I'd watched a ton of movies over the years. Read the articles. And yes, I knew all the stuff about smashing out the taillight with your foot so you could waggle your hand through the gap to try and alert people behind. I was aware that staying calm and trying to ascertain the direction in which the car was travelling or listening out for distinctive sounds could help in identifying your location. I knew all that.

But the problem was when you've been stuffed in the trunk of a car by two vampires, one who was the size of Goliath, and the other who could climb like some kind of vampire Spider-Man and run faster than Usain Bolt on acid, it was pretty hard to remember abduction escape 101.

It didn't take long for my growing panic to reach a crescendo, and after trying to remember the routes out of the area in my mind and mapping the car's path as it left the forest and hit civilisation, everything was lost in a sea of oh god I'm going to die, I'm going to die, and that was it. I had no idea where I was or where they were taking me.

The one thing I did know, however, was that these two vampires had made a crucial mistake.

I still had my backpack, which meant, I still had my knife.

Whenever we got to their destination, I wasn't about to give up without a fight.

Managing to shirk off the bag, I unzipped it, withdrew the blade, and waited.

After waiting for what felt like an hour, eventually the car slowed to a halt, the engine still running, and I heard the click and whirr of what sounded like an electric gate. A few seconds passed, and the car moved again, the distinct sound of tyres on a gravel driveway underneath.

The Discovery paused again, and this time, I heard another sound – the rumbling of a garage door maybe – and the car reversed onto a smoother surface and finally came to a stop. The engine died and the car doors opened, and my heart juddered. Manoeuvring myself into a position I thought might be more advantageous when they opened the trunk – not that I had any real idea how I was going to defend myself from in here, before they managed to overpower me – I listened for their footsteps, which stopped close by.

'Are you serious?' the vampire called Michael said, slightly muffled through the trunk lid.

'Well, I don't know if you noticed, but I was a little preoccupied at the time to think about anything else,' the other vampire retorted gruffly. 'Damn Sensor kicks like a bloody mule. A crazy mule.'

A crazy mule? What the Hell did they expect?

'And I was a little preoccupied trying to outrun an army of Cerberean.'

'Which you managed beautifully, my friend, as always.'

'Piss off...'

It went quiet, and then one of them mumbled something indiscernible, before the other chuckled.

Someone banged on the lid of the trunk.

'Hey, Sarah?' the vampire Michael called out. 'Listen, we know you're pissed, and scared – '

'I'm not scared, you piece of shit!' I shouted.

Another chuckle. I bet it was that vampire mountain with the facial hair problem.

'Well, I beg to differ from the sound of your heart rate, but okay,' Michael replied, his tone biting, as if he was really struggling to hold back. 'Look, listen to me. We didn't bring you here to kill you, alright? We had to put you in there for your own good.'

'You stuffed me in the trunk of your car for my own good? How is abducting someone and shoving them in the trunk ever for their own good?' My back muscles screamed to be released. I shifted my weight and tried to counterbalance the pain.

'She has a point,' the other vampire said, still chuckling.

I heard Michael hiss a curse and tell him to shut up.

'Look, I swear to you,' he tried again. 'Even you said, if I'd wanted to kill you, I could have done it last night, but I didn't. I could have killed you tonight, but I didn't. Let's just keep this calm, yeah? I'll open the trunk and you can get out; we won't touch you, and then I can explain everything. What do you say?'

I was silent for a moment – silent except for the sound of my shallow breaths, and apparently my drumbeat heart.

Swallowing, I said, 'Okay, fine. Go ahead.'

For a second or two, I didn't think they were going to open the trunk. Everything was too quiet. And then came the click and the lid slowly lifted. Harsh white light stung my eyes and my daring escape started off badly, as I waited for my vision to adjust to the glaring brightness. When finally, it cleared, I could see that Michael and his friend were standing back, their stances wary as they watched me scramble desperately out of the trunk. I stumbled a little, holding the knife out in front of me, warning them off.

