the keyboard and the light from the computer flickered as he started a report. ‘And…?’

            ‘They dealt with him accordingly. However… there was a fledgling made. My guess is it was an illegal turning, as these things tend to be.’

            ‘Most likely.’

            He gave them the address of the scene of the event.

            ‘We will look into this. The elders will be most displeased that such a thing has happened.’

            ‘Indeed.’

            ‘Will that be all?’