"I've died a few times. It isn't pleasant." Though Lust supposed perhaps only the last one, the one that had felt like an ocean from which there was no way to surface, had been a true death. Her regeneration had always kept her from truly dying. Now she was without it, and without the stones that gave her strength. Was that how they had weakened her?

"But you've found yourself in luck, Mr. Westerning." Lust turned a predatory cat's smile to the worn man she had found for her current companion. "I'm very good at fighting." And she still had her claws, though she knew from what she had been told that they wouldn't be as strong. "I should warn you now, I'm not entirely human. I hope that isn't a problem."

Better to lay it out there now, before she simply showed her true nature when something that went bump in the night attacked them. Perhaps he was a farmer, from some small and quiet place that had never seen war or violence. Or perhaps he was just one of those perpetual innocents.

Either way, it was a welcome change from what she was used to.