Sliding along the rear of the car, I took a fleeting glance about the room.

I had been right about the garage door.

We were in a large double garage. The Discovery was parked next to a small sporty looking convertible and the place looked pretty much pristine, with shelving lining one wall, its contents all neatly organised into transparent stacking crates. A shoe rack stood by a door at the rear of the garage, lined with wellies and hiking boots. The whole place was like a suburban homeowner's dream.

I raised the knife, and the giant raised his bushy brows.

'Oh terrific, Michael. You just released a rabid Sensor with a knife.'

Michael shot him a glare of irritation.

'So first I'm a rabbit, then I'm a mule and now I have rabies?' I spoke. 'Nice to hear you consider humans nothing but animals.'

The vampire scowled. 'Oh, I don't see humans as animals. Sensors wielding knives on the other hand? That's a different matter.'

'Vincent,' Michael said. 'You're not helping.'

'Well, tell her to lose the six-inch kitchen knife.'

'He can't tell me to do anything,' I snapped, gesturing with the pointed tip of the blade. 'Now I don't know what it is you want, but you need to let me go.'

Michael folded his arms across his chest. 'And where exactly are you going to go? Back to that shitty little cottage of yours? You'll be in a Council dungeon by tonight.'

'Well, I'd pretty much avoided contact with any of your kind for the past six months until you showed up and brought the party with you, so I'll take my chances, if you don't mind.'

I took another step back in-between the two cars. My gaze darted about the garage, looking for another way out and eventually I spotted the control button to the garage door. I let my gaze drift past it, acting as if I hadn't noticed it there. It had to be close to sunrise now. If I could get that door up, there was no way these two would risk following me.

Yet, even as I broke into a run, I knew it was futile. There was something in Michael's face, a narrowing of his eyes, the slightest of smirks on his lips, that told me he knew exactly what I was about to do, but still I ran. After all, I promised I wouldn't give up without a fight. I never had before, and I wasn't about to now. Sure enough, he reached the control pad just before I did, even though he'd had more ground to cover. Blocking my path, he grabbed hold of my wrists and slammed me against the garage door, pinning me there, his eyes blazing.

'How are you even able to move that fast?' I seethed, desperately trying to push back at him, the skin on my wrists prickling madly with his touch.

Hope not only faded, but died a quick death as Vincent approached, deftly wrestling the knife from my grasp.

'Well, if you stop trying to get away, then I'll tell you,' Michael said, anger tinging his cheeks.

Releasing me, he retreated as I kept my back pressed against the door, nursing my sore wrists.

'Fuck,' he said, shooting a dark look at his companion and gesturing at me with distaste. 'Why am I even bothering? You can see what she's like! This isn't going to work.'

My ears pricked at his words.

Vincent frowned. 'We all agreed it wasn't going to be easy, man.'

'There's difficult and then there's this.'

'Wait a minute, what's not going to work?' I asked, curiosity nagging at me. 'And as for what I'm like, what exactly were you expecting? That I'd be a good little Sensor and do what the vampire tells me? You broke into my home, you threatened me, told me a bunch of lies about why you were there, then you pretended to save me and instead abducted me, together with your hairy friend here.'

Vincent gave a half-smile and rubbed at his beard with his free hand. 'To be fair, she has...'

Michael scowled. 'If you say she has a point one more time, I swear, I'll open that door myself and push you out with her.'

'He's tetchy when he's backed into a corner,' Vincent said to me, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

'I'm pretty sure I'm the one backed into a corner here.'

The big vampire's face took on a serious note then, the humour draining from his eyes. 'Oh, on the contrary. You're the one holding all the cards. You just don't know it yet.'

Goosebumps rose on my neck that had absolutely nothing to do with my curse.

'Please,' Michael said, his voice gruff, as if saying the word grated in his throat. 'I don't want you to be here anymore than you do, and when we're done, you're free to do whatever you want. If you want to stay...' He paused, his face souring. 'And if you want to leave, you can leave. We won't stop you. But at least hear me out first.'

