Jack wanted to help – oh god, how he wanted to help! He shifted impatiently from foot to foot and tried to work his way to the edges of the crowd. But Alice held an arm out in front of his chest and told him to stay where he was.

If he hadn't hated her already – for the remark about Joel – he would have hated her for this. Her voice rooted him to the pavement while every instinct in his body screamed at him to be over there, where the fight and the blood and the broken glass was.

But now it was over – now that Professor Burgess was allowing Sam's colleagues to herd him warily in the direction of the station – Alice removed her arm and slipped through the crowd to the spot where Burgess stood.

Jack followed in her wake, feeling extremely disconnected. This wasn't like Oxford – all the blood and shattered glass and raised voices. It would almost have been a relief, if Burgess hadn't bitten Sam.

At the edge of the crowd, Constable Jones was trying to shoo everyone back, but his efforts didn't hamper Alice. He took one look at her and decided that the crowd needed controlling somewhere else. She was able to get right up behind Burgess, where he stood between his two police escorts.

"You've disappointed me," she said, in a low voice.

Burgess, walking between the two policemen, half-turned to look at her. He couldn't quite get her in his eye-line, but he obviously recognized the voice, because he turned pale and grew very still, as if straining to hear her.

Alice lowered her voice still further. "You will not hurt anyone else. You will co-operate with the police in every way until they leave you alone in your cell for the night. And then you will kill yourself."

Burgess let out a long, slow breath, as though the death-blow had already fallen. And, in a way, it had. With Alice, sentence was the same as execution. He was a dead man already, and he seemed to know it, because his head drooped between the two policemen, and they were obliged to half-carry him down the street into the waiting cab.

Jack wasn't surprised to find, on coming down to breakfast the next morning, that Burgess had hanged himself in his cell during the night. But the news still settled in his stomach like a lead weight. What was the point in looking for her weakness? What was the point in planning anything? Alice could order the world just the way she liked it without lifting a finger. 

He was slightly cheered by the news that Sam had survived. But following close on the heels of this were two further suicides. And, this time, he wasn't sure – that was the worst part of it. Gibson was dead, along with another of Burgess' co-workers at the Radcliffe Infirmary. And they might have done it out of panic or shame, or in an attempt to avoid justice.

But, equally, Alice might have paid them a visit – or even sent them a telegram. Would her terrifying powers of persuasion work in writing? Or did she have to physically be there? The idea that she could kill you with a hastily-scrawled note gave him a few sleepless nights in the coming year.

How did you defend yourself against a power like that? Worse still, how did you defend someone you loved against a power like that?

There were two certainties he took away from that night. The first was that Alice Darwin was the most dangerous person he'd ever met, and the second was that Sam could disobey her. They both influenced his actions when he was told, a year later, that Ellini would be coming to Oxford.

***

The amulets were the first things Sam saw when he finally felt brave enough to open his eyes. Bright gold discs and mystic symbols hanging by long ribbons from the ceiling. There was no breeze, but they were swaying hypnotically, and his eyes followed one of them – a Chinese dragon that had formed its body into a loop – for what could easily have been an hour.

The second thing he became aware of was the fact that his hands were strapped down. He struggled for a few moments, more out of curiosity than agitation, wondering what he could have done that had made it necessary to tie him down. And he must have said it out loud, because he was answered – in a voice so sprightly and sarcastic that it could only have been Dr Petrescu's.

"I telegraphed a colleague in Edinburgh, and he was of the opinion that you'd be a remorseless killer the instant you awoke. I'm happy to see he was mistaken."

Sam turned his head and tried to focus on the doctor. He was looking strained and unshaven. His neck-tie was loose and his collar unbuttoned. He was cradling an open book in one arm, rocking it from time to time, as though it was a baby that had been keeping him awake all night.

"I've never used these straps before," he went on, nodding at the thick leather fastenings around Sam's wrists. "I understand Jack sometimes uses them when he brings young ladies back. Apparently, they expect a certain type of thing from a new-breed General, and would be quite disappointed to see an ordinary bedroom – although I've seen his bedroom, and I think it's every bit as worrying as a torture-chamber."

