Sorry for the late upload, I've not been feeling good but luckily whatever has been lurking around my body has left; leaving me feeling back to my normal self. Also, I recently discovered a fantastic manga called Gantz which took up quite a lot of my time, but I've finished reading the chapters available, thankfully!I hope you like this chapter - I think you'll find it…interesting. :)

"Here!" said, he gestured to a small area next to two other tents "That's ours" He said, obviously referring to himself and Clary by the way he wrapped his arm around the redhead's waist. "And that Isabelle's and Simon's" He pointed to another tent almost identical to the other, apart from this one was a moss green in colour instead of the navy blue. They were situated a little way away from the main group of tents where the other people lived, and upon asking the nerdy looking boy, he explained that they weren't particularly fond of Sebastian's tactics and therefore, tried to stay out of his way as much as possible.

"Thanks" Magnus said, he pulled the two person tent from the bag and got started on putting it up, the others thankfully came over and helped him, Magnus hoped it wasn't obvious that he'd never put a tent up before in his life. "I'm Jace" Mr. Blondie introduced, and the other two introduced themselves too. "Simon" An average looking boy with brown hair and glasses said, he was wearing a MarioBrothers shirt and some dark wash jeans with combat boots, Magnus also noticed that the left lens of his glasses were cracked. "And I'm Clary, lovely to meet you" The girl with red hair from earlier said. She simply wore some black leggings and a simple purple tunic/dress; it clashed horribly with her hair and Magnus could feel his fingers twitching with the urge to get out his hairspray and do an impromptu makeover.

"Oh, and that's Isabelle, Alec's brother" Jace said, pointing to the black haired girl from earlier; she was still smothering Alec with hugs and saying something to his that kept making him blush. Magnus promptly turned back to the semi made tent to divert his attention "I'm their adoptive brother" Jace added as an afterthought "So you don't have to worry about me stealing away your arm candy"

Wait. What?

"What?" Magnus hissed, Clary and Simon laughed from beside him; putting the metal rods in the edges of the tent so it began to resemble something more like a tent, and less like an unmade bed "I don't know what you're talking about" Magnus huffed. "I saw you staring holes into my head earlier when I hugged him. I'm his brother and I have harboured nothing but brotherly love towards him" Jace said dramatically "He did have a crush on me for a while, but that was gone as quickly as it came. Anyway, you two should hook up or something – work out all that sexual tension between you before it suffocates me"

Just as Magnus was about to hit him around the head for being an insensitive prick, Clary stepped in and did it for him "Idiot" She hissed, while Jace rubbed his cheek with a look of annoyance. She turned to Magnus and gave him a sweet smile "Ignore him, he's a dick. Anyway, moving on. What's your name? Tell us your story"

Magnus scratched his head, thinking about what to say. Isabelle in the meantime had released Alec who walked over to the rest of them, a happy looking Isabelle on his heels "I'm Magnus Bane, a model. I met Alec when I got to Milton Keynes after he thought I committed suicide when I was just having a snooze under an underpass"

"Oh wow! A model!" Isabelle gushed, she looked even more fabulous and pretty up close "I'd love to be a model when I'm older" She shot him a pose and Magnus clapped, laughing as Jace made an exaggerated cry and shielded his eyes in mock horror. It was great to talk to other people; he missed having pointless conversations like these. "Hey Iz, Jace?" Alec interrupted "How did you get here in the first place? I mean, I went to Milton Keynes to go to the gym and check out the cinema but you two were back in Maidstone, quite a way away from Luton"

"Oh" Jace said "Well, shortly after you left there was a noise outside, and mum thought it was some kids messing around in the garden. So she went out to check it out and something ran inside, and it was one of those zombie things. Dad tried to scare it off by banging some pots and stuff, but it attacked them and they got infected and…" he trailed off, and Alec nodded swiftly, understanding what happened. Isabelle continued from there "Jace and I were upstairs at the time, and they were coming up the stairs so Jace jumped out the freaking bedroom window and I had to do the same which totally ruined my heels. We managed to sleep in a bus stop overnight, and the next day this car pulled up and inside the said car was Simon"

Simon perked out the sound of his name and gave them a mock salute before going back to finishing off the tent "Anyway" Isabelle continued "Simon drove us to some town to pick up a friend of his, and it was like hell there; those things were everywhere. But we picked up Clary, who, low and behold, was in contact with her insane brother who told her that he was creating a safe village on the top of the shopping centre in Luton. Luckilly we were told this before the phone signals all went out" That was true, in all of this confusion Magnus hadn't even checked his phone, he pulled it out his pocket and stared at the screen, there was no signal.