I stared at him, wondering what world he lived in where he thought I might possibly want to stay anywhere near him and not run in the opposite direction. I also wondered what world I was living in where I could be in close proximity to two vampires and neither had yet attempted to rip out my throat.

And yet, there was something about them.

About him. Michael.

'Alright,' I said, through gritted teeth. 'I'll hear you out, but then I'm gone, okay?'

'Fine with me,' he snapped back. 'Come on.'

With that, he turned on his heels and headed for the door at the rear of the garage, while I stood dumbfounded, staring after him. I glanced at Vincent, who raised his brows and shrugged again, gesturing me to follow his friend.

'If you think I'm letting you walk behind me, you've got another thing coming, big man. You go first.' I pointed to my knife in his hands. 'Don't suppose there's any chance I could get that back?'

'If you think I'm letting you have this back, you've got another thing coming,' he said, with a grin and a wink.

I sighed and swallowed hard as he walked away, following Michael through the open doorway.

As I passed the open trunk of the Discovery, I reached in and grabbed my backpack. The book had fallen open to where Gran's photo was nestled inside the pages. Her smile had felt like my whole world after Mum had been killed. It hurt to look at that smile now, remembering her face the last time I had seen her. Dead eyes wide. Fear still frozen on her features. Ravaged flesh where her throat had been. The tang of blood saturating the air. In life, Gran had always smelt good. One of those comforting smells – a heady mixture of the face cream she used religiously day and night and the fabric conditioner she used for her laundry. Hugs were delicious. Warm. Safe. At the end, she only smelt of blood and death.

Sarah, what are you doing?

Following Michael and Vincent felt like a betrayal. Giving them an inch of my trust felt wrong. Unnatural.

'Got another weapon hidden in that bag of yours, Sensor?' Vincent said, hovering by the doorway.

I slid the photo back inside the book and closed it. 'Unless you think I can bludgeon you with Lewis Carroll,' I said, showing him the book before placing it back inside the backpack and zipping it up.

'I wouldn't put it past you to try anything.'

'Feeling's mutual.'

I followed Vincent through the doorway, finding myself in a kitchen bigger than the whole ground floor of my cottage. It was, as the garage was, pristine, nothing out of place. I walked through, noting all the normal kitchen appliances and the expensive-looking pans hanging from hooks on the wall above the double oven.

'What could you guys possibly want with a kitchen?' I asked when Vincent caught me looking around.

'It came with the house,' he replied. 'Never found a place yet without one.'

'Okay, Mr. Sarcasm.'

He chuckled, continuing through another door on the other side of the kitchen and leading me out into a large spacious hallway with a staircase leading upwards and the front door directly ahead which I eyed with yearning. The style here looked Victorian, with red geometric patterned ceramic floor tiles, a high ceiling, and ornate cornices. A stained-glass Tiffany-style pendant illuminated the space, casting light onto the many framed pictures crowding the walls. I briefly studied them as I passed, seeing nothing but landscape images and moody pretentious art.

To the left, there was another room, and I followed Vincent warily, feeling my curse surge. I stopped just inside, my mouth dropping open.

The room was a spacious lounge, which doubled as a dining area with an impossibly huge oak table at one end and the living area at the other, dotted with a couple of couches, an armchair, and an impressive fireplace. The large bay window was masked by made-to-measure white wooden shutters, keeping the dawn light firmly outside. The whole place looked like it had been ripped from the pages of an interior design magazine, but it wasn't the beauty of the room that had almost knocked the breath from my lungs, but the other two vampires residing in it.

On a large squashy couch close to the window, a young woman reclined on huge sofa cushions, one leg resting on her knee, as she flicked casually through a fashion magazine resting against her thighs. Her hair was short and punky, an oversized bright yellow beaded hair slide clipped into one side and numerous ear piercings adorned with cute colourful studs. She wore ripped jeans and a Jack White tee. In human years, I would have guessed her to look in her early twenties, but she was definitely nothuman, nor was the other one seated at the dining table, one bare foot resting on the chair so he could paint his toenails.

