Only minutes after the call he heard a loud thunk coming from the living room of Mary's apartment. He was still covered in blood as he stepped out of the darkness of the bedroom, but at the very least he had managed to put on his pants despite how shaky his hands were.

  "Fuck!" a tall woman in a black suit exclaimed as he stepped into view, "You scared the crap out me!"

  Every word was so loud. It was like they were screaming at him, but their lips told a different story. Every sound was deafeningly loud and the light in the living room was blinding. They weren't screaming and the light was no stronger than before. It was his senses that had become far too acute.

  "You're, Ken, right?" the man standing next to the woman asked him.

  "Yes," he stammered.

  "Your parents are going to be here shortly so please take a seat while we deal with the situation in the bedroom, okay?" the woman said to him.

  He sank into the nearby couch the moment his frantic mind had processed her words. While the panic was still very present in his mind it had become far less overwhelming with time. The initial shock had long since passed and over time a strange numbness had slowly started taking its place.

  After a few minutes had passed the strange man that had arrived with the woman walked up to him. They sat down next to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He was having a hard time focusing on anything, but the moment they started speaking his mind immediately started processing his surroundings once more.

  "I'm Valentine, and as terrible as it's going to sound it does actually get easier with time."

  "What hell is wrong with me?" he forced out weakly.

  "Do you want me to give you the truth or do you want me to sugarcoat it?"

  "I'm fucking losing it so would you just tell me?!"

  Valentine sighed deeply and leaned in a bit closer, "You were unfortunate enough to be born a half human and you just went through our kind's equivalent to puberty during the last hour or so."

  "I don't understand..."

  "Ken, people like us are called chimera and we are what happens when a human and a nonhuman don't think things through and end up having a kid," Valentine said gently, "You're a predatory mix so you were probably starving for years, but tonight your instincts took over and you fed for the first time."

  Chimera? Was Valentine just like him? If they had an entire word for people like them then there had to be others that could understand his struggle. Valentine had said that he had probably been starving for years. Did that mean his wasting disease had just been some twisted symptom of starvation?

  "Ken, what happened here was unfortunate, but it's not your fault," Valentine said as he patted him on the shoulder, "Your brain had to signal that you were hungry so it crosswired hunger with lust to make you feed, which is what usually happens to chimera like us."

  The woman that Valentine had arrived with finally stepped out of the bedroom and approached the couch, "I'm going to need to give you a quick once over, Ken, so please hold still."

  "You won't be able to move, kid, but don't worry it's for her safety not yours," Valentine said reassuringly.

  His entire body went limp the moment the woman's hand touched his skin. First she looked at his eyes before slowly moving over to his teeth. She studied every inch of his body with her cold eyes before eventually giving Valentine a satisfied nod. She pricked his finger with a small needle and finished the inspection by taking a sample of his blood.

  "Well it's about as conclusive as can be," she muttered, "He's a chimera and not just a hybrid like you, but a true chimera."

  "Could you maybe be nice enough to tell the kid what he actually is instead of just rambling off a bunch of shit he can't even comprehend yet?" Valentine asked her with irritation in his voice.

  "The feeding pattern, the blood test, and his predatory adaptions makes it clear as day that he's dhampir, a half vampire."

  Half vampire? Somehow he could accept that vampires were real despite the fact they had been nothing but fiction up until a moment ago. Was his lifelong disease just his body eating itself for sustenance? It would make sense since it had left him anemic and vampire drank blood. Some part of him thought it strange that he was even entertaining the idea, but after what had happened he found himself willing to accept practically anything.

  "Good news, kid, you get to go home with your parents once they get here!"

  "Is it like this for everyone like us?" he asked Valentine as he heard a car pull up outside the building.

  "No we were both just born unlucky enough to be human mixed with something that eats humans," Valentine said as he got up from the couch, "The rest of them just get a weird adjustment period without the trauma of cannibalizing the first person they fall for."

  Stolen story; please report.

  "It's standard protocol, but here's a card with all of the information you will need if you ever require another check up or a corpse disposal in the future," the woman said to him as she placed the small white card in his hand.

  "Her name was Mary..."

  "What?" the woman said as he stood up and stared her down.

  "She had an entire life ahead of her that I took from her so show her some fucking respect instead of treating her like a fucking number!" he growled as he felt his sharp incisors digging into his lower lip.

  "Liz, fuck off and let the kid fucking mourn," Valentine hissed at the woman as she slowly backed away from the two of them.

  He had taken something that could never be given back. Mary's life had ended because of him and he would never forgive himself for that. The first person he had ever fancied had lost everything because of him. It didn't matter that he hadn't been in control at the time. Either way the blood was on his hands.

  "Fucking mage," Valentine sighed, "It never gets through to them what it's like for us."

  "Look, kid, your parents are here and Liz is probably filling them in on everything that went down, but remember that you're not alone."