"So I started driving us here, but I threw the suspension in the car after running over an obese zombie" Simon said, he stood back and admired his handiwork with a grin "So we had to walk the rest of the way here and sure enough, the freak had created some village that we could stay in. Luckily we raided an outdoors shop on the way so we had these tents. We don't like staying in this place, especially when it's being run by such a lunatic. But it's better than being down there with the diseased"

It took a moment for everything to sink in "Wow" Alec said "That's…confusing" Simon and Clary chuckled and nodded in agreement, while Jace dragged their rucksack into the tent, it looked like it was going to be a tight squeeze for the two of them and the rucksack, but Magnus was just glad they'd found somewhere like this. Magnus then paused for a moment, and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion "Wait, Sebastian's your brother?" He asked Clary, who nodded with a look of distain "Unfortunately, yes.

Alec now looked confused "But he tried to kiss you" He said, and Clary huffed "He's got some weird sister complex" Jace called from inside the tent "He's a freak. Stay out of his way!" he crawled out the tent and got up, dusting his knees. He turned to Magnus and Alec with a look of complete seriousness "Don't get involved with Sebastian, he's a nasty piece of work" he said "There was a woman with a newborn baby here, but the baby wouldn't stop crying so Sebastian shot it. That's how much of a bastard he is"

Alec looked horrified "With a gun?" Magnus said with disbelief, Jace shook his head.

"He has a stun gun he uses, but it was just too powerful for the baby and it died instantly, the next day, the mother had stabbed herself" Magnus remembered how Sebastian looked like he was going to pull something gun shaped from his pocket earlier, then shock hit him "Hodge" He said "Where did Hodge go?, Sebastian wanted to talk to him, but he hasn't come back yet and it's been two hours" Alec looked worried too.

Simon, Isabelle, Clary and Jace shared an uneasy look "Umm…Sebastian has a thing about adults, not sure why. But as soon as one appears they vanish without a trace. I don't think Hodge is coming back" Simon said.

Alec gave Magnus a broken look, and Magnus sighed, reaching out to ruffle Alec's hair fondly "This sucks" Alec mumbled to him "This is meant to be a safe place and people are getting killed if they look at that freak the wrong way. Hodge did nothing against him. Maybe we can go and see if we can talk to Sebastian, get him to change his way?"

"You're too nice" Magnus said back "But you heard what Blondie said, and I have to agree. Talking to Sebastian will be a death sentence – Just go inside and set up your bed, it's getting dark and we'll have to sleep soon" Alec looked like he was going to say something back, but Magnus merely raised his eyebrows and pushed him towards the tent, Alec grumbled and started pulling some blankets from the rucksack to create makeshift beds.

Hodge Starkweather liked to think of himself as a strong willed and determined person. Despite his strict parenting and lacklustre childhood, he grew up to be an accomplished man who worked a whole lot to buy himself a life of luxury that mainly consisted of a beautiful Victorian house in Buckinghamshire. And it took a further three years to fill that house with belongings, mostly from his parents' house after they died, but it wasn't rare for him to browse Camden for interesting oddments which would suit his bizarre and somewhat eccentric taste. At the prime of his life, while he was working as a head teacher at a traditional school in a nearby town, he met Nancy. She was pretty –no, beautiful- with blonde hair that curled around her slim shoulders and bright, stormy blue eyes which seemed to pierce his soul. And he blamed his whole downfall on her.

He'd come home one day and he found her in the bedroom with another man, who promptly scrambled for clothes and left in a hurry, leaving the two of them together. After about an hour of heated arguments in his kitchen and empty excuses from her end, he had enough, and lodged the nearby kitchen knife into her upper thigh where he knew the femoral artery was. It had been almost comical, her eyes had widened and she wordlessly clutched her leg which pumped streams of blood across the room at an impressive speed. Almost, being the key word, since he was a little disgruntled at the fact her blood had stained his lovely Moroccan rug and curtains, but the rest of it had been easy to clean. Her body had been easy to dispose of too; he dragged her to the bathroom and pushed her into the bath before filling it with hot water mixed with a fair amount of bleach and washing powder. And a couple of days later it had been reduced to a red, foul, gooey mess within his bathtub which, with the aid of a plunger, washed down the plughole. He sold the house 3 months later with her bones buried underneath the cherry tree in the backgarden. To this day, Nancy Carter is still on the missing list.

He found himself growing paranoid, at every ding of the doorbell he found his heart beating fast in worry, and every time he saw a policeman wandering around town his hands grew clammy. And yet he couldn't stop himself. Dr Grisby was a nice enough man, but his beady eyes bothered him and he failed to acknowledge that Hodge was suffering from acute chest pains. And he knew it was over-the-top of him to do so, but he broke into Dr Grisby's house and murdered both him and his wife while they slept with a couple of well-aimed blows to the head with his mace. And while he was there, he took a couple of solid silver candlesticks and flogged them at the Auction. The news of these sudden murders were over the news, yet Hodge knew nobody suspected him. He was friendly, he helped old woman carry their shopping as they crossed the road and only yesterday did he climb a tree to remove a child's kite that was tangled among the branches.