Athletic-looking, with the longest – and shapeliest – legs, he wore a pair of tweed check tiny shorts, and a tropical print teal blue silk kimono open at the chest. His long-braided hair was piled high, a patterned headscarf wrapped around his head and tied in an elaborate bow. A sweep of glittery ruby shadow adorned his eyelids, matching with the varnish he was expertly applying to his nails.

Without warning, Michael appeared behind me, sliding past as if trying to put as much space between us as he could. I flinched and gaped at him as he stopped by Vincent.

'You brought me to bloody vampire den? Are you kidding me?' I accused him.

Before he could reply, the female vampire looked up from her magazine, almost as if she hadn't even realised I was there until I had spoken. 'Did she just say this is a vampire den?' she asked, amused.

The vampire at the table looked pointedly at her, as if annoyed she'd disturbed him from his art. 'She certainly did.'

'Hilarious!' she laughed, closing the magazine, and jumping up from the couch. Light-footed, she half-skipped over to where I was standing, forcing me to back up quick.

'Hey, I'm Marina,' she said, holding out her hand. 'But everyone calls me Maz. You can call me Maz too. I don't mind.'

I stared at her outstretched hand like it was a coiled snake, until she withdrew it, a sheepish grin on her face and maybe just a touch of hurt that surprised me.

'Right, sorry,' she said with a mock-grimace, as she rolled her eyes. 'I forgot we're not meant to do the whole greet each other thing. Against the sensor-vampire rules or whatever it is. No worries.' Her gaze snapped to Vincent. 'Hey, bear, what's with the knife?' Her eyes drifted quickly to Michael's blood-stained shirt. 'That's your blood. What happened?'

Fuck. My muscles tightened, waiting for the inevitable. It wasn't going to take long for them to piece this nightmare together.

Michael glanced at me, and Marina's eyes widened.

'She got you?' she shrieked, breaking into a wide smile, pure glee lighting up her eyes. 'You got him? How?'

Okay, not what I had expected.

'She got lucky,' Michael snapped, bitterness lacing his tone.

'Yeah, but still...' Marina continued to stare at me with something verging on awe. 'If you got him, then... shit! I mean, we knew about the whole Luther thing, but this is a whole other level.'

Michael was a whole other level to Luther Baines, notorious den leader of Westminster?

I stiffened, locking eyes with him, and doing my best to pretend this bit of news hadn't made my stomach turn a rollercoaster somersault.

'Yeah, well, apparently he's not as fast as he thinks he is.'

Vincent snickered. 'You should speak to his past girlfriends. They'd disagree.'

They all laughed, except for Michael who looked hugely uncomfortable, which I knew instinctively had zero to do with the light-hearted jibe at his expense and everything to do with my presence. I guessed he'd not been lying, after all. He hated me being here as much as I did.

'Okay, so you've met Maz. And Vincent, obviously,' he said, scowling, before nodding towards the vampire seated at the table. 'This is Damien.'

'We call him Dame,' Marina cut in.

'But you can call me The Dame,' Damien said, looking up from his nails, and casting a disapproving glance my way.

'I'm not going to call you The Dame.'

Damien pursed his lips, placed the brush back into the varnish bottle and pointed at me. 'You know, you're awfully feisty for a human in a room full of vampires. Oh, and your dress sense is abominable.'

I narrowed my eyes at him, heckles rising. 'You're wearing headache-inducing clashing prints and you want to cast shade on what I'm wearing?'

The vampire placed a well-manicure hand against his bare chest, looking horrified. 'Hey, this is Gucci.'

'Then Gucci was clearly drunk when that nightmare was created,' I said.

'Nightmare? You wanna talk about nightmares?' Damien cracked a wicked smile and tongued the end of one elongated incisor. My stupid heart juddered. I couldn't help it.

