DISCLAIMER: I do not own Underworld, its characters or any of the other stuff in the movies. This is set before the events of the first movie, which is why Selene does not yet have the silver bullets.

Selene ran down the alley, knowing that Raze was close behind. Taking a sharp turn, she leapt into the air and grabbed a protruding roof tile, pushing with her legs so that she performed an elegant flip, drawing her pistols upside-down, and landed quietly on the balls of her feet in a cautious crouch. The Lycan's screams of rage were loud, and she winced. Hoping that the entire street wouldn't be woken, she pushed off again and soared into the air, taking careful aim and firing each of her pistols once. The bullets (not yet the silver nitrate they would become) shot through the air and embedded themselves in the wolf-man's chest.

'Blood!' Raze yelled, ripping off his jacket as he began to change, his Lycan fur and teeth erupting from his already formidable human body.

'Dog!' Selene replied, though her shout was more controlled. She didn't want to wake the people who were, at that moment, safely asleep in their beds; it made victims for Raze, which would make him stronger, and witnesses she would have to deal with.

Selene growled; she hated killing innocents. Raze, however, was not innocent by a long shot.

'Come on then, Lycan,' the vampire hissed, keeping her guns levelled at the beast.

Raze gave a cry of hatred and pounced; Selene dived to her right and brought her weapons up, pulling the triggers.

'What the hell?!' It was a new voice, neither vampire nor Lycan.

'What is that thing?' a second voice cried.

Both Death Dealer and Lycan turned to the new arrivals. Both were young, in their teens, and judging from their stances they appeared to know each other. The vampire's enhanced hearing enabled her to hear their heart rates, and she could tell that they were both frightened beyond any terror they had known before.

Firing another bullet into Raze's open maw, she dashed at the youths, covering the twenty-metre distance in a scant second. They stood there, mouths wide open, until she grabbed them and leapt into the air, traversing the rooftops with ease and dropping them in a park about a mile away. Sprinting back to where she had left Raze, she reloaded both of her pistols with fresh bullets in preparation for the kill, but the werewolf was gone. A trail of blood showed clearly the path he had taken.

'Uh-oh,' breathed the vampire.

Raze had followed her.

***

Chris and Alex stood in the middle of the unfamiliar green, panting.

'What the hell were those things?' Alex, the curly-haired taller of the two, managed to cough.

'I don't know,' Chris replied, breathing heavily between words, 'but the woman one looked good in that outfit.'

'She'd look better without it, though.'

At that Chris gave a snort of laughter and ended up smacking himself on the chest, almost unable to breathe.

'What about the werewolf thing though?' Alex asked, having almost recovered all his breath.

'I don't know. Maybe it was just a big dog?'

'Too big.'

They stood in silence for a moment, and probably would have for much longer had Raze not erupted from the boughs of a tree.

***

'No!' shouted Selene as Raze dived on the taller of the pair. 'You bastard lycanthrope!'

The other teenager was screaming, running from the scene; jumping towards him, the vampire caught the boy and charged towards the Lycan.

Holding one arm out and shielding Chris with the other, Selene struck Raze with the heel of her hand; the Lycan barely noticed any pain, but the impact made it drop Alex.

Then Raze turned on Selene.

The werewolf ripped Chris from her protesting grasp with its claws, breaking his bones effortlessly as it shook him like a rag doll and threw him aside.

'Screw you!' Selene screamed, blasting yet more bullets into Raze's hide.

With a roar, the Lycan finally relented and leapt away, back to its coven.

Dashing to the taller boy, Selene shook him by the shoulder. She recoiled as she saw the bite marks in his shoulder. Meanwhile, the other boy was stirring.

'Alex…' he tried to say, but burst out in a coughing fit mixed with uncontrollable sobs.

'Nothing we can do for him,' the Death Dealer said, talking more to herself than to the semi-conscious boy. 'He's one of them now.'

She strode to the younger of the pair and quickly examined him, but soon saw that there was no hope. He had not been pierced by tooth or claw, but nearly every bone in his body had been broken. There was only one chance for him.

'Don't make me choose,' Selene hissed into the night air. 'I won't make another innocent a creature of the night against their will. Not so young…'

But the boy's cries moved her almost to tears herself, and, unable to resist the lure of saving a life - and gaining a new ally - the vampire found her mouth inching slowly towards Chris's neck…