And then it went downhill. There was no reason to kill Hannah Kingfisher, she was a pleasant woman who lived alone in a stone cottage, yet Hodge couldn't help but be in awe of the amount of antiques that were hidden behind the walls of her house when he was invited around for mid-afternoon tea. He killed her the next day in the hours of early morning, cracking her skull in with his mace, before carefully placing gold jewellery, Crown Derby plates and silver picture frames in his drawstring bag. And in his moment of utter glee it escaped his mind to scrub the door handles with bleach to remove his fingerprints.

It was like a precarious dance, the police would get wind that he was in another town, and as soon as they arrived he would relocate to another location and change his identity, going so far as to use a penknife to cut one side of his face and dying his hair a completely different colour in order to conceal his identity. He wouldn't however, ditch his tweed suits for they were like a comfort blanket for him.

Long story short, he was man. A man who'd killed people mercifully to either hide his anger or get what he wanted. And a man like this wasn't scared of a teenager boy. Yet he was. Hodge was terrified. He was terrified of Sebastian who was standing in front of him, terrified by the way his eyes, clouded by darkness, seemed to stare right through him. Sebastian made a noise, and chuckled quietly before the corners of his lips pulled up into a smirk "Pity. Such a pity" He said, which was promptly followed by a long, drawn-out silence.

Hodge kept his face blank. Talking was, in Hodge's opinion, overrated. But it was circumstances like these that he wished the other man would simply talk about anything to fill the awkward silence. Even if he wanted to share his views on Twilight or how there was a giant gnome in the sky which was controlling everyone on earth. He'd rather listen to some shit like that than be left in this awkwardness.

"To think that this cunning, unflawed killer than I'd admired when I was younger turned out to be…you" The last word was said with a tone of disbelief "I'd sit in front of the Tv and watch the reports about you, listen to the brutal methods you'd used to kill them, and I'd look at that CCTV footage of you and think 'Wow, I want to grow up to be him'. And you're nothing but a scared, crippled, old man who's quivering at the sight of me"

"How…" Hodge started "How did you know?" He'd been so careful; he looked nothing like he did back then.

"How did I know it was you? It's those eyes; you have the eyes of a killer. The eyes of someone who kills for their own gain, you can't change your eyes" Sebastian smiled "Tell me, do I scare you because I have the same eyes? I do, don't I? I have the eyes of a killer too" He leant forward, and Hodge instantly moved back "I'll let you in on a little secret. I kill. I've killed more people than you can ever imagine and you're my next victim"

Hodge's breath caught in his throat, they were a long way away from the rest of the camp and the sky was darkening, nobody would be able to see what was happening. Sebastian laughed suddenly, and turned to the boy next to him; Mike? Who laughed with him. "Did I scare you?" Sebastian asked, with a playful glint in his eyes "Pardon me, that wasn't very nice. I merely took you over here to ask you a few questions"

'This guy is mad' Hodge thought 'He's fucking insane. I need to get away. I need to get away fast'

"Do you like games, Mr Starkweather?" Sebastian asked, he rocked back on his heels and regarded him with a confident smirk on his pale face "I like games, and I want you to play a game with me"

'Do what he says. He'll kill you if you don't'

"Y-Yes" Hodge stammered "I like games. Chess, Backgamon, Cards. I like most games"

"That's good. This is a game I created about a couple of minutes ago. It's called 'Hodge and Ladders', let me explain it to you" Sebastian said, Mike, the muscled man next to him grabbed Hodge tightly by the shoulders and pushed him towards the wooden ladder which connected the part they were on to the roof of a small, empty building – it couldn't be bigger than 4x4 metres. Hodge glanced back at Sebastian who looked at him expectantly "Go on, walk across" Hodge swallowed thickly and Mike let him go; carefully, he walked across the ladder and tried not to look down below him where the diseased where roamed around. He reached the other side safely and turned back towards the other two.

"Right. The rules are quite simple really. I'll ask you four questions, and after answering a question you take two steps forward across the ladder until you reach the other side. Do you understand?" Sebastian called over, and Hodge nodded quickly despite his racing heart. He hated heights with a passion. "Okay" He said as evenly as he could. Sebastian grinned.

"Okay. What do you know about the diseased?" He asked.

Hodge took a deep breath while Sebastian listened intently "They're attracted to noise and it normally takes about an hour to a day for a person to turn into one after being bitten, it depends on their body weight and age. To kill one, you need to smash the head in or damage the brain, any other attacks are useless. Lastly, if you remove the area you've been bitten on it doesn't affect you" He gestured to his handless arm and Sebastian nodded, thoughtful. Hodge took two steps forward and the wooden ladder squeaked under his weight.

