Prologue

I suppose I always knew I was different;

that my fate was set in stone, and that one day,

I would sit on a cold, hard throne.

A symbol of what I am. A deity of my kind.

A deity among many.

I was not conscious. I was running through the green grass, screaming her name in a tongue as familiar to me as the shadow that the tall gray-stone building cast in my path. Tears streaked my face and I struggled to climb the steps, hearing the babble behind the closed entrance doors, like the stream beside the lodge that would swell after the winter rains. My polished, square, school-approved heels squealed in protest as I burst through the double doors, coming across the same sight I had seen a thousand times: hundreds of faces turning to me, and then blackness. I waited, breathless though asleep, for the scene to replay itself as it always had in the past.

But this time was different. Instead of waking up in a cold sweat, cheeks wet, bed soaked, I drifted into another scene. Now, a tall statue loomed in front of me and sunlight glinted off pale paving and the tumbling water in two identical fountains. Almost as though somebody had hit fast-forward, the scene sped up and I watched, captivated, as thousands of suit-clad humans and camera-carrying tourists rushed from one side of a square to the other. The clouds sailed across the gray, simmering ocean of a sky, the square darkening as day turned to night, Nelson lighting up on his column as fewer and fewer people passed by. Eventually, Trafalgar Square emptied of any life, except for a few pigeons and a lone girl.

The sceneslowed and focused on the girl. Dark hair framed her face and she wore a long black coat, half-unbuttoned to reveal the darkened outline of cl**vage and hoisted high enough to show the hem of her black dress, which she tugged down every few minutes. She wasn’t pale, but neither was she blessed with a tan; most striking of all were her eyes, purple, which glowed above the light of her mobile.

Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she moved to sit on one of the long stone benches beneath the trees that lined the square. After a single minute, she perked up again, alert and tense.

Abruptly, the scene cut and was replaced by another. Darkening, congealing red liquid coated the ground and stained the water of the fountains like wine. Bodies littered the floor and I looked on, sickened as their life and energy drained from their necks and seeped across the city I knew and loved; the city I was torn from . . .

I was wrenched back to consciousness. Bolting upright in bed, I reached for the light on my alarm clock, surprised. It had only just turned one o’clock in the morning.

I was sweating now and heaving in air, hugging the clock to my chest so its light illuminated the room. It was empty, but every time I blinked I could see blood, and bodies, and purple eyes . . .

Groaning at the vivid images still implanted in my mind, I grabbed a pen and reached up to the calendar above my bed, crossing out and therefore marking the start of another day of the fast-evaporating summer holidays: July 31.