Julius and Watkins walked up to the entrance to the graveyard. The street lights that were supposed to illuminate the area were broken, the glass shattered, and the internal circuits were damaged.

"Looks like the ghouls took out the lights." Julius pulled out two vials of a purple substance, handing one to Watkins.

"What's this?" Watkins asked.

"Darkvision potion. Or do you prefer shooting blindly in the dark?" Julius asked smugly.

Watkins drank the potion without further argument. Julius downed his potion. The moment the bitter liquid passed his lips, the night lit up. The dark corners of the cemetery were suddenly as bright as if it were daytime.

"We should split up and cover more ground," Watkins stated.

Julius stared at Watkins. "There are simpler ways to commit suicide. A number of bridges you could jump off of, for instance."

"I am more than capable of handl--" Watkins tried to protest, but Julius cut him off.

"I do not care what you think you are capable of. This is your first time with me in the field, and that means you stick with me, you do what I tell you, and you might not die. You can go back to the motel if you cannot handle that."

Watkins didn't say anything and just stared at him for a moment. Before either man could say a word, a topless woman shot out of the graveyard at a speed comparable to an Olympic sprinter. Julius and the woman barely had time to react before she slammed into him. Julius grunted at the surprising amount of force behind the impact as he caught her.

"Whoa, whoa, ma,am, are you alright?"

"Monsters! There are monsters in there!! … Vampire!! And Mathias he … I hit one, and it…." words spilled out of her mouth so fast Julius could barely understand her. Her bright green eyes shot left and right with an almost manic light.

Julius decided to deal with the most immediate problem and took off his trench coat and draped it around her. Leading her over to a bench, he sat her down.

"Are you alright? Were you injured?"

The woman shook her head violently.

"Is there anyone else in there?"

"My boyfr … his name is Mathias." she shuddered and hugged his coat to her body protectively. That was enough for Julius to get a rough picture of what happened. Her boyfriend had turned into a monster. It was something he had seen so often it bordered on the cliche.

Pulling out his phone, Julius shot off a text to the local wizards. Wizards liked to set up small conclaves all over the place, and while they weren't a part of the BPA, they tried to keep the supernatural a secret for their own reason, so they were more than willing to help with the cover-up and the clean-up. They usually didn't arrive until after the monsters were dead, but Julius considered this to be a special circumstance.

"Have you been bitten? Or scratched?" Julius asked calmly.

Ghouls weren't strong, fast, or even very tough. What made them dangerous was the paralytic poison in their claws that could paralyze a horse and the necrotic disease in their mouths that could rot a body in a week.

The girl nodded in response to his question. She gestured to her left shoulder. Julius examined it and bit his lip. He could easily tell the difference between a ghoul's bite and a vampire's.

"You 've been bitten," Julius noted as he reached into the coat he had placed around her and pulled out one of the potions of cure disease he had prepared earlier today. If he was being honest, it wasn't that different from an antibiotic, only a lot more aggressive and targeted at harmful bacteria.

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"Drink this. We don't want it to get an infection," Julius said as he offered her the potion. It was a mostly true statement. He really didn't want to kill her if she turned into a ghoul or, god forbid, a vampire.

Snatching up the potion, the girl chugged back the vial of what Julius knew couldn't taste much better than cough medicine like it was a shot of vodka.

"Hey, look at me," Julius spoke calmly, putting some magic into his words to force her compliance. The girl's eyes were drawn to his face, and Julius maintained eye contact as he silently cast a calming spell to help settle her down.

"What's your name?" Julius asked.

"Romana," she said, her whole body shuddering with every syllable.

"Ok, Romana, I need you to stay here. I've called the police, they will be here in a minute, but right now, I'm going to hand you off to my partner and ---"

Julius turned to Watkins. But Watkins had already disappeared into the cemetery when he had been dealing with Ramona.

"Watkins, if you aren't already dead, I am going to kill you."

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Watkins trekked through the cemetery with his gun in his right hand and a Dagger in his left as he followed the blood trail. He had tracked down killers a hundred times before in Afghanistan, and with the magic items he had been given, he was three times as strong as he used to be.

Turning the corner, he spied three ghouls charging toward him. He didn't hesitate opening fire. The heavy calibre bullets splattered their insides across the grey tombstones, their ruined bodies hitting the ground with a wet Squelch. A second after dropping, the ghouls' guttural howls echoed across the graveyard as the other ghouls no doubt heard the gunshots.

Watkins smiled as two of them leapt over a tombstone at him. He shot one in the chest before slashing the other in the neck with a level of precision and speed he hadn't enjoyed before he had discovered the supernatural. It had been a raid in the middle east. Their intel had been good, but they failed to mention that their targets weren't human. He and his team had been driven into a nearby town as the things that were pretending to be human picked them off one by one. Their enhanced bodies give them an advantage. But not an insurmountable one. Watkins smiled as he remembered the creature's face as he blew the last ghoul's head clean off.

Watkins finished off the last ghoul before moving into the clearing. A man stood there uninjured but covered in blood. Two ghouls stood by his side like loyal dogs.

"Stay out of this mortal. I don't have the time for you."

Watkins shot the kid between the eyes with a dark smile across his face. He didn't know what the kid was, but he figured it was better just to shoot him and deal with the paperwork later. The two ghouls launched themselves at him, but he blew them away the two ghouls before they could close in on him. He smiled as he finished the mission.

He was just about to walk away when the kid's body jerked. Blood seeped from his skin as his body bulged and his skin rippled. Watkins opened fire, unloading his entire clip into the transforming thing to no effect. The once human seemed to explode as a much larger creature emerged from the human-shaped glob of blood. It was a batlike creature that stood on two legs. Instead of wings, it had two well-muscled arms with thick claws at the end of them.

Watkins had already reloaded and fired two rounds into the creature's bat face and three into its center of mass. The impact snapped the creature's head to the side, it turned back to face him as its injuries healed, and the bullets were pushed out of the closing bullet holes.

Watkins felt his blood go cold as the bat creature seemed to smile at him. Watkins stepped backward, moving to run away when the creature disappeared. It didn't run away or slink into the shadows. It had simply vanished into thin air. Watkins scanned the area, his gun raised, his hair standing on end. Just as he was about to relax, something slammed into him hard enough to break his left arm claws ripped open her flesh as he was sent tumbling into a tombstone hard enough to knock it over.

Fear began to seep into his mind as he opened fire at whatever had just hit him. The bullets impacted the stone wall but impacted nothing. Watkins scrambled to his feet in a panic as he cradled his ruined arm against his body. His arm burned. He waved his gun back and forth in a panic as he tried to locate where the monster was. He couldn't detect the creature, but he hadn't noticed it until it hit him the first time, either.

It was then he felt something dripping down onto his head. He instinctively looked up. The bat monster looked down at him like he was a tasty meal. Watkins tried to bring up his gun, but the creature grabbed his gun and yanked it out of his hand, breaking his figures when it did. Watkins screamed as the vampire lunged at him sinking its teeth into his neck and shoulder.

Needle teeth pierced his flesh and began to drain his blood as Watkins struggled desperately, trying to escape as he was exsanguinated. Watkin's movements became slower and slower as the creature sucked him dry. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the vampire's bat face exploding in a shower of blood.