Tanish winked at Larten as he said that, then looked as innocent as he could when Wester flared up. “That’s a horrible thing to say! We were the same as them before we were blooded. They have shorter lives than us and are much weaker. If we kill humans, we disgrace ourselves. The vampaneze are soulless scum who will never find Paradise, and you’re a fool if you can’t see that.”

Wester ranted for another fifteen minutes. His hatred of the vampaneze had set in him like a disease, and though he spoke little of the matter most of the time, those close to him knew of his true feelings. Seba had tried reasoning with him — just because a vampaneze had killed his family, it didn’t mean he should hate all of them — but Wester refused to listen.

Wester’s hatred of the breakaway group of night-walkers troubled Larten more than it worried Seba. Their master had seen this dark bent in Wester many decades before and was convinced the young vampire would meet an early end at the hands of one purple-skinned vampaneze or another. But Larten had always hoped that Wester would come to terms with his loss and put his hatred behind him.

Larten had urged his dearest friend to track down Murlough — the one who had slain Wester’s family — and kill him. He thought that would finally help Wester to put that dark night behind him. But Wester was reluctant to do that. He had come to hate the entire vampaneze clan. He sometimes swore that he would finish off Murlough only when he was done with the rest of the scum, that he wanted his foe to suffer the same kind of loss that Wester had been forced to endure.

Tanish shrugged when Wester finally lapsed into a fuming silence. “The vampaneze mean nothing to me,” he said. “If war breaks out between us, I’ll fight them and be glad of the challenge. But as long as the truce is in place, what do they matter?”