More glowing numbers appeared above the carnage, marking the life force that was slowly dissipating into the warehouse's stale air.
The sound of combat was coming from deeper in the warehouse, where shipping containers created narrow corridors and blind corners that turned every engagement into a close-quarters nightmare. Kaine moved toward it, Soulrend materializing in his right hand as his enhanced senses picked up the details of what was happening.
At least six human heat signatures, clustered together in what looked like a desperate defensive position. They were surrounded by seven vampire signatures that moved with the coordinated precision of a pack hunt—circling, testing defenses, looking for the perfect moment to strike.
But three of those vampire signatures were different. Brighter, more defined, radiating the kind of supernatural energy that marked bloodsuckers who'd been around long enough to develop real power.
[DEATH SIGHT - TARGET ANALYSIS]
[3x Third Generation Vampires - Level 8-10]
[4x Fourth Generation Vampires - Level 4-6]
The system's analysis painted tactical overlays across his vision, showing threat levels and combat capabilities like some kind of supernatural heads-up display. What made Kaine more excited was the level of detailing this strange screen appearing in his field of view had. A
Usually, hunters went by instincts and experience to determine what they were up against. It was either that or they found out in the worst ways how strong a bloodsucker truly was.
"Third gens," Kaine murmured, watching the heat signatures move through the container maze. "This should be interesting."
He rounded a corner formed by two forty-foot shipping containers and found the surviving recruits backed against a loading dock, trying to maintain a perimeter with weapons that clearly weren't designed for prolonged engagement against multiple high-level targets.
They were kids, maybe early twenties, with the kind of desperate determination that came from realizing your training hadn't prepared you for the reality of fighting actual monsters. Their tactical gear was scorched and torn, their faces were streaked with blood and soot, and their weapons were running low on the specialized ammunition that made them effective against supernatural targets.
Six of them left out of what had probably been a twelve-person team. The survivors were trying to cover multiple approaches while dealing with enemies that could move faster than human eyes could track.
The vampires were taking their time, circling like sharks around wounded swimmers. They knew they had won; now they were just deciding how to play with their food before the feeding began.
One of the third gens—a tall woman with platinum blonde hair and the kind of expensive clothes that suggested she'd been someone important before her turning or became someone important, stepped into the light cast by the recruits' tactical equipment. Her skin had the porcelain perfection that came with centuries of supernatural preservation, and her red eyes glowed with the kind of intelligence that made her significantly more dangerous than the average bloodsucker.
"Poor little hunters," she said, her voice carrying the cultured accent of someone who'd learned English in finishing schools that no longer existed. "Marcus promised us fresh blood tonight, but I think his standards have declined significantly."
Another third gen, this one a broad-shouldered man who looked like he'd been a soldier before his conversion, laughed with the kind of genuine amusement that suggested he was actually enjoying himself. "Marcus always was too eager. Remember when he was just a fledgling fourth gen, begging us for scraps from our kills? He's now grown stronger since then,"
"Those were simpler times," the woman agreed, examining her fingernails with the casual interest of someone discussing the weather."Before he got ideas above his station. Second generation indeed. As if twenty years of feeding could make up for centuries of experience."
A third vampire, this one younger-looking with the lean build of a predator, nodded agreement. "I heard he claimed to have turned a hunter. Some Shadowguard operative who killed half his nest before Marcus finally brought him down."
"Impossible," the soldier vampire scoffed. "Hunters aren't easy to turn. Not for someone of Marcus's caliber. Their minds break before their bodies accept the change."
Kaine paused, processing that information while staying hidden behind a shipping container. Marcus had been a recent promotion to second generation status, which explained why he'd been so vulnerable to Soulrend and so easy to kill. A true second gen, one with decades or centuries of experience, would have been a much more challenging opponent.
It also explained why Marcus had been so arrogant and sloppy. New power, insufficient experience, and the kind of overconfidence that got vampires dead when they picked fights with people who'd made careers out of killing their kind.
But that was academic now. Right now, he had field testing to conduct and recruits to save.
Well, maybe save. Depended on how well the experiment went.
"Attack," he said quietly.
Marcus moved like a force of nature given physical form.
The Ghoul burst through the side of a shipping container like it was made of cardboard, metal sheeting exploding outward in a shower of sparks and twisted steel as two hundred pounds of undead muscle and bone drove through it without slowing down.
The container's reinforced walls, designed to withstand ocean voyages and industrial handling, might as well have been tissue paper. Marcus punched through them like they were a minor inconvenience, creating an explosion of debris that sent chunks of metal flying across the warehouse floor.
