"I've done it a few times before," I told him dryly. His eyes widened, and I smelled the fear saturating his skin.
He said nothing for a few seconds, then he turned to me and said, "I deserve this. At least it will be quick." I looked at him, and reached again into his mind, and felt his remorse and a form of relief, and made a decision. I would try to reprogram this man tonight. If I failed, he would die. I thought of Rebecca, and her struggle with her vampire side, and realised that, after all these years, I too struggled against it. I had sensed the regret in this man for the foul things he had done, and if I could ensure that he would never be able to do anything to harm another being, I would choose that over simply ending his life.
"I'm ready," he said quietly. I didn't bother to tell him that his readiness had little to do with what was going to happen to him.
I drew up outside a small deserted station, and turned the van off. I sat and gazed out of the windscreen while I probed inside Eric's mind, sensing the fleeting thoughts. My hand snaked out and snapped his right femur, and his pain ripped through those thoughts, stalling them briefly, while I slammed the silvery encoded wedge between them, reprogramming his mind and changing his life forever. He lost consciousness then, as they all do, and I lifted him gently from the seat, and placed him on the tarmac of the parking lot. He would wake a different man, in a hospital with metalwork holding his broken bones together, and no memory of what had happened tonight, but still breathing.
I wasn't so sure I'd be able to say the same for James Colborne, though.