Truants

Contorting the conventional vampire narrative into a startling tale of immortality, blood lust, and rage contaminating London s inner-city youth like a virus, The Truantstells the story of the last of the old-ones creatures afflicted with a condition not unlike vampirism: ancient, bloodthirsty, and unable to withstand sunlight. The last old-one has decided to end his life following the suicide of his lover. But, as the sun rises over a bleak London landscape and his fiery demise looms near, the old-one is held up at knifepoint and stabbed before the sun burns his body to ashes. His assailant scurries back into the belly of London s housing projects, the knife in his pocket, the blood of the old-one seared into its sharpened edge.

But once the blade stabs another person, the congealed blood of the old-one mingles with that of its victim a baby and in the infant host s body reawakens the old-one s consciousness, resurrected from the depths of the afterlife. The knife trades hands, drawing blood again, and one-by-one the old-one s consciousness is divided, spreading through the infected, disenfranchised youth of London. Determined to die as he originally planned, the old-one must find and destroy the knife before his soul becomes irrevocably dispersed in the bodies of the city s children, and he commands his horde of infected youth to ravage the city to reclaim the knife and control of his soul. But someone is out to stop him . . .