Her eyes are the grey-blue of a hazy summer's sky, the overhead light of the kitchen reflecting like the shine of sunlight. "Everything dies?" Rae repeats, questioningly. "Including you?"

Had he not given up his place in that cycle? Vampire drink the life of others, but that is where it stops. Vampires have no natural predators, only those who take it upon themselves to go up against them. They do not die by natural causes. They do not breed. Nothing feeds itself on them. There is no cycle when vampires are involved.

("Sunshine, there can be no clean death between one of your kind and one of mine, for all of my kind were once of yours."

"Then, it must go both ways. The death of that vampire at my hands was no cleaner than the death he was offering that girl.")

She shakes her head as if trying to rid herself of the thought, feeling his fingers against her chin. "To die is one thing; to be killed, another. The how of it matters. The why of it matters."

She can hear Con's words in her head, of how humans are the only creatures to draw that sort of distinction. But he cannot see that it is that distinction which makes them human.