"Do you know anything about how this started?" Sebastian asked, and Hodge shook his head because he didn't really have a clue "No, I don't" He said, and Sebastian nodded towards the ladder. Hodge took another breath and gingerly walked a couple of places forward. The diseased below groaned louder at the sight of him and began to cluster under the ladder in anticipation.

"Do you know of anyone who knows something about them?" Came the next question.

Hodge paused, he did. "NightWalker. I don't know much about him but apparently he's some guy on YouTube who posts tips on how to kill them, or to survive. He uploads a video about twice a week. I've only watched a couple of videos but I found them pointless and my laptop ran out of charge"

"Ah yeah, I've heard about him before. Interesting" Hodge would have laughed at the way Sebastian stroked his non-existent beard like some cheesy villain from an 80's movie; if not for the fact he was standing about 10 metres above a pavement teeming with undead. Instead, he watched Sebastian carefully, and suddenly the boy seemed to snap out of his daydream and he sent Hodge a look the older man couldn't quite place. Hodge took two steps forward and his knees began to shake slightly at the fact that the solid roof was so near him. But Hodge wasn't stupid, he'd seen that gun shaped outline in Sebastian's pocket and despite the fact there was a high probability that it was fake, he didn't want to take any chances and get shot.

"Okay. Thanks" Sebastian said swiftly, he turned on the spot and went to walk away – leaving Hodge extremely confused behind him. Was he supposed to wait? Was he supposed to move? He'd only asked three out of the four questions. "What about the forth question?" He voiced before he could help himself. Sebastian and Mike paused, and Sebastian waved Mike away who set about walking off towards the main campsite; he disappeared into the darkness. Sebastian turned back towards him and squatted to the ground, he ran his fingertips over the end of the wooden ladder and Hodge's mouth went dry. He didn't like being in a position where he didn't know what was happening.

"Forth question" Sebastian paused, he didn't look up from the ladder "Are there any last words before you plummet to your death?"

Sebastian grabbed the end of the ladder with both hands and moved it sharply to the side, Hodge could help but squeal at the unexpected movement and tumbled from the ladder; he desperately went to grab the edge of the roof that Sebastian was standing on with both hands when it suddenly occurred to him that he had one hand, and that the other handless arm was useless. Nevertheless, his only hand grabbed the edge of the roof and he curled his fingers into a little gap between the roof tiles, the tips of his shoes tried to gain purchase on the slippery exterior of the building. If he had both hands he could have easily shimmied across the roof and hauled himself up away from Sebastian, but his whole life was hanging on his fingers which felt like they were being pulled from the sockets in his hand. Sebastian sneered and knelt near his hand before pulling the gun from his pocket. Hodge looked up to him with a look of desperation, confusion and fear "Why are you doing this! Stop!" He panted.

"Listen here, Starkweather. I cannot let a man like you change the dynamics of this place. I am their leader and an adult like you coming along with throw everything off course; it's only natural for a brunch of frightened teenagers to look up to a person of authority and letting you stay here will make them turn their attention to you" It wasn't a gun in his hand, but whatever it was, it certainly didn't look nice. Sebastian pressed the nozzle at the tip of the gun against Hodge's straining hand and his fingers hovered above the trigger.

"Please!" Hodge pleaded "Listen to me! Just let me live. Let me go. I can't die yet!"

Sebastian pulled the trigger, and it felt like the Hodge had been struck with lightening. There was an audible crack and a flash of blue that surged up his fingers. All of his nerves screamed against the unknown sensation and his body froze in terror and pain. And, he let go of the roof. Everything seemed to happen at once and his body was hurtling towards the pavement underneath him; he could hear the wind whistling past his ears and his skin broke out in goosebumps as it struck against the exposed parts of his body. His back collided against the cement, and yet he wasn't dead. His vision was fuzzy but he could still see the dark, almost humanlike shapes looming over him; and he couldn't move any part of his body below the neck – he'd most like damaged his neck and was paralysed. He was trapped.

"Wow!" Sebastian called from up above him with a sick sense of awe "You still alive?"

Hodge wanted to scream, he wanted to curl into a ball and cover himself with his arms. And mostly, he wanted to say sorry for those horrible crimes he committed in the past. But he couldn't speak, it seemed like the only thing he could do was see fuzzy shapes and even if he could, there would be nobody to hear him. It was then -as the diseased descended upon him and started tearing at his flesh and through his muscles- that he allowed himself to cry for the very first time since he was thirty three when he walked in on Nancy having sex with someone who wasn't himself.

The tears trickled down his cheeks as the terrifying blackness of death clouded his mind.

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I've done. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please forgive me Lord. I'm sor-'