Jamie ducked back down and reached out towards them. “Come on!” he yelled. “Take my hand!”

A woman crawled forward, her eyes flickering with pale pink fire, her skin grey and pallid. She took hold of his hand and he pulled her towards him, the towel-wrapped object in her other hand.

“Where’s the baby?” he yelled. “I heard a baby!”

“Here,” croaked the woman, and nodded at the towel. “I’ve got her.”

“Can you fly?” asked Jamie.

The woman nodded.

“OK,” he said, and let go of her hand. “I’m going to boost you through the window. In front of the house are two people wearing the same uniform as me. Go straight to them, not to anyone else. Got it?”

She nodded again.

“All right,” said Jamie. “Go!” He grabbed the woman beneath her armpits and pushed her up and through the empty window frame. She screamed and, for a terrible moment, he was sure she was going to plummet to the ground. But she righted herself, hovered unsteadily in the air for a brief second, and flew away from the burning house, her baby clutched tightly against her.

He dropped back to his hands and knees and crawled forward again. He reached the second figure, a man in his early thirties holding a cardboard box covered with a towel.

“We have to go!” shouted Jamie. “Put that down and come on!”

The man shook his head; his eyes were streaming with tears, but there was determination in them. “Take this,” he said, and held out the box. “Be careful with it. I’ll follow you.”

Jamie wasted no time arguing. He took the box, felt it shake as something inside it moved, and got to his feet. The smoke was thicker than ever, and half the room was burning; flames were spreading over the walls and ceiling, and through the open door he could see nothing but fire. The man appeared beside him, coughing around the hand covering his mouth. Jamie threw himself backwards through the window, gripping the box tightly, and floated in the cool air, his gaze fixed on the inferno inside the house.

Nothing happened.

He waited, his heart thundering in his chest, and was about to dive back into the fire when the man appeared, half jumping and half falling through the window. Jamie darted forward and caught his hand; the man arrested his fall, and let himself be dragged over the burning roof of the house and down on to the lawn on the other side.

Jamie released the man; he staggered, but stayed upright, and went to the woman. She was sobbing, the baby in her arms, and the man pulled her against him and hugged her as his own tears began to flow. Beyond them, pairs of firemen were spraying huge jets of water into the house. Jamie watched as one of the emergency personnel made their way towards him.

“Anyone else in there?” he asked.

Jamie flipped his visor up and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Just them.”

The fireman let out a long sigh of relief, then clapped Jamie hard on the shoulder. “Good work, mate,” he said. “Well bloody done.”

More sirens screamed down the road, and Jamie turned to see three police cars pull to a halt beside their van, their lights spinning. Half a dozen officers climbed out and stared incredulously at the carnage around them: the burning house, the gut-shot man, the unconscious men and women scattered across the road, the sobbing vampires, and the three jet-black figures standing on the lawn. Jamie smiled behind his visor.

I bet the paperwork on this will be fun, he thought. Rather you than me.

The box in his hands rattled again. He crouched down, set it on the grass, and slowly pulled back the towel. Lying in the box, partly wrapped in a bright red blanket, was a black and white cat; its eyes were pink from the smoke, but its side was rising and falling steadily. Jamie reached a gloved hand into the box, scratched the cat behind its ear, and heard an appreciative purr. The blanket around her stomach was moving and he pulled it back, suddenly – joyfully – sure what he was going to see.

Five kittens were lined up in a neat row, suckling determinedly at their mother. They were tiny, barely more than a couple of weeks old at most, their heads mostly ears, their bodies balls of fluff, their eyes firmly shut. Two were jet-black, one was the same black and white as the mother, and two were brown and white tabbies, their backs already covered with beautiful markings that ran down to their stubby tails.

“Oh God,” said Ellison. “That is genuinely the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. I want one. Actually, scratch that. I want all of them.”

Jamie looked around. His squad mates were standing behind him, their visors raised as they stared down at the box. Qiang was smiling, and Ellison looked like all her Christmases had come at once.

“Look after them,” said Jamie, and stood up. “I need to talk to their owners.”

Ellison crouched down in his place, and began stroking the cat as he walked towards the vampire couple. Their sobbing had ceased; they were standing with their arms round each other, their attention fixed entirely on the baby they were holding between them.

“How are we doing over here?” asked Jamie.

The man looked up, and gave him a look of such fierce gratitude that Jamie almost took a step back. “We’re all right,” he said, his voice barely more than a croak. “Are the cats OK?”

Jamie smiled. “They’re fine.”

“Thank you,” said the woman, looking at him with eyes that were red and wet with tears. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” said Jamie. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?”

“We didn’t think they’d actually do it,” said the man. “We’ve had trouble before, knocks on the door late at night, things shouted through the windows, but we never thought they’d go this far. We never thought they’d try to kill us.”

“Things are crazy at the moment,” said Jamie. “I’m really sorry this happened to you, and I know it’s a lot to take in, but when you’re both ready I need you to come with me.”

The woman frowned. “Come where?”

“Somewhere safe,” said Jamie. “While we sort this all out.”

“Somewhere safe,” repeated the man. “You promise?”

“I promise,” said Jamie, his gut twisting as he spoke. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a policeman striding across the lawn towards him with wide eyes and a red face. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, and turned towards the new arrival.

“You’re Blacklight, right?” said the policeman, stopping in front of him and drawing himself up to what Jamie assumed was his full height.

He nodded.

“Then maybe you can tell me what the hell went on here? Who shot that man?”

“My colleague did.”

“On whose bloody authority?” asked the policeman, his face darkening.

“Mine,” said Jamie. “The only authority she needed. Is he going to be all right?”

The policeman glanced over his shoulder to where paramedics were crouched round the bleeding man; his eyes were closed and he had stopped screaming, which was something.

“Apparently, he’ll live.”

“Good,” said Jamie. “Then you can ask him what happened. We’re leaving.”

“Hold on a bloody minute,” said the policeman. “You can’t just leave. I’ve got a house burned half to the ground and a man with a bullet in his belly and half a dozen men and women laid out in the middle of the road. What the hell do you expect me to do with all this?”

“Sort it out,” said Jamie. “Do your job.”

He left the red-faced policeman spluttering on the lawn and led the man and woman, who had listened to the exchange with clear confusion on their faces, towards the open rear door of the van and helped them inside. Ellison handed the box of cats to the man, a look of profound unhappiness on her face, then stepped back as Jamie swung the door shut and faced his squad mates.

“Well done,” he said. “That was an absolute nightmare, but we came through it in one piece, and so did they.” He nodded towards the van. “There’ll be a proper debrief after I write it up for the Director, but there’s something I need to discuss with you first.”