‘Can you explain how you’ve become this creature and how it makes you feel?’

Maclure grinned. ‘I feel free. Powerful. Invincible. I understand the world in a way no one else can. I see its patterns. The way it all fits together. How one creature is a resource for the next. We give life and take life. Nature is a pyramid, Doctor. Every one of us was built to consume the weaker among us.’

‘And when did you first start feeling like this?’

‘I always have. Always. I denied it for so long. Pumped my body full of chemicals to shove the animal inside me back down to the depths of my humanity and for a while I believed that was the right thing to do …’ He tipped his head to one side, then the other, his eyes flicking left and right. ‘Do you hear that? Do you hear them talking about me?’

‘Who?’ Dr Fox asked.

‘Them …’ Maclure gave an upwards nod towards the mirror. ‘The people in there, staring at me. They’re fascinated. They feel how different I am to them.’

‘We’re all here to help you, Rune,’ Dr Fox said. ‘We just want to understand what’s happening.’

Beyond the glass, as one, the medical students took a small step away from the glass.

‘Can he really hear us?’ one asked. ‘I thought this was soundproof.’

‘He’s bright,’ the professor said. ‘He knows he’s being watched. The schizophrenia he was self-medicating for doesn’t mean he’s incapable of making rational deductions.’

‘So is he making up this thing about becoming a crow to excuse killing? It seems too far-fetched. He’s calm and controlled. The attacks seem to have been carefully planned and he chose to stop taking his antipsychotic medication,’ another student continued.

‘No.’ The professor crossed her arms. ‘He’s not making it up. Mr Maclure is, in my opinion, suffering from clinical lycanthropy. It’s rare – I’ve never seen a case myself – but well documented and is a form of delusional misidentification syndrome, where the brain ceases to be able to identify the self accurately.’

‘So he genuinely believes he’s no longer human?’ someone else asked breathily.

The professor pointed her students’ attention back into the hospital room.

‘The people I killed had defied nature. They’d tried to take their own lives. They made themselves prey. What else could I do but consume their life force? I’m a predator and I was still forming my true self. I needed what they had to offer me …’

Inside the observation suite, two lines on the monitor began to pulse erratically.

‘But what you did to them might be regarded as cruel. Perverse, even. There were elements to their deaths that went far beyond anything one could define as natural,’ Dr Fox commented calmly.