Sam wondered why he was being told this. Was the doctor nervous? Was he trying to make him angry? Amazingly, it wasn't working. Even the knowledge that Jack had been tying women to the operating table – or vice versa – didn't irritate him. For the first time since Lily's suicide, he felt utterly serene.

"Am I a demon now?" he asked, marvelling at how calmly he could contemplate the idea.

"I believe not."

"Then you can untie me?"

Dr Petrescu gave him an apologetic smile. "It's not quite as simple as that."

Sam tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was bone-dry. "If he – if one of the biting-kind – bit me," he mumbled, "then I should be one of them, shouldn't I? Isn't that how it works?"

"Of course," said the doctor sardonically. "That is a well-known fact. So well-known that it's quite hard to make people understand that there isn't actually any evidence for it."

"But – yes, there is. Of course there is."

"Oh, yes?" said the doctor, indicating the open volumes on the floor beside him. "You've read all these books, have you? You were a witch-finder for fifteen years?"

"Well, no, but--"

"Then listen to the facts of the matter – or, rather, the lack of them. It is the law of England – and many other countries besides – to execute anyone who has been bitten by 'the biting kind' and survived the experience. There are no trial transcripts, because there were no trials. There are no medical accounts. As far as I can tell, no doctor has ever been allowed near them. The only descriptions we have of these unfortunate individuals are accounts of their executions – how long it took them to die, how much they struggled – from which the only common denominator I can deduce is that none of them particularly liked dying."

Sam made a feeble effort to change the subject, because he was feeling sick enough already. "Why wasn't I taken to the Radcliffe Infirmary?"

"Two reasons," said Dr Petrescu, closing the book in his arms with a snap. "Firstly, I'm an expert on new-breeds as well as a medical doctor, and, since the police didn't know what you were, they thought I might. Secondly, no-one thought you would receive unbiased care at the Radcliffe Infirmary, because Professor Burgess worked there for sixty years, and he hanged himself in his cell this morning."

"What?" said Sam, struggling against the wrist-bands in an effort to sit up. "He's-?"

"Yes," said Dr Petrescu, with a sour smile. "Any chance of asking him what he thought was going to happen to you has fallen by the wayside. I am to do my best with gallows literature, as you see."

"Where's Jones?" said Sam, still struggling uselessly against the straps. "Surely there's a policeman here-?"

"Constable Jones is in the hall."

"You didn't let him in?"

Dr Petrescu sighed and rubbed his temples wearily. "I don't know what his orders are."

"His orders? His orders are whatever I say they are!"

"I repeat," said the doctor patiently, "it is the law of England that anyone who has survived an attack by the biting kind is to be executed without trial. And it is the job of a policeman to enforce the law, yes?"

Sam sank back onto the table, trying to calm down. He felt as though his heart had climbed into his throat. He could feel it there, pushing down on his wind-pipe, making it impossible to breathe.

Dr Petrescu scratched his moustache thoughtfully. "Jack assures me we could have quite a successful siege in this building, but I'd rather it didn't come to that."

"Let them take me into custody," said Sam, in a hollow voice.

"We're not going to do that, no. If they try to take you by force – and I doubt they will – we'll resist them."

Sam frowned. He thought perhaps he should be feeling grateful, but all he could think was that the doctor was being stupid. "You'd do that for me?"

"No, indeed," said Dr Petrescu, lifting the book out of the crook of his arm, opening it, and holding it up to Sam's eyes. The page displayed a very clunky, primitive woodcut of a hanging woman – and you could only tell it was a woman because her body ended in a kind of triangle, which was presumably supposed to represent a skirt. 

"For this one," said the doctor, "who took thirty-five minutes to die, because she kept getting a foothold on one of the beams of the scaffold, and the executioner was too scared to go up to her and knock her feet off their supports. In the end, he did it with a stick, and she struggled and writhed for a further eight minutes before the mercy of death finally took her. Not for a crime, you understand, but because she was unlucky enough to survive being bitten by a new-breed."

