The five of us took the elevator in silence. There was no pretence on Victoria’s side anymore. No attempt to argue her case or to continue grooming me. She’d revealed herself and had nothing more to say.

Marian was strapped into a chair in a round, white chamber I hadn’t seen before. Five technicians were in the room with her, their faces covered with surgeons’ masks. Several of them had blood on their lab coats. A variety of cruel looking instruments were strewn around tables in the room. Bright lights shone down on the clinical chamber. Cameras and monitoring devices recorded every awful moment of the experiments on Marian. The chamber had been used for similar purposes before. I knew it in my bones. Scratch marks were cut into the white tiles. Dark patches stained the concrete floor.

An observation room with a three-inch thick glass window afforded a view onto the proceedings. I watched in horror as Marian’s head was forced into a bucket of water for five whole minutes. She came up gasping for air, her face bewildered. Terrified.

“What are you doing, Victoria?” I whispered.

“Testing her limits,” Victoria replied. “This is fascinating. She actually cannot be killed by conventional means.”

While we’d been above ground, Victoria’s technicians had spent the last hour exploring Marian’s curse of immortality.

“Stop this!” I shouted. “This is obscene!”

I tried to walk out of the observation room to get Marian out of the hellhole. My path was blocked by one of the security guards, who trained his gun on me. I stepped back. I’d have to fight my way out of this somehow, but I didn’t like my odds.

“Don’t make a fuss, Ethan,” Victoria said. “This will all be over soon. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to really explore what she can survive.”

Victoria leaned over a console array, flipped a switch, spoke into a microphone.

“That’s enough. We’re moving to Phase Three now. Bring Vincent in.”

“Victoria, stop whatever this is right now.”

My voice was laced with as much menace as I could muster.

“Oh, please, Ethan. Don’t try to threaten me.”

She hit another switch, and a monitor flickered into life. Jess, tied to a chair in another room, somewhere in the mansion. A guard beside her.

“Try anything, and your little redheaded friend will suffer. Severely.”

“Victoria, please. Stop this. This isn’t you.”

Victoria chuckled.

“Ethan, you have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of. Nevertheless, the choice is still yours. You can stand beside me, work with me. Or not. I’d prefer the former, but believe me when I say I have plans for the latter. One thing you’ll learn about me, Ethan, is that I have my contingency plans have contingency plans. Raise a finger against me and I promise you there will be severe consequences. Now please excuse me, I have some business to attend to. Don’t do anything foolish in the meantime.”

She left the observation room and stepped into the chamber, where Marian was strapped to the chair. Vincent was wheeled into the room, and the technicians who had been torturing Marian left. Beside Marian was a table with a tray on it. Something on the tray caught my eye. A familiar shape.

I recognised it, but I couldn’t understand why it was there.

It was like looking at someone you knew in one context, maybe in their work clothes, and then seeing them somewhere different. I focused on the object, convinced I’d made a mistake. Victoria picked it up. Ran a finger along its sharp, black edge. It was the same knife that had killed the cursed one in High Wycombe.

The same knife that had put me in hospital.

“No!” I shouted.

I hit the switch that Victoria had used for the tannoy.

“Victoria, don’t!”

Victoria glanced at me through the observation window. Threw me one of her killer smiles.

With three heavily armed men beside me and Jess in an unknown room somewhere in the mansion, there was nothing I could do except watch as Victoria plunged the soul blade straight into Marian’s heart.

The vital signs on the medical equipment that Marian was hooked up to flatlined.

The last cursed one was dead, and it was all my fault for trusting the wrong person.

I stood rooted to the spot as Victoria pulled the knife out of Marian’s chest. She wiped the blood off the blade with a cloth, placed it back on the tray, and left the white room. Only Marian’s corpse and Vincent, in his wheelchair, remained.

Despite my shock, I tried to formulate a plan. I needed to find Jess and get us both out of here, as far away from this nightmare as possible. If what was coming next was what I expected, then I had a chance to break free in the ensuing chaos. Marian’s death would prompt a portal opening, maybe more.

Whether I could find Jess was another question.

I’d have to target Victoria, force her to tell me where my friend was.

And still the same phrase was on a loop in my mind: I’ve been played...

Victoria returned to the observation room, stood to one side and away from me. Any second now, the fireworks were about to begin.

Sure enough, just as they had with Paul, flashes of white electricity crackled and twisted around Marian’s body. Victoria adjusted controls on the console, recording everything that was happening.

“Vincent?” she called through the tannoy.

