Underneath me, Sam Grest - who'd been my friend and saved my life - lay perfectly still and slipped further and further into the final sleep of an unfair and horrible death.

I'd like to do something to help the worst afflicted, but I can't. It's not possible to save everybody. Even heroes have their all-too-human limits.

I mean, seriously, what lady of taste could resist a shiny green head of hair like mine?

If I'd known how wrong I was - if I'd had any idea of the awful night that lay ahead - I'd have run after him and never returned to that disgusting circus of blood, that revolting circus of death.

The world won't end with a bang or a whimper. It'll end with the death screams of a thousand demons and a defiant, carefree, savage, wolfen howl.

Look at me!" I roar. "Do you think you'll be the first I've killed today? I wasn't a murderer, but you changed me. I'm a monster now. And I'm hungry." "Meera!" Anotoine whines. "Prae! Please, I beg you. You're civilised people. Help me!" "We can't," Prae says coldly. "Even if we wanted to - and personally I have no problem with him gutting you - we couldn't. He's not ours to control. He's one of your specimens. You helped create him - now you have to deal with him

But in life we don't usually get to choose the time of our defining moments. We just have to stand and face them when they come, no matter what sort of a state we're in.