Michael shot me a glance and sighed, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. 'Dame, for fucks sake, cut it out. Put them away.'

'That's not what you usually say, beautiful,' Dame replied with a wink, his grin fading when he saw the look on Michael's face. The man was a fireball of tension. I could feel it emanating from him in waves, something which also wasn't lost on the pretty vampire at the table, who raised his hands in surrender.

'Okay, okay. Fine, I'll behave. Just tell your human to back off... I mean, as if this whole outfit isn't a total vibe.'

'I'm not his human. Don't talk about me like I'm a pet.'

Damien smiled. I hated to say it, but it really was a beautiful smile. 'Darling, you are the sole human in an elite, albeit very compact and bijou, apparent den of vampires. You're the pet, trust me,' he said. 'Michael, I like this one. She's got a lot of sass. Can we keep her? I mean, obviously we'll have to work on... this.' He gestured wildly to what I was wearing, his lips curling up with distaste.

I shook my head and returned his withering gaze with one of my own, before turning back to Michael. 'Are you going to tell me what all this is about so I can get out of here before he puts a leash on me?'

Just then, a small figure with a mass of curls tied up in a bunch, pushed her way into the room, darting past me and throwing herself at Michael. He smiled, the first true warmth I had seen from him, as she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, looking up into his face.

'You're back!' she said, frowning when she saw the state of his shirt. 'You got hurt!'

'The badly dressed one did it,' Damien called out, having gone back to his nails, now concentrating on painting one of his hands.

The child vampire turned and glared daggers at me.

The child vampire.

I was horrified. 'What the fu...' I looked at them all, feeling sick. A child? I had always known vampires possessed an innate sense of cruelty about them, but turning a child? I couldn't do this. I couldn't stay here. No matter what this Michael had to tell me, I couldn't just stand here and act like this didn't matter, that this was okay.

I levelled my gaze at him, and he met the challenge with that cold, dark stare he seemed to master so well. The kind of look that could make your bones weaken. It was the kind of look that could stop a heart.

But I wasn't just someone.

I was the Sensor who'd killed Luther Baines singlehanded, and I was the Sensor who had stabbed a vampire apparently on a whole other level.

'Nothing you could possibly say is worth this,' I said, keeping my voice steady, even though I was more furious than when they'd thrown me into the trunk of the Discovery. 'This is wrong, and you know it. I'll take my chances on my own, thanks very much.'

I backed up into the hallway, heading for the front door.

'This has a name,' Michael called out angrily.

I stopped and turned. He was standing in the hallway now, the child's hand grasped firmly in his. The others had moved to stand behind him.

'Her name is Bailey and she's not the wrong one here. You are,' he said, his voice edged with a barely controlled rage. 'Whatever you think, trust me, you're wrong. None of us made Bailey like this.'

By his side, the child inched closer to him, seeking the security he so clearly offered.

'You wanted to know what I am?' he said. 'Why it is I can move the way I do? Why I'm different to other vampires?'

I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. Instead, I just nodded. Despite everything, I had to know.

I needed to know.

'Bailey and I, we're the same,' he said, looking down at the girl 'Nobody made us. Nobody turned us. We weren't bitten.'

'W-what?' I stammered to get the words out. 'What do you mean? If you weren't ever bitten, how did you become vampires?'

The air prickled with something awful. Suddenly I wasn't sure I did want to know, but whatever it was I knew it was going to change everything. I could sense it. Like everything had pushed me to this one terrible moment in time.

'I was born into this world a vampire in 1888 and until twelve years ago, I believed I was the only one of my kind,' Michael said. 'That's when I found Bailey. When her mother was killed, we took her in and together we've all protected her ever since.'

He looked down at the girl with that same affection I'd seen before, except this time, it was laced with a deep sadness I didn't understand.

'We're trueborn vampires, she and I, and this life – if that is what we can call it - is all we have ever known.'