He crept over to the sleeping drunk, wrinkling his nose at the smell of old wine. As the hunger swept through his entire body, his canines seemed to extend of their own free will. Taras crouched over the prone beggar. The man’s clothes were tattered and dirty, much like Taras’s own. His matted, filthy hair hung over his face in stringy brown tangles. He lay barefoot in the dirt, his left hand clasped around an empty jug. It would be an easy kill.

Except…

There is always a choice.

Jesus’ words came back to haunt him. Gods help him, his hunger was driving him insane. It felt like a white-hot knife in his abdomen, and the one thing that would ease the pain lay helpless at his feet, and still he heard the words of a dead rabbi who may or may not have been completely mad. Worse yet, he knew he would heed those words regardless of his pain. It went against every instinct of self-preservation he had, yet he could not deny that something had tempered his violence since that night outside Mary’s tomb.

He did have a choice. His hunger might make it a difficult choice, but the decision was still his to make. If he killed the beggar, he would be doing it of his own free will, and thus he would have to accept the responsibility of that. Could he do it?

What would Mary say?

Cursing, he turned his back on the prone beggar. Taras had killed men in their sleep before. As an assassin for Rome he had done many things he preferred to forget, but this was different. Before, he had done his duty for Rome and her cause. Now, it would just be murder. Taras was many things, but he’d never considered himself a murderer. Even the many people he killed the night he fled Jerusalem had been because of a malady of the mind.

Sooner or later that malady would return, and he would be unable to stop himself.