Tallir had the human woman pinned on the bench, and his jaws opened towards her throat. He stopped mid-lunge and the thing whimpered. His mouth hung above her neck. Something in his mind had clicked and paused his attack: Something didn’t feel right. Was it perhaps that he had needed to be in human form to restrain the creature, and was simply unaccustomed to having to tear out throats with a human mouth? …No, that couldn’t be it. He spent a lot of time in his human form, fought in it, killed in it; he was used to it. Perhaps it was that his prey didn’t struggle. Years of living in fear and darkness had bred quiet, docile humans for the vampires of Reality Three to feed from. The thing hadn’t taken long to run down, and even now as he had hesitated it didn’t struggle. He looked down at it sheepishly as it lay there, either frozen with fear or simply resigned to its fate. He wondered what would happen if he released her hands. Would she just keep lying there? He felt his mouth close and he looked closer at the human.

She was breathing so hard Tallir thought the panic might kill her before he did. Her eyes were screwed shut, her blonde hair obscuring her face almost protectively. He tentatively let go of a wrist, and drew her hair away with one claw. She might have been pretty, but Tallir was a poor judge of human beauty. Rathes in human form he had found attractive, though he had never figured out- by extension- why not humans. He slowly gripped her wrist again. She hadn’t moved and he continued to peer at her. Her wrists were so warm, and her pulse tantalisingly quick. All the blood rushing through her, the thought made him bare his fangs again almost subconsciously. What was it that still held him back? He knew then the reason he had been trying not to think about: he had become just as humanised as Tristen had said.

He wasn’t a Rathe anymore. Rathe’s are higher than humans, he told himself the words that had been drummed into him as a cub, humans are a disease. But even though the helpless one that lay below him now had been bred as a little more than piece of meat, he still could not kill her. If he let her go, not only would he be ashamed of himself, but a vampire lurking in the shadows somewhere would have her neck little under twenty minutes. He growled loudly at his weakness, and the frail little thing began to cry. It was worse than he had imagined; he felt sorry for her.

He was ripped from her and tossed to the ground by his shoulder. He hit the dusty tarmac hard and rolled. The speed and strength in the arm that had moved him left him stunned for a moment as he scrabbled into a sitting position and gawked at his attacker.

The dark figure before him hauled the human woman up by her hair and she fell to her knees by its side, wide-eyed with terror yet focusing on the alley’s wet and filthy brick wall. It held the woman’s face under the chin with one hand so she could not get away, not that there was much chance of her trying.

Tallir looked up into the scowling face of the figure, and a pair or golden eyes glowered at him from the shadows. Tallir knew it was Tristen before he even stepped into the moonlight, dragging the girl with him.

“Tallir, I understand I really got to you before, but that is no excuse for this nonsense! What the hell kind of good did you think killing a human would do you?” Tristen spat at him.

Tallir just sat staring up at him with his mouth open, and Tristen took a few deep breaths to compose himself. When he next spoke, it was in that even emotionless tone of his that tended to scare all who heard it.

“Let me show you how serious I am, Tallir, so perhaps you will better listen.”

In a movement so fast it make Tallir jerk out of his stupor, Tristen lifted the human and snapped her neck, letting her limp and lifeless body thud on the ground in front of him. Tallir had only an instant to gape her before Tristen’s voice demanded his attention.

“It’s true you’ve become accustomed to humans, and lost a little of yourself in the process. By all means go find yourself, but not with this foolishness. We are Rathes- not vampires, not wolves, not humans- we do not find ourselves in the hunt or the kill; we are a race bred to be warriors and born of spirits and magic. That human, Tallir, meant nothing-”

Tallir let his eyes flicker to the corpse on the dank ground; her dead eyes looked right back at him.

“-You know she would have been eaten sooner or later, but still you couldn’t kill her. That’s not weakness, Tallir, it’s commendable.”

Tallir peered at him with an obvious confusion.

“You’re wondering why I killed her, then? Because I was trained to, because I can kill to prove a point, because I feel no remorse for the death of this creature, and believe me, Tallir, I wish I could.” Tristen looked down at her, with an almost bored expression. “But even though I know it was ‘wrong’, I feel no regret for it. Mercy is a gift Tallir, and instead of scorning it maybe you should go figure out where it comes from.” He looked back at Tallir. He had calmed down now and certain sadness had crept into his voice. “Don’t think killing a human would have made you less like them, it would have made you alike all the more.”

Tristen turned with a swish of leather trench coat and left his words hanging above the inert human with Tallir in the alley. Tallir couldn’t bear to look at her anymore, and got to his feet. He felt unhappy about her death, and maybe a little worse that he’d have to go and leave her for the rats. Tristen was right, though, mercy wasn’t a common Rathe trait. Tallir had never felt the presence of the other blood in his veins until that moment.