  Valentine slowly lead him out of the apartment the moment they had gathered all of his things. Washing away the blood covering his body had been a struggle, but in the end they had managed to make him look somewhat presentable.

  His mother ran up to him and threw her arms around him the moment he and Valentine stepped out of the building. It made him feel a little bit better knowing that his parents still loved him despite what he had done, but at the same time it made his guilt all the more potent. The painful memories rushing through his head made his heart ache as they drove him back home in silence.

  "How long have you known?" he asked them the moment they had stepped through the door of their home.

  "We knew there was always a possibility that you weren't human when we adopted you, but we laid those thoughts to rest as the years went by and you never displayed any of the signs," his father said wearily.

  "For me those signs were present throughout my life so we just assumed you were a normal albeit a very sick kid," his mother said to him as she stroked his hair gently.

  His father sank into the couch and looked at him with regretful eyes, "True chimera can be incredibly difficult to identify and predatory ones are even more difficult since they rarely display a single sign of their true nature before the hunger strikes."

  "But it won't make us love you any less, sweetie!" his mother cut in.

  He wasn't human, and everything that had happened so far made it clear that he never had been. Even if he was part human by virtue of being a chimera or whatever they called it he still wasn't human. The hunger dwelling inside him was sated for now, but he could still feel it clearly. Would he eventually come to think of other humans not as his fellows but as his food? The very thought made his blood freeze.

  "What does this mean for me?" he asked them, "What will my life be like now?"

  "It doesn't need to change all that much, but you'll have to make sure you don't harm someone accidentally with your newfound powers and we'll have to make sure that your dietary needs are met," his father said calmly.

  "We can contact the nice people from earlier and they will surely get you all the food you will need until you're ready to start hunting on your own, sweetie."

  His mother's words made him feel sick to his stomach. Was it his lot in life to hunt and kill? Were things like him just allowed to hunt humans to their heart's content? All of it infuriated him, but at the same time he felt like there wasn't anything he could really do about it in the end.

  "I need some fucking air," he muttered as he walked past his parents and stepped out into the backyard.

  His body still felt weird. It was like he could do anything. Clearing the tall fence in the backyard would have left him gasping for air before, but now it was different. He cleared the entire fence in a single leap with practically no run up.

  "Holy shit!" he exclaimed as he flew through the air and the wind rushed past him.

  A low thud echoed out as he landed five paces away on the other side of the fence. What he had just done was far beyond the capabilities of even the greatest athletes in history. His jump had exceeded his own standing height and then some, which placed his ability somewhere far beyond what could even be considered human.

  Playing around with his now superhuman body made his racing thoughts calm down somewhat. The guilt was still there, but pushing himself to his newfound limit muted it somewhat. It was about a hundred meters between his house and the end of the street, but for some reason he liked the idea of testing how far he could get in as short a time as possible.

  "Deep breath," he said as he readied himself.

  The world stretched out in his peripheral vision as he burst into motion. It was almost impossible to run completely straight, but when he started zig-zagging back and forth his body stopped threatening to topple him with every step.

  "Time!" he called out as he reached the end of the street.

  He had just completed a hundred meter dash in less than five seconds. It was practically twice as fast as the fastest human alive. For some reason it made him feel giddy having gone from being exhausted just walking that distance to clearing it in the blink of an eye, but it also reminded him of the fact he wasn't even truly human.

  "How am I even supposed to deal with that sort of revelation?"

  Walking the empty streets eased his mind somewhat. The cool late night air didn't make him feel like he was freezing anymore. Running caused him no noticeable exhaustion anymore. Not a single sound could escape his hearing and the darkness of night was bright as day to his changed eyes. Was this what he was always meant to be?

  There was a sickly sweet smell in the air and he could feel his hunger flaring up inside him the moment it hit him. He followed it like bloodhound until he reached an alleyway where the lingering smell in the air was the strongest.

  "What manner of thing could have done this?" he said to himself as he approached the body laying on the cold asphalt.

  It was strange. Looking at the eviscerated body before him evoked no strong emotions in him. The body was still warm, but the only thing within his mind that gave a response was the hunger. He touched the blood pooling around the body and brought his fingers to his mouth. It didn't taste nearly as sweet as Mary had, but it didn't make him feel any guilt either.

  A voice echoed out from somewhere behind him, "You seem just as surprised by the body as I, which leads me to assume you just happened upon it by chance."

  The man standing behind him was dressed in an improperly buttoned shirt and a pair of torn jeans. They had an awkward smile on their face and their movements were somewhat stilted. Even the way they studied the crumpled sticky note in their hand was awkward.

  "While most would have assumed that you were the killer," the man rambled with excitement, "I can recognize a useful clue or future associate when I see one."

  "Who are you?" he asked the man as they approached the body.

  "I'm Harry, and you're now part of the investigation of a lifetime!"