Moments ticked by like spiders scuttling up my spine. The vampaneze's angry breath and my gasping sobs filled the air. There was no sight or sound of the person who'd fired the arrow. Shuffling backwards, the vampaneze locked gazes with me and bared his teeth. "I'll get you later," he vowed. "You'll die slowly, in great agony. I'll cut you. Fingers first. One at a time." Then he turned and sprinted. A second arrow was fired after him, but he ducked low and again it missed, burying itself in a large bag of rubbish. The vampaneze exploded out of the end of the alley and vanished quickly into the night.

There was a lengthy pause. Then footsteps. A man of medium height appeared out of the gloom. He was dressed in black, with a long scarf looped around his neck, and gloves covering his hands. He had grey hair — though he wasn't old — and there was a stern set to his features. He was holding a gun-shaped weapon, out of the end of which jutted a steel-tipped arrow. Another of the arrow-firing guns was slung over his left shoulder.

I sat up, grunting, and tried to rub some life back into my right leg. "Thanks," I said as the man got closer. He didn't answer, just proceeded to the end of the alley, where he scanned the area beyond for signs of the vampaneze.

Turning, the grey-haired man came back and stopped a couple of metres away. He was holding the arrow gun in his right hand, but it wasn't pointed harmlessly down at the ground — it was pointing at me.

"Mind lowering that?" I asked, forcing a sheepish smile. "You just saved my life. Be a shame if that went off by accident and killed me."

He didn't reply immediately. Nor did he lower the gun. There was no warmth in his expression. "Does it surprise you that I spared your life?" he asked. As with the vampaneze, there was something familiar about this man's voice, but again I couldn't place it.

"I… guess," I said weakly, nervously eyeing the arrow gun.

"Do you know why I saved you?"

I gulped. "Out of the goodness of your heart?"

"Maybe." He took a step closer. The tip of the gun was now aimed directly at my heart. If he fired, he'd create a hole the size of a football in my chest. "Or maybe I was saving you for myself!" he hissed.

"Who are you?" I croaked, desperately pressing back against the wall.

"You don't recognize me?"

I shook my head. I was certain I'd seen his face before, but I couldn't put a name to it.

The man breathed out through his nose. "Strange. I never thought you'd forget. Then again, it's been a long time, and the years haven't been as kind to me as they've been to you. Perhaps you'll remember this." He held out his left hand. The palm of the glove had been cut away, exposing the flesh beneath. It was an ordinary hand in all respects save one — in the centre, a rough cross had been carved into the flesh.

As I stared at the cross, pink and tender-looking, the years evaporated and I was back in a cemetery on my first night as a vampire's assistant, facing a boy whose life I'd saved, a boy who was jealous of me, who thought I'd conspired with Mr. Crepsley and betrayed him.

"Steve!" I gasped, staring from the cross to his cold, hard eyes. "Steve Leopard!"

"Yes," he nodded grimly.

Steve Leopard, my one-time best friend. The angry, mixed-up boy who'd sworn to become a vampire hunter when he grew up, so that he could track me down — and kill me!

HE WAS close enough for me to lunge at the gun barrel and maybe redirect it. But I couldn't move. I was stunned beyond anything but passive observation. Debbie Hemlock walking into my English class had left me gobsmacked — but Steve Leopard (his real name was Leonard) turning up out of the blue like this was ten times as shocking.

After a handful of anxious seconds, Steve lowered the arrow gun, then jammed it through a belt behind his back. He extended his hands, took my left arm above the elbow, and hauled me to my feet. I rose obediently, a puppet in his hands.

"Had you going for a minute, didn't I?" he said — and smiled.

"You're not going to kill me?" I wheezed.

"Hardly!" He took my right hand and shook it awkwardly. "Hello, Darren. Good to see you again, old friend."

I stared at our clasped hands, then at his face. Then I threw my arms around him and hugged him for dear life. "Steve!" I sobbed into his shoulder.

"Stop that," he muttered and I could hear the sound of his own voice breaking. "You'll have me in tears if you keep it up." Pushing me away, he wiped around his eyes and grinned.

I dried my cheeks and beamed. "It's really you!"

"Of course. You don't think two people could be born this handsome, do you?"

"Modest as ever," I noted wryly.

"Nothing to be modest about," he sniffed, then laughed. "You able to walk?"

"I think a hobble's the best I can manage," I said.

"Then lean on me. I don't want to hang around. Hooky might come back with his friends."

"Hooky? Oh, you mean the vampa—" I stopped, wondering how much Steve knew about the creatures of the night.

"The vampaneze," he finished, nodding soberly.

"You know about them?"

"Obviously."

"Is the hook-handed guy the one who's been killing people?"

"Yes. But he isn't alone. We'll discuss it later. Let's get you out of here and cleaned up first." Letting me lean on him, Steve led me back the way I'd come, and as we walked I couldn't help wondering if I'd been knocked unconscious in the alley. If not for the pain in my leg — which was all too real — I'd have been seriously tempted to think this was nothing but a wishful dream.

Steve took me to the fifth floor of a run-down apartment block. Many of the doors we passed along the landing were boarded-over or broken down. "Nice neighbourhood," I commented sarcastically.

"It's a condemned building," he said. "A few apartments are occupied — mostly by old folk with nowhere else to go — but the majority are empty. I prefer places like this to boarding houses and hotels. The space and quiet suit my purposes."

Steve stopped at a battered brown door kept shut by an extra thick padlock and chain. Rooting through his pockets, he found a key, unlocked the padlock, removed the chain and pushed the door open. The air inside was stale, but he took no notice as he bundled me inside and closed the door. The darkness within held until he lit a candle. "No electricity," he said. "The lower apartments are still connected, but it went off up here last week."

He helped me into a cluttered living room and laid me down on a couch that had seen better days — it was threadbare, and wiry springs stuck out through several holes. "Try not to impale yourself," Steve laughed.

"Is your interior decorator on strike?" I asked.

"Don't complain," Steve scolded me. "It's a good base to work from. If we had to report back to some swanky hotel, we'd have to explain your leg and why we're covered in filth. As for accounting for these …" He shrugged off the pair of arrow guns and laid them down.

"Care to tell me what's going on, Steve?" I asked quietly. "How you were in that alley and why you're carrying those?"

"Later," he said, "after we've tended to your wounds. And after you've—" he produced a mobile phone and tossed it to me "-made a call."

"Who am I supposed to ring?" I asked, staring at the phone suspiciously.

"Hooky followed you from your friend's house — the dark-skinned lady."

My face whitened. "He knows where Debbie lives?" I gasped.

"If that's her name — yes. I doubt he'll go after her, but if you don't want to run the risk, my advice is to call and tell her to—"

I was hitting buttons before he finished. Debbie's phone rang four times. Five. Six. Seven. I was about to dash to her rescue, regardless of my bad leg, when she picked up and said, "Hello?"