Marcie. She must be sprawling somewhere in the reddening shadows. Tom peered about for her, clutching the club tight in his sweating hands. Now he could make her pay, now he would—

‘Drop it!’ Kate had grabbed him by the shoulders, was shrieking in his face. She was covered in blood. ‘Tom, for God’s sake, please, drop it!’

Suddenly the weapon felt white hot in his hands. He let it clatter to the ground. ‘Are you …?’ He felt dizzy, sick in his stomach. Her cheek and neck were sticky and dark. ‘Are you OK, Kate? You’re bleeding …’

‘It’s not my blood, Tom,’ she wailed, ‘it’s theirs.’ She pointed to Swagger, clutching his head and gasping, and the two thugs who were writhing on the ground in agony.

‘I … I wanted to kill them.’ Tom stared at them in disbelief. ‘More than anything.’

‘You were never like this before,’ Kate hissed, hugging herself. ‘It’s that stuff, that damned stuff Stacy gave you, it must be!’

‘Jesus, Kate …’ Tom started to shake, tears welled up and streaked down his cheeks. ‘I couldn’t stop myself …’

‘Enough,’ snarled Marcie. Her eyes were yellow and bright, her features beginning to buckle and shift.

Swagger was pushing himself up on to his hands and knees. His eyes were shut, his forehead gashed open. Tom watched as thick, coarse hair started to sprout from the wound.

‘This way, Tom!’ Kate shouted as she jumped up on to the wide metal rail that ran along the side of the bridge. ‘Tom, come on. Come on. The ’wolves can’t climb.’

Kate swung herself down on to the top bar of the steelwork scaffolding ranged against the bridge’s side and began to clamber down to the planks below.

A low, rumbling noise behind him drew Tom’s dazed attention. He looked back over his shoulder.

The dark, nightmarish shape of Marcie in ’wolf form came howling out of the darkness towards him, her foaming, rabid jaws wide open and ready to devour. Swagger ran beside her, a hulking, hideous creature, his sandy coat matted and bloody.

Tom leaped on to the scaffolding after Kate.

But as he swung down to the next level, he landed badly and started to fall. He grabbed hold of a corner of the thick tarpaulin that shrouded the metal trelliswork. It tore under his weight but slowed his descent – before one of the scaffolding bars stopped it completely as he landed astride it. Pain tore through his body. He struggled to rise, to haul himself up on to one of the planks, but he was tangled in the tarpaulin.