Cain grunted as the last of the rubble tumbled over the side of the destroyed, abandoned building, falling for several seconds to explode into dust on contact with the grey pavement.

He kicked at another stone, watching with savage satisfaction as the stone flew in an impressive arc before explosively crashing into the floor again, crumbling into sand and dust.

His frustration was still unspent, and there was still a lot of rubble scattered around the derelict office block, waiting for an introduction to his foot. He restrained himself with an effort of will however, reminding himself he was currently in the sixth floor of a building smack dab in the middle of Graveyard.

Unless he was trying to ring a dinner bell announcing for every vamp and shifter out there, kicking stones out a broken down wall was pointless.

It felt good though.

He glanced back at one of the corpses thrown at the back of the room, bloodless skin white and lifeless. He hadn't been the one to kill her —or the other one—, but he sincerely wished he had. It would have saved them from the suffering of what actually happened.

Cain had been tracking down a mixed pack of wolf and dog shifters, a group of about fifteen. The... things... had been dragging at least three humans along with them, tied up and incapacitated. Their plans for them were pretty obvious, leaving Cain no plans other than hunt them down and brutally, painfully end them.

He'd tracked them to this building, spent nearly and hour scouting around to make sure he wasn't walking into an ambush, and then moved in.

Only to find the bodies of two corpses propped against the wall, a message scrawled in blood on the wall beside them.

We're watching, hunter.

He'd been too late to save them, and he doubted he could have, even if he'd blindly charged into the building. There was nothing he could do for them.

The first, a young blonde woman had been beautiful in life, and in death she made a haunting figure, drained of blood and nearly resembling a damned vamp herself.

The other... well, Cain couldn't tell what he looked like in life, because the shifters had taken a morbid liking to his face, turning it into a bloody mosaic of red flesh and crushed bone. The rest of his body had received similar attention, his abdomen ripped open in a straight line, innards open for all to see. His arms and legs had been snapped and twisted in positions they were never meant to be in, like a doll that had been run over by a car. The only way he even knew he was male was by his clothing.

Cain returned away again, staring back at the street below him. The monsters had known he was shadowing them, so odds were, it was also too late for the third guy. It sure as hell didn't mean he wasn't going to try.

And even if he failed, bloody vengeance was still on the table.

Veins thrumming with determination and rage, he leapt out of the hole in the wall, falling through the air for a few seconds that lasted an eternity. He landed silently and effortlessly landing in a crouch his body barely noticing the strain of the impossible leap.

He took a second to orient himself, then tore in the direction he was sure they had gone, legs carrying him through Graveyard, the city formerly called Chicago, at inhuman speeds.

***

Cain watched as his prey moved through the rubble of the old city. They were alert, noses twitching this way and that as they tried to pick up distressing scents.

Not that it would help them. Cain no longer gave off scents. Since the Vamp bit him, he was as scentless as an embalmed corpse. Short of sight and sound, he was invisible, and he was very good at masking those two.

They had kept the last human alive, but even then, it was far too late for him. Cain could see the faint trembling he tried to contain as the fever from the virus ran through him, changing him irreversibly. He stumbled drunkenly, bumbling into one of the half-shifted Weres.

The Were snapped it's jaws in warning, yellow eyes glaring at him as it stumbled in turn, the rest of its body barely carrying its oversized head.

It was an opening Cain couldn't refuse.

The Weres had momentarily turned their attention to the Were-dog that nearly tripped, and in that moment, Cain covered the hundred meters between them. The wolf at the head of the pack turned around, human eyes widening as he gave a shout of warning.

Cain blew past him, fingers ripping through his throat like claws through paper. The Were spun from the impact, gaping throat spurting his lifeblood down his chest. Cain paid him no mind as his fist came up in an uppercut that shattered the jaw of the wolf next in line. He plowed into and over him and stepped into the center of the bewildered pack.

The next few minutes were a blur of flesh and blood, cracking bones and screams and barks of pain. Cain took several blows that would have utterly broken a normal person, but only staggered him. Every swing of his hand broke bones and ruptured organs, his fingers cutting flesh down to the bone.

When silence returned, Cain was painted in blood, his clothes shredded under the claws of the Weres. The claws that did cut into him, left tears in his flesh bleeding strangely fluid blood. He was surrounded by limp, twitching bodies, their blood painting the streets.

With a grunt of exhaustion, he pulled the sword from the scabbard on his back, loping off the head of one of the wolves in one smooth motion. It instantly stopped twitching.

He could have attacked with brutally sharp weapon from the first, but there was something visceral and cathartic about being wrist deep in the enemies intestines, hearing and feeling the snapping of bones in his hands. The demon in him seemed to approve of the violence.

He had to remind himself he was serving justice for the poor souls ravaged by the monsters, and for those who had been turned, he was putting them out of a miserable existence. It didn't make it any easier to sleep at night, but it was the only thing left holding the fragmented pieces of his humanity together. Without his rage to direct his impulses, without the jagged pain of loss he could feel from deep inside, he would be a simple monster that destroyed everything around it.

No better than those he hunted.

So when he decapitated the last were, he dropped to a knee. And he prayed for the chance that the innocent souls amongst his victims would make it to the best afterlife there was. That the pain they suffered would be washed from them.

And hoped that a God who seemed to have stopped listening to prayers would answer.