Jack’s squad mates nodded. They walked down towards the queue and moved away along the line of vampires in opposite directions, their MP7s drawn but lowered at their sides.

Jamie watched them go. “I’m already wishing there were more than six of us,” he said.

Jack gave him a tight smile. “Me too.”

The doors of the hospital’s main entrance slid open behind them, and Jamie turned to see Walder step through them. The doctor looked out across the crowd, then shouted for everyone’s attention. The cacophony dropped, just a little, as every pair of eyes turned towards him.

“Thank you,” he said. “My name is Doctor Andrew Walder. I’m the clinical director here at University College Hospital. We’re going to start admitting patients now, but I can already tell you just from looking at this queue that not all of you are going to receive the cure this evening. We will treat as many people as is humanly possible, but you’ll need to be patient, and we will shut the programme down at the first sign of any trouble out here. Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

There was a low rumble of grudging agreement.

“All right then,” said Walder. “We’ll take the first ten of you now.”

The police officers at the front of the queue stepped aside. Ten men and women walked up the steps to a chorus of boos and pleading from the protesters on the left and a shouted volley of insults and accusations from those on the right. Jamie watched them; they walked with their heads up, and if they heard the abuse coming from behind them they gave no sign of it.

The vampires disappeared into the hospital as the protesters started up their songs and chants again. Jamie frowned behind his visor, and realised that his hand had gone to the butt of his MP7.

That’s ten, he told himself. Only a hundred and forty more to go.

For the next two hours, Jamie watched group after group of vampires file through the doors to an ever more boisterous response from the crowds beyond the queue.

There had been a number of small scuffles between the protesters, and the police had dragged maybe half a dozen people into the vans that were lined up at the kerb, but the chaos he had feared would be inevitable when he had first looked out at the mass of vampires and protesters had not occurred. The pungent smell of alcohol was thicker than ever, and the shouted insults – particularly those from the anti-vampire side of the crowd – had become ever more unpleasant, but the police were doing a good job of keeping them separated. It would be stretching things slightly to say that the first distribution of the cure had gone smoothly, but it had happened, and it was nearly finished, and that was ultimately all that mattered.

Jack had moved halfway down the steps. Jamie joined him, and surveyed the crowds of protesters.

“All right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Jack. “I’m starting to think we might get away with this.”

“Don’t get carried away,” said Jamie. “Say that when we’re in the vans on our way home.”

The hospital doors opened again and Doctor Walder appeared, clipboard in hand.

“Here we go,” said Jamie, quietly.

“We’ll now be taking the final ten patients of the evening,” said Walder. “Please can the rest—”

The doctor’s voice was drowned out by an explosion of noise as the queuing vampires bellowed their objections. They surged against the metal barriers, their eyes filling with red, sending the police staggering backwards. Jamie raised his T-Bone and ran down the steps towards them, twisting the comms dial on his belt with his free hand.

“Calm down!” he shouted, his amplified voice causing the vampires to recoil with shock. “You were told that you wouldn’t all be seen tonight, but we’ll be running the programme at the same time tomorrow. So just calm down and go home.”

The vampires swayed, eyes glowing in the darkness, growls and hisses rising from their throats. Jack appeared at Jamie’s side, his own T-Bone set against his shoulder, as Caldwell and Harris trained their MP7s on the queue. Beyond the lines of vampires, both sets of protesters were screaming and yelling, galvanised by the prospect of trouble.

“We will not tell you again,” said Jack, his voice booming out across the crowd. “Unless you are one of the next ten vampires in line, disperse and go home. Immediately.”

The red glow faded, as did the rumble of discontent. The police at the head of the queue stepped aside once more, and let the last ten vampires through. They walked up the steps towards the hospital, looks of profound relief on their faces.

“That was close,” said Jack. “For a moment, I—”

“Shut up,” said Jamie, and turned his head as heat bloomed behind his eyes. Somewhere in the crowd, inaudible to anyone who did not share his supernatural senses, he could hear a male voice, thick with emotion.

“What is it?” asked Jack.

Jamie ignored him; he was scanning the crowd, trying to pinpoint the voice.

“Scum!” it was yelling. “You’re all bloody scum! One of you killed my brother, you bastards! You should all be put down! Exterminate the lot of you!”

He found the shouting man’s red, tear-streaked face as he whipped his arm forward. Something glittered under the yellow glare of the street lights as it soared through the air; it was an empty whisky bottle, and as Jamie opened his mouth to form the first syllable of a warning, it crashed into the head of a vampire woman about to walk through the glass doors into the hospital.

It shattered, sending fragments of glass raining down on to the steps, and the woman staggered, her eyes flaring with involuntary crimson as a plume of blood sprayed out from above her ear. For a long moment, there was silence, as she raised a trembling hand to her head, and stared at the blood dripping from her fingers. Then an animal growl rumbled from her throat and the fire in her eyes darkened almost to black; she took a single step forward, then leapt into the air and rocketed towards the crowd.

Oh shit, Jamie had time to think, before everything turned to chaos.

The woman hit the anti-vampire protesters like a missile, sending them flying as she tore into the middle of them. Seeing their chance, the pro-vampire group surged forward, taking the police line that had been separating them by surprise and breaking through it. Fighting instantly broke out as the two sets of protesters got their hands on each other; men and women fell to the ground, punching and kicking and clawing, as others backed away, clearly wanting no part of what the protest had suddenly become. The remaining vampires in the queue took to the air; many of them fled into the night, but almost as many followed the injured woman’s lead, and hurtled into the mass of brawling, howling men and women beyond the police line. For a moment, Jamie just stared, frozen to the spot; in what seemed like no more than a second or two, a situation that had been largely under control had exploded into something very close to a full-blown riot.

Jack Williams sprinted down the stairs, shocking him out of his momentary paralysis. Jamie ran after his friend, holstering his T-Bone and twisting his comms dial as he moved.

“Qiang, O’Malley!” he shouted. “Front and centre, right now! Ready One!”

Over to his left he saw Jack’s squad mates wade into the crowd, dragging men and women apart as the police, who now found themselves at the very centre of things, tried desperately to regroup and form a new line. As Jamie reached the crowd, his vampire side roared into life, hungry and gleeful. He hurled himself into the melee, punching and kicking as though his life depended on it.

The interior of the heaving, swaying crowd was utter bedlam: a frantic landscape of swinging arms and legs accompanied by a cacophony of shouts of fury and screams of pain. Jamie ducked a punch, located the man who had thrown it, and kicked him sharply between the legs. The man folded silently to the ground, the colour draining from his face, and curled into a foetal position, his eyes squeezed shut with pain. Jamie left him where he fell and waded further into the crowd, searching for the woman whose assault had started all this; if she found the man who had thrown the bottle before he found her, he was absolutely sure they were going to have at least one death on their hands.