One of the fourth gen vampires had just enough time to look confused—its head turning toward the sound of destruction with the kind of slow-motion awareness that came with supernatural reflexes trying to process something that was happening too fast even for them—before Marcus's fist connected with its skull at roughly the speed of a sledgehammer swung by someone with serious anger management issues.
The vampire's head compressed like a melon dropped from a ten-story building. Skull fragments and brain matter mixed with black blood sprayed across the concrete in a pattern that would have made Kaine proud, if Kaine had worked exclusively in vampire gore.
The body flew fifteen feet backward and cratered into another shipping container hard enough to buckle the steel walls and send vibrations through the warehouse floor.
[MORTAL ESSENCE ABSORBED: 65 ME]
"What the hell—" the soldier-turned-vampire started to say, his head snapping around to locate the source of the attack.
Kaine stepped out of the shadows behind him, moving through the darkness with the fluid grace of something that had transcended the normal limitations of physics. The Shadow Step ability felt natural, like he'd been teleporting through darkness his entire life instead of learning about it five minutes ago.
Soulrend took the bloodsucker's head off in a single clean stroke, the cursed blade passing through supernatural flesh and enhanced bone like they were warm butter. The vampire's expression of confusion remained frozen on its face even as its head separated from its shoulders and bounced across the warehouse floor like a particularly gruesome basketball.
Black blood fountained from the neck stump, painting abstract patterns across nearby shipping containers before the body collapsed in a heap of expensive clothes and rapidly cooling meat.
[MORTAL ESSENCE ABSORBED: 85 ME]
The remaining vampires scattered like startled cats, finally realizing they were no longer the apex predators in this particular food chain. The recruits, meanwhile, stared in shocked silence at their unexpected rescue, their weapons tracking movement they couldn't quite follow.
"Stay down," Kaine advised them, then went to work with the kind of professional enthusiasm that came from twelve years of practice.
The fourth gens tried to run, but Marcus was faster than anything that had once been human had any right to be. The Ghoul caught one of them in mid-leap—the vampire had been trying to clear a shipping container in a single bound—grabbed it by the leg, and used it as an improvised club to batter the other two into pulp against the concrete floor.
The impacts echoed through the warehouse like gunshots mixed with the sound of bones breaking and organs rupturing. Marcus wielded the vampire like it was a baseball bat, swinging it with enough force to leave crater-shaped dents in the industrial flooring.
After the third or fourth swing, the vampire-club stopped moving and started leaking significantly more than was probably healthy. Marcus discarded it with the casual indifference of someone throwing away a broken tool and turned his attention to the remaining fourth gen, which was trying to crawl away despite having most of its ribs caved in.
[MORTAL ESSENCE ABSORBED: 45 ME]
[MORTAL ESSENCE ABSORBED: 50 ME]
But the third gens were smarter, stronger, and significantly more dangerous than their lesser-generation cousins.
The woman raised her hands toward the warehouse ceiling, and blood began seeping from the walls, the floor, even the air itself. It wasn't random bleeding—this was controlled, purposeful, the kind of supernatural manipulation that required centuries of practice and absolute mastery over the life force that flowed through all living things.
The blood coalesced into floating orbs that hardened into crystalline spikes, each one gleaming with supernatural sharpness and glowing with the dark red energy that marked genuine blood magic. They hung in the air like a constellation of death, waiting for her command.
"Blood magic," Kaine observed, watching the display with professional interest. "Now we're getting somewhere."
The spikes launched toward him with the speed and precision of bullets fired from multiple rifles. They cut through the air with a whistling sound that suggested they were moving fast enough to punch through steel plating without slowing down.
Kaine sidestepped the first volley, his enhanced reflexes making the supersonic projectiles look like they were moving through molasses. He rolled under the second wave, came up running, and watched Marcus take three of them in the chest without even slowing down.
The crystallized blood spikes punched through the Ghoul's torso like it was made of soft clay, opening holes that would have been instantly fatal to anything that still needed functioning organs. Black blood leaked from the puncture wounds, but Marcus kept moving toward its target with the single-minded determination of something that had forgotten how to be stopped by inconveniences like massive chest trauma.
The soldier vampire had his own tricks, refined through decades of combat experience and supernatural enhancement. His hands shifted and elongated, fingers becoming claws that dripped with blood that moved like it was alive. When he slashed at Kaine, the blood followed the motion, creating whips of red energy that cut through the air with razor precision and left glowing trails of malevolent power.
One of them caught Kaine across the ribs, opening a line of fire through his shirt and drawing a thin trail of silver-black blood. The wound burned like acid, but it was already beginning to close as his supernatural healing factor kicked in.
