Faust points at the throat of the corpse.

“To the untrained eye, it might look like a normal wound.” He says, looking straight at the gore where Caius fights the urge to avert his eyes. “Pretty brutal for human violence, but still human. The throat-ripper is clever - he rips the throat as the killing blow, choosing not to drain all their blood. That way, the crime scene is still bloody enough to look like a human murder and so there’s no evidence of bite marks. You’d need to be a doctor or a vamp hunter to spot it.”

Caius looks at him.

“Is that possible?” He says, a tinge of fear forcing its way back into his voice.

Faust folds his arms.

“Of all people, you especially already know how strong and intelligent a vampire can be.” He sighs. “What’s worse, vampires get smarter and more powerful with age. You’ll get yourself killed if you treat vampires like bloodthirsty idiots.”

“Right.” Caius mutters, feeling oddly chastised.

He glances back to the body.

“How can they bite someone like that?” He asks, frowning. “I thought in movies, vampires turn people by biting them. Wouldn’t the victim turn into a vampire themselves?”

“Wasn’t it in the book you were so proud of buying?” Faust snickers, and Caius resists the urge to elbow him in the ribs, seniority be damned. At his glare, Faust coughs and wipes the laugh off his face. He gestures towards his own throat, near the Adam’s apple. “There’s a gland here called the thyroid gland. It’s not that well understood by humans, but vampires need to bite this gland to turn a human. Even after that, the resulting vampire’s strength depends on a lot of factors - the blood type, the strength of their bone marrow, their white blood cell volume… stuff like that.”

Caius swallows.

“Then…” He ventures. “How strong was that vampire? The one with the red hair… who took Clete.”

Faust pauses, then turns to look at him with an uncharacteristically serious expression.

“At least a superior-class.” He says, and his tone makes Caius immediately think that’s bad news.