The dalwight moved carefully, keeping in the shadows and out of the orange light from the streetlamps that lined the street.  She kept the boy in sight, and made sure she would not be seen even if he turned round suddenly.  

It was late afternoon, but on this day in the middle of December it was already dark.  There were many other people around, some hurrying home from work, some shopping, and some doing no more than talking to friends or colleagues.  None took any notice of the dalwight or of the boy she was following. 

A gust of wind caught the dalwight's long black coat making it flap as though she were some sort of huge bat.  Her long, blonde hair blew over her face, momentarily blocking her view of the boy.  She said nothing.  She merely brushed it back with her hand, concentrating on that boy and oblivious to everything else around her.

Why she waited was a mystery.  She had plenty of opportunity and there was no real reason she had not already launched her attack.  No one in the streets would have noticed anything out of the ordinary, not from her.  Perhaps someone might have seen the boy's reaction and gone to help him when he closed his eyes and sank to the ground.  There was nothing they could have done.  It would have all been over in two or three minutes, and he would have opened his eyes, climbed to his feet with a confused expression on his face and shaking his head to remember something without ever knowing what it was he was trying to remember.

He knew why she waited.  In fact, he was counting on it.  He had to reach the alleyway by the bridge before she attacked.  They told him she would wait until then, and they knew much more about her than he did.  They had spotted her long before he had been aware of the danger and long before he knew that they too had the same unusual abilities he had discovered only last year.  They explained it all to him, although he did not believe them at first.  It was only when they demonstrated they could sense some of his thoughts, read his feelings and, when his cousin Emily actually managed to give him the answer to a geography question without a sound from the far side of the school classroom, he knew without a doubt they were like him and he was one of them.

He had kept quiet about his particular and, he thought, unique skills when he discovered he had them.  After all, he had no wish to be called a freak, to be ridiculed by the other children in his school.  Anyway, if no one knew what he could do then he had a definite advantage over everyone else.  Admittedly it was nothing very dramatic.  To have a feeling of what someone was thinking was useful.  It was not mind reading; that would have been so much better.  He did try, but that just was not possible.  All he received was a general feeling, as if the person he looked at was saying "I'm cross" or "I'm happy" or "I like you" or "I don't like you" and those kind of broad thoughts rather than particular individual words or pictures they happened to be thinking. 

It was also useful to be able to move things without touching them.  Again, it was a very limited ability.  If his teacher put down a piece of chalk on the very edge of her desk where it might fall, then he could sometimes make it fall.  He could also stop it from falling if it was about to fall, but that was about as far as that particular ability went.

His most useful ability was to be able to send feelings and ideas.  It was not a very exact skill, although he found that the more he used it the more effective it became.  Several times he successfully threw ideas at his teacher and she took them up at once without any sign she had the slightest clue that they were not from her own thoughts.  It was particularly useful when he knew he was going to be busy after school and did not want too much homework to do.  It was useful when he wanted someone to take notice of him and did not want to have to say anything.  A stream of "Hello, I'm here" directed in his thoughts at someone he liked invariably brought whoever it was across the room to talk to him.  It was useful, too, when someone was annoyed with him.  A steady flow of calming thoughts pushed straight at them would produce the right effect within a minute or two.

It was not much.  It was enough.  It was more than other people had.  It was special, and it was what the dalwight would take away from him if she could.

He was nearly there.  He was nearly at the place where his cousin and the others had told him the dalwight would attack.

"Why?" he had asked them, "Why will she attack me, and why there?"

Emily had shrugged.  "I don't know," she said.  "I can feel it.  That's where it will be."

"But why?" he persisted.  "Why does she want to attack me?"

His uncle put his hand on the boy's shoulder.  "It's what dalwights do," he told him.  "They are not so different from us really.  They have the abilities we have, but it is as though something has gone wrong with their abilities.  They can't bear to see anyone else with the same skills, and they make it their main aim to find us and to destroy ours."

It made no sense to the boy.  It was clear to him that his uncle and his cousin had the skills he too possessed, and in fact theirs were far more developed.  He had to trust their judgement and to believe what they told him.  He had no one else to ask about it.

The dalwight was watching him even more closely now.  She had closed the distance between them and could be no more than twenty yards behind him.  He wondered what thoughts were going through her head at that moment.  He might have been far more worried if he had known what they were.

She looked at him with a mixture of hunger and hatred.  He had to be destroyed.  Perhaps he had no idea that she had been watching him for months, and perhaps he had no idea yet of his own special abilities.  Many eruins, like this boy, did not discover the abilities until long after they had surfaced.  Some used them without knowing they were using them, and some did not use them at all.  It did not matter.  Whether they knew about their abilities or not, they still had to be destroyed.

The dalwight had never asked herself why she had to destroy eruins.  She simply knew.  It was part of her.  It was something she had to do, and if she could not do it the way that came naturally, by stretching out with her mind and taking away the eruin's power together with all memory of it, she would have no hesitation in destroying the eruin completely as soon as the opportunity presented itself.  A dark alleyway would be perfect.  It would look like a mugging, an attack by a vicious gang in the darkness.

He was there.  He was just where she wanted him.  She rushed forward to launch her attack, stretching out with her mind to lock onto the powers in his and to rip them from him.

It was then it happened.  She had no idea they were waiting for her.  As they had planned, they shielded their thoughts so that she would not feel them until it was too late.  The noise filled her head, rising and falling rapidly like a siren that had gone out of control and was screeching too fast and too loudly.

The boy fell forward.  He had felt her mind reach out for him and, as his cousin had told him he had not tried to avoid it.  It had scared him to feel her in his thoughts, but the noise that filled them a moment afterwards was far more terrifying.  Even though they had warned him he might feel it too and even though he knew its force was not directed at him, he was shocked and frightened by the power of it.

The dalwight was on her knees, holding her head.  In this dark alley there was no one to see her except the boy who now lay face down in fear and the three children who had now emerged from the shadows and stared fixedly at the dalwight.

It only took a few minutes.  With a small shriek that was not much more than a moan, the dalwight gave up.  She closed her eyes and sank to the ground.  The noise that had filled the boy's head faded and stopped.  He raised his head and looked round cautiously.

"Have you killed her?" he asked.

"Of course not," said the eldest of the children.  "She will wake up in a few minutes.  She won't have any idea what has happened, and she won't remember anything about it.  Her powers are gone.  She won't know she ever had them."

"Come on, John," said Emily running forward and reaching down to him.  "Let's go.  You did well."

"I didn't do anything," the boy said.  "I just walked where you told me to walk.  Are you sure it all worked all right?"

Emily nodded.  "It was perfect," she said.  "You were very brave.  You should have seen how scared I was the first time."

"Well done," said Kieren.  He was Emily's brother and his father, John's uncle, had put him in charge.  "It will be easier next time."

"Next time?" asked John as he climbed to his feet.  He was shaking.

"Of course," said Emily.  "There will be more dalwights.  There are always more dalwights, but now you know how to recognise them.  All you have to do is to call us as soon as one them appears."

"Yes," said John slowly.  "It's good.  It's good to be one of the eruins."