As the exchange went on, Tom felt someone tug on his arm. Rico. He was pointing across the vast arena. Tom swore. Unseen by Takapa, Marcie and the rest, someone was balanced up on a mountain of meat hanging above the rink, waving furiously. ‘Kate,’ he breathed.

‘I’ll sneak down, try to help her out,’ Rico whispered.

‘Stay out of it, Ric,’ Tom warned him. ‘You’re only a kid, you can’t—’

‘Watch me.’ With that, Rico slipped into the bleachers to Tom’s right.

Tom held his breath, but miraculously, it seemed no one had seen him go.

‘You’ve played me for a fool, Takapa,’ Stacy was saying.

‘And it was so deliciously easy,’ the albino murmured.

Tom kept a subtle eye on Rico’s progress. He could see he was making his way down through the bleachers in a purposeful zigzag, heading for the rink.

‘I suppose,’ said Jicaque thoughtfully, ‘that Dr Stein could be said to be the founder of the feast here.’ His voice hardened. ‘Such a shame for you that the feast is poisoned.’

Takapa narrowed his pink eyes. ‘What nonsense is this?’

‘The drug you have been synthesising, the means of controlling your rabid army here …’ Jicaque waved an angry hand at the teeming monsters in the rink. ‘Your minions stole the doctored samples from Stacy’s laboratory, and I guessed you would be using them tonight. So you see, before the supplies were taken, I did some herbal doctoring of my own to those samples.’

‘Well, whatever you did, you wasted your time,’ snarled Takapa. ‘The contents of those phials were added to my own stocks of the drug.’

Tom held his breath as Jicaque went on.

‘Excellent. Then I have contaminated your entire supply.’ The old man smiled. ‘I have neutralised the effects you sought to engender in these unfortunates you would have fight for you.’

Takapa was shaking his shaven head now in angry disbelief. ‘No. You’re lying,’ he snapped. ‘Are you blind? They are fighting for me!’

‘As humans, sure.’ Jicaque clicked his fingers. ‘But now they have transformed to the lupine state, my remedial herbs are taking effect.’

Tom gripped Jicaque’s arm. ‘The cure? It’s working on them now?’

‘The first step of many –the restoration of human will. But I can only cure those who wish to be cured,’ Jicaque reminded him. ‘There are many here who relish the strength and power their ’wolf lends them.’

‘It’s a trick!’ Takapa spat, with the fury of a cheated child. ‘A filthy trick!’

‘For your sake, Takapa,’ hissed Marcie, ‘it had better be.’

The albino raised his arms and fell forwards into a crouching position. His form seemed to blur and run like watercolours in the rain.

Tom flinched to see a lean, sinewy ’wolf suddenly facing them, eyes narrowed and burning with malice.