The rooftops of the warehouse district stretched out like a concrete ocean under the moonlight. Kaine moved across them with the practiced ease of someone who'd spent years avoiding ground-level patrols, his boots finding purchase on rain-slicked tar and weathered brick. The city looked different from up here—cleaner somehow, without the grime and desperation that clung to street level like a disease.
Marcus followed exactly three steps behind, moving with that same aching dullness but somehow making no sound at all. For something that weighed close to two hundred pounds, the ghoul had an unnerving ability to ghost across surfaces that should have creaked or shifted under his weight.
'At least he's useful for stealth work,' Kaine thought, leaping across a six-foot gap between buildings. Marcus followed a moment later, covering the distance with inhuman ease and landing without even a whisper of impact.
The problem of feeding his undead servant was proving more complicated than expected. Kaine's knowledge of vampire biology was extensive—twelve years of hunting would teach you everything about their feeding habits, territorial patterns, and reproductive cycles. But ghouls were different. They weren't vampires, weren't exactly zombies, and the system's tutorial had been frustratingly vague about their dietary requirements.
'Human flesh' could mean a lot of things. Fresh or aged? Specific organs or just general meat? Did preparation matter? Kaine had seen plenty of undead over the years, but most of them were kill-on-sight situations that didn't require understanding their culinary preferences.
He paused at the edge of a twelve-story office building, scanning the streets below with enhanced vision. The Death Sight ability had been running passively for the past hour, highlighting the warm life signatures of late-night pedestrians and the colder, darker shapes of things that hunted them.
Downtown was crawling with bloodsuckers tonight. At least fifteen different signatures moving through the financial district, probably coordinating some kind of operation. The Shadowguard response would be minimal—rich neighborhoods got protection, but the business district after hours was considered acceptable risk.
'Politics as usual.'
Marcus appeared beside him, those pale eyes reflecting the city lights like a nocturnal predator. His nostrils flared slightly, testing the air for scents that normal senses couldn't detect.
"Still hungry?" Kaine asked quietly.
The ghoul's head turned toward him with that dullness, and something that might have been anticipation flickered across his features. His lips pulled back just enough to reveal teeth that were definitely sharper than they'd been three days ago.
[WARNING: MARCUS - HUNGER LEVEL CRITICAL]
[TIME REMAINING: 4 HOURS 12 MINUTES]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: ACQUIRE SUSTENANCE IMMEDIATELY]
'Great. A ticking time bomb with abandonment issues.'
Kaine had considered several options during their rooftop journey. The city morgue was the obvious choice—plenty of meat, already dead, no moral complications. But morgues had security systems, night staff, and records that would be missed. Too many variables, too much exposure.
Hospitals were out for similar reasons. Funeral homes kept their inventory locked up tight and monitored around the clock. The meat processing plants in the industrial district used non-human flesh, and Kaine wasn't sure if Marcus's dietary requirements were that flexible.
Which left the option he'd been trying to avoid thinking about.
'Cemetery. Fresh graves. Nobody's using the meat anymore.'
The thought made his stomach turn, which was impressive considering some of the things he'd seen during his hunting career. There was something fundamentally different between killing bloodsuckers and desecrating human remains. One was pest control. The other was... something else entirely.
But Marcus needed to eat, and Kaine needed his servant functional for the night's real work. Pragmatism trumped squeamishness when the alternative was watching his first undead creation go feral from hunger.
St. Catherine's Cemetery sat on the outskirts of the warehouse district, twenty acres of weathered headstones and dying grass surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that had been installed sometime around the Civil War. The place had been running out of space for decades, but the city kept cramming bodies into increasingly small plots rather than expanding into more expensive real estate.
Kaine dropped down from the adjacent apartment building's fire escape, landing in the narrow alley that separated the cemetery from the living world. Marcus followed with that same silent grace, touching down without disturbing so much as a piece of loose gravel.
The fence was eight feet high with decorative spikes along the top—more for show than security. Kaine had scaled similar barriers plenty of times during vampire hunts. Bloodsuckers loved old cemeteries for their ambiance and the convenience of pre-dug holes.
'Just like old times. Except now I'm the monster breaking into sacred ground.'
He found a section where the fence posts had shifted with age, creating a gap just wide enough to squeeze through. Marcus followed, his expensive jacket catching slightly on the iron bars but not tearing.
The cemetery at night was exactly what you'd expect from a horror movie—fog drifting between weathered headstones, bare trees casting twisted shadows, and the kind of oppressive silence that made every footstep sound like thunder. Kaine's enhanced senses picked up the smell of old earth, decaying flowers, and something else underneath it all that might have been death itself.