Vincent lifted a frail hand, waving off any concerns his sister might have. Then he reached out and grasped one of the strands of energy. He held it in his palm, like an ancient, crippled god holding a wriggling bolt of lightning. The crackling strands leapt around his hand, their intensity rising as more were attracted to the one he gripped. Vincent’s arm absorbed the lightning fragments as quickly as they appeared. His whole body glowed with power. Shards of white light burst and danced all around him and inside him, blindingly brilliant.

And then it was over as suddenly as it had begun. No portal opened this time. Vincent had absorbed all the excess power.

The wrinkles from Vincent’s face had gone. His body was no longer weak and broken. He stood up, tall and strong, a man in his late twenties, rejuvenated. Filled with so much power, you could see it flowing through him.

He kicked his wheelchair away with contempt.

“Is it done?” Victoria asked.

Vincent nodded, smiled. Stretched his back, cracked his fingers. Reached down to touch his toes. Stood back up again and grinned, ignoring Marian’s lifeless body beside him.

“I don’t know about you, but I am famished,” he said. “Is it too late for dinner?”

Victoria laughed with delight, clapping her hands together. Her brother had returned to her. She looked like a child whose favourite pet was lost and then found.

“Not at all,” she replied through the tannoy. “In fact, I think that’s an excellent idea.”

She turned to me, her eyes shining, and I glimpsed the full depth of her madness.

“Oh, Ethan, stop looking so shocked. Let’s discuss all of this over a bite to eat, hm?”

*

Vincent tore into his steak like a man who had been living on bread and water for a decade, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Victoria rolled her eyes at her brother’s re-discovered, rapacious appetite. No longer forced into a strict diet, Vincent was wasting no time in sampling the culinary delights he’d been denied for so long. He was glowing with the energy and power he’d absorbed as he munched through his plate of food. Victoria was just glowing with delight at having her brother restored.

Vincent burped, spooned horseradish, mustard, and pickled onions onto his plate. Relished every taste.

There wasn’t a hint of remorse on either of their faces.

We were sitting in the same dining room that Major Wilson had attacked us in. I could still see the marks on the door where he’d staked Alice. The table I’d thrown had been replaced, as had the broken window I’d crashed through. My heroics, saving Victoria and Vincent, all of it had been pointless.

My cheeks burned with the humiliation of having been made a fool of so easily. All the times I’d trusted Victoria, all the times I’d put myself on the line for her, and this was the result.

I was a chump, as the Americans might say. A patsy. A fall guy.

A prize idiot.

There was nothing I could do. Jess was still locked up who knew where. The three armed security guards had had their numbers bolstered by two in the meantime. Vincent was literally glowing with power. I was no expert on magic, but I guessed he could take me down in a heartbeat.

Eventually, through the numb shock, my ability to speak returned.

“I’d like to leave now. And I’d like to take my friend with me.”

“Oh, Ethan,” Victoria half yawned as Vincent gluttoned away, “Please, don’t be so...”

“...predictable,” Vincent said through a mouthful of steak.

“Exactly,” Victoria smiled. “Don’t be so predictable. There are things going on here that you have no understanding of whatsoever. You’ve barely scratched the surface of this new world you’re living in, and now you want to, what, go running home to Mummy?”

I felt a hot flush on my cheeks.

“Anyway, we can’t let you go. I want to know as much as I can about the formula that was injected into you. You’re a minor miracle, Ethan. Can you imagine what we could achieve if we could replicate the serum that made you what you are? Imagine the applications...”

“An army of Ethans,” Vincent said. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

“You’ve got my blood. What more do you want?”

“The cells in your blood break down after a few hours away from your body. We’ll need you to complete our studies.”

“Plus, we need to see what breeding would produce,” Vincent said, pushing his plate to one side. “Don’t forget about that.”

“Absolutely,” Victoria nodded. “Are your abilities hereditary? Will your children have the same qualities? So many questions to answer.”

The pair of them were insane. Completely, utterly insane. They were talking like giddy, drunk children, finishing each other’s sentences and thoughts, then pushing each other further. The symbiosis between them was in full flow now that Vincent had been restored to his youthful self.

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

“Ethan, for heaven’s sake, I wish you’d grow up. There’s no point fighting me.”

“No point fighting us,” Vincent clarified.

“I trusted you,” I said to Victoria.

“Well, you still can trust me, once you stop being so...”

“Petulant,” Vincent said.

Victoria smiled. “Precisely. Have you finished?”

Vincent nodded. “That was excellent.”

I felt like I’d stepped into a sitcom set in an upmarket lunatic asylum.

That feeling wasn’t improved any when Mr Stabby casually walked in and took a place at the table.