There it was again. A soft footfall behind me somewhere out there in the darkness. I whipped round seeing nothing but the sodium glow of arching streetlights on the walkways that criss-crossed the grass of the Meadows. Another gust of wind tore through leafless trees like teasing whispers in a classroom where the only one who didn’t know what was going on was me.

A scrape of claws on stone as though something was gathering itself for flight and a trickling growl the only warning in the split second before it struck me square in the back taking me down, down, down onto concrete and a spreading pool of blood.