The room grew stifling. Sarah’s whole body hurt. She felt as if she had a blood infection, which in a sense she had. Her tongue was hard and dry, her eyes watering. Her guts churned and she was momentarily doubled over by the pain.

Her medical background told her that Miriam’s blood, finding no other nutrient, was beginning to feed on its host body. She was literally being eaten alive from within. Her mouth jerked open. A spasm choked her until darting black shadows filled her eyes and the room seemed far, far away.

When the spasm passed she found herself lying on the floor, the weave of the carpet crawling beneath her as if she were lying in a mass of worms.

She managed to get to her feet. Somehow she had to reach Miriam. Her mind screamed at her, ‘last chance, last chance!’

If only she had told Tom earlier. There had been time back in the apartment. Just a few words and he would have known the whole truth.

He would never have come here then, not without help. Perhaps even at that late hour Geoff’s blood wash would still have worked.

Sarah could have saved herself, she saw it clearly.

‘Why not, you fool?’

Even this morning she was still half-convinced she wanted Miriam’s “gift.” She remembered well the thought that had revealed her truth: ‘I could live forever. Actually live forever.’ And she had tried to imagine it. ‘Me. Still alive in a thousand years.’

Or two thousand.

What was death but a disease, she had asked herself. And she had told herself she would break the secret of death from within the shelter of immortality and give the secret to humanity. What a lie that had been!

That was before she killed Tom. Not until her victim was someone she really loved had she come to her sense about the evil of it all.

She longed for hot life in her throat, for the salt of deliverance to fill her belly. The scalpel gleamed in her fingers, waiting.

Astonished, she dropped it. “My God, look at my hand!”

It was a claw, withering before her eyes. “Oh my God!” She darted to the dressing table, stared into the mirror there. By moonlight she saw a sunken thing, eyes black sockets, cheekbones stark in a famished face, teeth prominent behind shrinking lips.

Malnutrition, sped up beyond the wildest nightmare. “MIRIAM! BRING HER! BRING HER!!” She clasped her hands in her hair, threw back her head and screamed. “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”

The scalpel. The scalpel. She looked wildly across the floor, saw its gleam, pounced on it.

The door clicked.

No.

‘You’ve failed at everything else. But don’t you feed the hunger again.’

She drew the scalpel across her wrist, drew it deep to the bone. Bright red blood poured out. Instantly she was staggered by an overwhelming weakness.