"Interesting technique," he said, examining the cut with clinical detachment. "But see your buddy over there? I turned him into a believer and now he follows me. If you want to avoid that, you'll have to do better than that."
He moved in close, too fast for the vampire to react, and drove Soulrend up through its sternum. The cursed blade punched through ribs and whatever passed for a heart in something that had been dead for decades, sliding between bones with the kind of precision that came from years of practice in anatomically creative violence.
The vampire's eyes went wide with shock and pain as the weapon began doing what it did best—separating souls from bodies without hesitation. The blade's red glow intensified as it fed on supernatural essence, draining the life force that kept the vampire animate.
"Marcus was weak," the thing gasped, black blood bubbling from its lips and running down its chin in thick streams. "A pretender. A nothing. You have no idea what real power looks like."
"Probably not," Kaine agreed, twisting the blade and feeling the vampire's supernatural anatomy come apart like wet tissue paper. "But I'm a fast learner."
[MORTAL ESSENCE ABSORBED: 120 ME]
Meanwhile, Marcus had reached the woman with the blood magic. She tried to wrap him in red chains, binding him in place while more of those crystal spikes formed around her like a lethal constellation.
The Ghoul walked through her constructs like they were made of spider webs and wishful thinking.
Her blood magic shattered against Marcus's advance, the supernatural bonds dissolving into ordinary liquid that splattered across the warehouse floor. The crystalline spikes deflected off the Ghoul's body like they were hitting reinforced steel instead of undead flesh.
One massive hand closed around her throat, lifting her off the ground with the casual strength of something that no longer needed to worry about things like taxes and rent.
Her feet kicked uselessly at empty air while she clawed at the Ghoul's wrist with fingernails that had transformed into talons.
She raked those claws across Marcus's face, opening furrows in the gray flesh that leaked black blood. But the Ghoul didn't even seem to notice the damage, its pale eyes remaining fixed on her with the kind of empty attention that suggested pain was no longer a relevant concept.
"Impossible," she wheezed, her voice barely audible through the pressure on her windpipe. "What are you? What kind of abomination—"
Marcus, of course, didn't answer. Ghouls weren't big on philosophical discussions about the nature of undeath and supernatural servitude.
Instead, he squeezed.
The vampire's neck collapsed like an empty soda can being crushed by hydraulic pressure. Vertebrae separated with wet popping sounds, and her body went limp as whatever force kept her animated finally gave up and went home.
[MORTAL ESSENCE ABSORBED: 140 ME]
The blood magic constructs dissolved back into ordinary liquid that splattered across the warehouse floor in abstract patterns, leaving behind the metallic smell of spilled blood and supernatural violence.
Kaine looked around the warehouse, taking inventory of the night's work. Seven vampires, reduced to puddles of blood and scattered body parts. A dozen Shadowguard recruits, six of whom were still breathing and would probably live to require extensive therapy. One Ghoul with superficial damage and absolutely no signs of fatigue despite having just torn through multiple supernatural opponents.
'Not bad for a field test,' he thought.
Marcus stood in the center of the carnage, waiting for new orders with the patience of something that had literally all the time in the world. The wounds on his face were already beginning to close, new flesh growing from the edges of the cuts like some kind of accelerated time-lapse photography of healing that defied every law of biology Kaine could remember.
"Good boy," Kaine said, patting the Ghoul on the shoulder with genuine approval.
He was examining Marcus's regeneration more closely—the way new tissue seemed to bud and grow like plant shoots, filling in damaged areas with methodical precision—when he felt eyes on him. Not the shell-shocked stares of the surviving recruits, who were still trying to process what they'd just witnessed.
This was different. Professional. Calculating. Someone trained in surveillance and reconnaissance, someone who knew how to stay hidden from enhanced senses and supernatural detection.
Someone who was evaluating him as both a potential threat and a possible asset.
Kaine smiled and started walking toward the warehouse exit, Marcus following like a well-trained attack dog that had just demonstrated its capabilities in the most violent way possible. Let whoever it was wonder what they'd just witnessed. Let them try to make sense of a dead hunter and his pet vampire walking away from a massacre that should have been impossible.
Behind them, the surviving recruits slowly picked themselves up from the concrete, their hands shaking as they tried to reload weapons and call for backup. Their voices carried the kind of hollow shock that suggested tonight was going to require significant amounts of alcohol and professional counseling.
In the shadows between shipping containers, Major Patricia Gwen watched a ghost walk away and wondered if she was losing her mind.
Because that had looked exactly like Kaine Cross.
And Kaine Cross was supposed to be dead.
Twice now.