Cass crouched on the rooftop and stared coldly at the door to the bar. She’d been there for minutes, hours, days. She was waiting for something. Figures had wandered in and out of the bar, but it wasn’t yet time. She could wait as long as it took.

Finally someone came out and she felt her body wake up. A single male, youngish, hunched shoulders against the rain. Stumbling a little, maybe exaggerating it. Doesn’t look around, just heads straight east, towards the Grid, oblivious to all around him.

Cass waited and watched. This bait would be taken, she could feel it.

The air vibrated around her as if someone had grabbed the world and pulled it taut, flicked it with their fingernail to make it hum.

The figure in the street slowed and then stopped, staring off to his left at the dark alley leading away from the Boulevard. He began to back away. This was it.

Cass leapt across to the next building, then up to the nearest power line and slid across the street on it. She hit the next roof running and leaned over to look down into the alley. There was nothing.

The man had backed right up against the far side of the street, a featureless brick building holding him up. His face was twisted into a mask of terror and panic. He crept slowly across the wall until his fingers found the edge of a windowsill, then turned and pulled himself up quickly. There were no stumbles now. He was pushed back against the wall, hands splayed backwards, trying to disappear into the brick itself, eyes staring down at the street below him.

Cass scanned again but there was nothing. Just that familiar vibration in the air. Same as earlier, same as with Quarters. She was here, she was close, but Cass couldn’t sense her.

There was a way inside it, there had to be. As soon as Cass had the thought she knew what the answer was. The blade leapt up into her hand.

She didn’t bother with the power lines this time, just jumped the two storeys down to the street below, flew out from the rooftop to land lightly on her feet just in front of the terrified man. Then two more steps and she was beside him, blade against his throat. The man’s eyes didn’t move from the street below. She let the blade dig in.

The world around her warped, shifted two feet to the left. She looked down at her hands and they were someone else’s, a man’s – the man’s – and beyond them, underneath them, the street was moving.

She looked closer and shrank back against the wall as it became clear. The street was covered in rats, swarms of them, crawling on top of one another, burying each other in their eagerness to reach him. To reach you. They were hungry.

Their black fur was wet from the rain and sticky with blood, teeth and claws dripping with it, fighting each other, pilling on top of each other and getting ever higher on the wall. Just another foot now.

The first one made it to the narrow ledge and he kicked out at it. They were enormous, at least a foot and a half long, heavy bodied. Moments later another came, then another. He couldn’t knock them all back down and felt the first diseased fangs sink into his ankle.

The pain pushed him further back against the wall, then the second and third bites dropped him, face first, into the slathering pile. He felt hungry mouths chew into his cheeks.

The blade clattered down onto the street and suddenly the world around her was clear. Cass was on her knees, sucking in air, hands covering her face. She looked up at the street around her but it was empty. Everything had gone. The man had gone.

Taken. Taken by her, by the vision that she was there to face, that she’d been able to do nothing about.

Cass felt out to the blade and wrapped her fingers around its hilt. There was no blood on the blade, and it hummed with hunger. It wanted to feed. Well, there was only one thing for it now. They would feed again soon.

She strode up to the bar door and pushed it open.