The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Prologue

Vampires should never be afraid of the dark.

After all, we live for the dark, hiding all day in our secret lairs where the sunlight cannot touch our skin. As the daylight diminishes, handing its dazzling gauntlet over to the night, we awaken, instinctively searching out the shadows and wrapping ourselves in their protective black shroud.

But sometimes, there is much to fear in the dark. And it is only when you feel it pressing in on you, smothering your body with its slick hands and feel its breath on your neck, do you realise that even vampires are not safe from its deathly embrace.

Oh, you can fight all you want. In fact, the dark wants you to fight. The more you resist, the more pain it will inflict upon you and the greater your suffering, the more powerful it becomes. We vampires know that more than anyone. Your pain, your suffering, your death. With each bite into your soft flesh, with each drop of your sweet blood, we grow stronger, drinking you in so that we live and you join the rest of the tortured spirits lingering in the underworld.

And what happens to you when you get there?

You find out just why you spend your human lives afraid of the dark. You find out just why you don't let your foot hang out from under the covers, in fear of a clawed hand that might reach out from under the bed and clutch at your ankle. You find out just why you run past cemeteries and boarded-up houses, where the sunlight never seems to warm the damp earth and brick. You find out just why you run to your car late at night when you've parked in a deserted car lot, with the streetlights flickering overhead and the sound of your footsteps accompanying you like some maddening death march. You find out what really awaits you in the darkness.

I already know what awaits me. Lucius has shown me. And I might be a vampire, but I am afraid of the dark.

In fact, I'm terrified.