Sam found himself tugging absent-mindedly at his wrist-straps in an effort to break free. He wasn't sure what it was he wanted to do – perhaps just clamp both hands over Dr Petrescu's mouth. The anger that had been so suspiciously absent for the past ten minutes was starting to creep back.

In fact, it seemed as though everything the doctor had said from the moment he'd regained consciousness had been designed to make him angry. When Jack's dissolute lifestyle hadn't done the trick, he had started describing judicial stupidity and horrible executions. And yet, the doctor was angry too – in his cheerful, philosophical way. Perhaps he just wanted to share it.

"Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "You're not saying I'm fine, are you? Even if they don't execute me?"

Dr Petrescu gave an irritable shrug. "Fine is a relative term. I don't think your life has been shortened, and I don't think either your mind or your body has been altered for the worse – apart from the scar." He gave Sam a smile. "Sorry, I didn't mention the scar, did I? Your neck-tie will hide it most of the time, I don't think it's going to change your life." He lowered his voice and looked down at his fingernails, as though what he was going to say now was a mere afterthought. "But I think that, when you die, someone else might be in charge."

Sam glared at him. "What does that mean, please? When I'm dead, someone else will-?"

"Operate your body for you," said Dr Petrescu. "Use your mind and memories. As I say, it need not be for another forty or fifty years. Your life-span has not been shortened. But when – in the fullness of time – you do pass on, a demon may take over."

Sam took a few slow, thoughtful breaths. "You wanted me to be angry for this part, didn't you?"

"I wanted you to be yourself," said Dr Petrescu. "Is that the same thing?"

"You're saying... there's a demon inside me, waiting for me to die?"

"I believe that would be the wrong way to think about it. I don't think it is an extra being, with a malign intelligence – just a seed of life. A different kind of life from the kind we know about."

"So you're saying I'm pregnant?" said Sam flatly.

The doctor actually laughed. "No, I wouldn't have said that either – although pregnant with potential, perhaps."

Sam shut his eyes, trying to control the anger. He was tied to a table. There was nothing his temper could do now but rip him to shreds from the inside out. And, if it did that, then a demon would take over – although he didn't see how a demon could be any worse.

"What are you talking about, please?" he managed to say.

The doctor leaned forward, as though imparting a great secret. "I don't wonder that you haven't seen the opportunity here. It is... a lot to come to terms with all at once. But consider that nearly half the city saw you stand up to a monster last night – at great personal risk – in order to do your duty. It doesn't matter that he was an angry and confused old man, barely over five feet tall. To everyone standing in that crowd, he was twice as tall as you, with superhuman strength, and terrifying powers of persuasion."

"He did have superhuman strength," Sam protested, but the doctor waved him into silence.

"He was Oxford. Clever and well-educated, a member of all the right guilds and societies. It had never mattered what else he did, because he was clever. Nobody has ever stood up to that before, not in this city. What the people of Oxford saw last night was a triumph of brawn over brain, which is something Oxford badly needs. Of course, you and I know that he was both the brawn and the brain, and that the only thing which triumphed last night was sheer bloody-mindedness."

Sam glared at him – but without as much venom as he'd shown before.

"I do not think the people of Oxford – or, indeed, of England – will allow you to be executed," said Dr Petrescu. "Which means we have a golden opportunity to change a barbaric law. But it's more than that. The actions of Professor Burgess have... unsettled things. Alice is right, this could mean war – and, although we have one of the world's best Generals at our disposal, I'm sure he'd forgive me for saying that he's not at his best right now. Heaven help us if he ever gets back to his best, but, in the meantime, we have you. The man of the moment – the man who everybody suddenly wants to listen to. This is a situation that is going to take a great deal of smoothing over, and, although you are not the most diplomatic of speakers, I have always seen you as a voice of reason. You could avert war with a few casual words spoken in the hearing of a journalist. You will have the public in the hollow of your hand."

"And finally," he added, laying down the book with a slight sagging of his shoulders, as if he'd been unburdened of a great weight, "if they do retain some doubts about you – if they are half-afraid that, at any moment, you are about to grow fangs and tear their throats out, where's the harm? In my limited experience, frightened people tend to do what you tell them to."

***

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