Marcus's behavior changed the moment they were inside the grounds. His head came up like a hunting dog catching a scent, and his movements became more fluid, more purposeful. Whatever passed for instinct in his simplified mind had detected something it wanted.
'Of course he can smell the bodies. Probably like a buffet to him.'
Kaine consulted his mental map of the cemetery's layout. He'd been here twice during his Shadowguard days—once chasing a rogue vampire who'd been using fresh graves as a decoy feeding ground, switching out old bodies for new ones. Kaine till date had no idea why the bloodsucker thought that was a good idea for a cover or an idea at all.
The second one was investigating reports of corpses going missing from recent burials. The first incident had been a quick kill. The second had turned out to be grave robbers selling body parts to black market organ dealers.
Both times, he'd noticed the pattern of fresh graves. The newer sections were on the eastern side, where the city had been expanding burial plots into what used to be a maintenance area. Less supervision, cheaper coffins, and the kind of clients whose families couldn't afford elaborate security measures.
They picked their way between headstones, Kaine reading names and dates in the moonlight. Most of the recent graves were marked with simple metal placards rather than carved stone—temporary markers until families could afford something permanent.
Or until they gave up trying.
Marcus stopped suddenly, his entire body going rigid with attention. His pale eyes fixed on a patch of ground thirty feet away, where the earth was still loose and dark from recent digging.
[DETECTION: FRESH REMAINS LOCATED]
[AGE: 2 DAYS]
[CONDITION: SUITABLE FOR CONSUMPTION]
The headstone was smaller than most, just a metal plate with "ROBERT LOOKE - BELOVED FATHER" and dates that showed he'd been forty-three when he died. The flowers beside the grave were still fresh—carnations and roses that someone had arranged with care.
'Sorry, Robert. Nothing personal.'
Kaine had come prepared with a collapsible shovel he'd liberated from a construction site. The ground was soft from recent rain, and whoever had filled the grave hadn't packed it down properly. Probably rushing to finish before daylight.
"This is it," he told Marcus quietly. "But we do this fast and clean. Get what you need and we're gone."
Marcus stood at the foot of the grave, motionless except for his nostrils flaring as he tested the air. His fingers twitched slightly—the first involuntary movement Kaine had seen from him since the conversion.
The digging went faster than expected. Two feet down, the shovel hit wood with a hollow thunk that echoed across the cemetery like a gunshot. Kaine froze, listening for any sign that they'd been detected, but the night remained silent except for distant traffic and the whisper of wind through dead leaves.
Marcus stepped forward before Kaine could stop him, dropping into the shallow grave with inhuman agility. His claws—and when had they gotten so pronounced?—scraped against the cheap pine coffin like nails on a chalkboard.
The sound of splintering wood filled the air as Marcus tore through the lid with casual strength. Kaine caught a glimpse of dark fabric and pale skin before looking away, focusing on the treeline around the cemetery's perimeter.
'Just get it over with. Don't think about it.'
What followed was the most disturbing five minutes of Kaine's life, and that was saying something considering his professional background. The sounds coming from the grave were wet, enthusiastic, and accompanied by the kind of satisfied noises that Marcus had never made while alive.
There was tearing. There was crunching. There were slurping sounds that made Kaine's enhanced hearing feel like a curse rather than a blessing.
'I've seen bloodsuckers drain entire families,' he reminded himself, trying to maintain professional detachment. 'I've watched them rip people alive. This is just... meal prep.'
But it wasn't the same, and he knew it. Those had been monsters feeding on victims. This was his creature, following his orders, desecrating someone's father because it needed sustenance to remain functional.
The ethical implications were going to keep him awake during whatever passed for sleep these days.
Marcus finally emerged from the grave, his expensive clothes somehow still immaculate despite the circumstances. His pale skin had taken on a healthier ...pale color, and his movements were more fluid, more natural.
Whatever had been missing from his supernatural physiology had been restored.
[MARCUS - HUNGER SATISFIED]
[DURATION: 72 HOURS]
[COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS: OPTIMAL]
The ghoul looked at Kaine with something that might have been gratitude, if ghouls were capable of complex emotions. His pale eyes seemed brighter, more alert, though still fundamentally empty of personality.
"Better?" Kaine asked.
Marcus tilted his head in what could have been a nod.
Kaine filled in the grave as quickly as possible, patting down the earth and scattering dead leaves across the surface to disguise the disturbance. With luck, it would be weeks before anyone noticed anything unusual. And by then, weather and natural decomposition would have obscured the evidence.
They slipped back through the fence and onto the adjacent building's fire escape, leaving St. Catherine's Cemetery to its eternal silence. Marcus followed three steps behind, moving with renewed purpose and energy.
The night's real work was waiting.
"Maybe when we catch this vampire or if he is one at all, I'll buy you ham and then we see from there," Kaine said.