The Sinsayer
Se-gun had no intention of letting Kenneth down. To open a new line of trade with another arms dealer, he took Bill Murray’s introduction and rode out to find a man called Sergeant Western.
Western was a classic Anglo-Saxon white man, the sort who wore a cowboy hat the moment he was off duty—an eccentric U.S. serviceman through and through. His pride in his country was enormous, yet that pride never stopped him from moving illegal weapons. The double standard made him look like the kind of father who would dote on his own kids at home. Typical American sentiment, maybe: endlessly kind to children and animals, yet eager to belittle, demean, and condemn anyone of color or any nation he considered lesser. A textbook example of how right-wing hardliners exist everywhere.
…Or so Bill Murray had insisted. To Se-gun, personality and business were separate matters. Unless the man tried to harm him, Se-gun did not care whether Western was a villain or anything else.
Vampires were another story.
If all he needed was to buy weapons, dealing with a weirdo like that did not seem so bad. So Se-gun gunned his bike all the way to Chuncheon without stopping.
After roughly two hours on the road he arrived at a lakeside bar. The place claimed to be a live café and already looked odd from the outside; Se-gun could not fathom why a drive-in-style joint would sell liquor. He stepped inside and checked his watch. Exactly ten minutes to four. Talk a little, turn around, and he would be back in Seoul by sundown.
“I ought to rest today,” he muttered, rolling his throbbing body. He knew the side effects of Psychedelic Moon all too well. Worst case you became a vampire; best case you got seizures. Turning into the very thing he hated was already the worst outcome, yet he had long since accepted that fate. Wasn’t it always like this? A revenger who stayed true to his hatred eventually became the image of everything he despised.
Revenge only breeds more revenge. Wash blood with blood and nothing changes except whose blood it is.
“Welcome.”
The clerk was a young man with his hair slicked back under a thick layer of oil. He tilted his head at Se-gun—probably wanting ID—but no one short of a cop would dare ask a green-haired man radiating pure murder for identification.
“Which table?”
“Window.”
“They’re all taken over there.”
Sure enough, couples had claimed every seat by the glass. Se-gun snorted at the bottle-shaped interior of the place.
“Anywhere’s fine.”
He glanced outside just as a Harley with wildly curved ape-hanger bars rolled up and stopped in front of the shop. The rider was a massive white middle-aged man wearing a World War II flight helmet and goggles—a real piece of work.
The moment he entered he clamped a pot-lid-sized hand on the clerk’s shoulder and asked in heavily accented Korean:
“Hahahaha! Got a guy named Han Se-gun in here?”
Se-gun considered kicking a can into the idiot’s face if one had been handy. Instead he simply raised a hand.
“Here.”
“Huh? Oooooh, kid. Cute little stunt. But fun and business ain’t the same thing. My business is so tough. I don’t deal with some hairless little brat in the rough trade.”
“Idiot. I can hear every word.”
Se-gun rapped the table while watching the other customers. Only then did the big man sit opposite him. The chair groaned under the weight; it might not collapse right away, but its lifespan had definitely shortened.
“All right, let’s talk. What do you need? TNT, was it?”
“That works, but you got any claymores?”
Now that the vampires knew his plans, anti-personnel claymores would be far more useful than building-leveling TNT. The man’s face wrinkled at the word; the even stubble on his cheeks followed every crease into deep furrows.
“Claymores? Overkill for vamps.”
“Keep your voice down, will you? Forget it. Let’s talk outside.”
“Whoa, no need. Long as the money’s there, we’re good.”
“Money? It’s rotting so hard mushrooms are growing on it. Don’t worry.”
The man threw his head back and laughed.
“Hahahaha! I like you, kid.”
“That so?”
“Then let’s write the deal right here.”
He pulled out a notepad and began haggling over prices and quantities. Se-gun had plenty of cash and nowhere else to spend it; if the numbers sounded fair he simply nodded them through.
“Cool!”
The Yankee kept shouting “Cool!” as he studied the order sheet. One case of claymores, one case of stun grenades, wireless detonators, a grenade launcher and its shells—all listed.
“Planning a war, kid?”
“We agreed you don’t need to know that at this price. Just have everything ready by next week.”
“No problem.”
Se-gun strode straight outside, gave his bike a careful once-over, and headed back toward Seoul.
The quiet private room bar Sang had lately been occupied by a strange pack of foreigners. The owner never went home; he drifted around the floor with a pale, hollow face, forever serving. The staff looked no better. Stranger still, the place no longer accepted ordinary customers. It was packed solid with bizarre foreigners, the door locked day and night while they threw endless parties.
Among vampires it was common knowledge that this was where Hecate’s children made their nest in Korea. Using their thrall abilities they had completely taken over the bar and celebrated every night. The celebration consisted of dragging humans in, pouring liquor down their throats, draining every drop of blood from their bodies, and riding the thrall-induced high that felt exactly like sex—a thoroughly decadent festival.
Yet for all their revelry, Hecate’s children had recently lost face in spectacular fashion. They were a vampire gang that hunted hunters, using weapons equal to any hunter’s, a pack of pure hedonists who chased pleasure above all else. They encouraged drug use and kidnapped living humans to feed on, which made them rather low-class even by vampire standards.
Still, whatever their methods, they had absolute faith in their own violent superiority. That faith was their pride.
And that pride had been smashed to pieces. Only two days earlier the vampires they had sent out had been wiped out by a vampire hunter. The corpses showed signs of blood-draining, yet entire upper torsos had been blown away—shotgun deaths, by the look of them.
“So you’re saying this bastard killed our kin?”
On a glass table reflecting wild disco lights lay a photograph of Se-gun. Other vampires were busy making tiny cuts all over a woman’s naked body—where they had grabbed her, no one asked—and licking the blood. Under the crimson light her pale flesh coiled like a snake while red tongues lapped the blood welling from her skin. She only giggled like an idiot, too far gone to notice her life draining away. Supreme eroticism, the image of death itself, filled the room like a cauldron of madness.
In the middle of that frenzy the vampires had laid out data on their hunter and formed an absurd study group.
“Seriously? Some little human kid killing vampires that well? These Oriental runts are tiny.”
“True, but bullets don’t care how big you are.”
They chattered while collecting blood from the dancer’s hand into a glass, topping it with whiskey, and downing the mixture without bothering to stir.
“Still weird. Not just us—plenty of other vampires are getting hit hard. One guy can’t be doing all of it, right?”
That was when someone knocked on the door. It was still daylight. Noise leaked from inside, but the “Closed” sign was up. Who would try to walk in? Suspicious, the vampires instantly went silent and sent out the thrall they controlled. The bar owner, face slack as a madman’s, shuffled over and stood at the door.
“Who—”
A thunderous blast tore his upper body completely away. Black darkness surged inside.
“What the hell?!”
The vampires who had been drowning in their orgy scrambled to their feet. Two gun muzzles rose before them. Shattered door fragments were swallowed by a black wave; from inside that wave a pale, handsome man lifted his head.
But that black wave—what was it? Even vampires who saw through ordinary darkness as if it were noon could not pierce this shadow. Who was the man wrapped in it?
“You son of a bitch!”
The vampires snatched up weapons. Ingrams, Uzis, Scorpions—mostly submachine guns—spit fire and poured a terrifying volume of rounds into him.
Drrrrrrrt!
The bullets vanished into the black wave, sparking uselessly and dying. They did not so much as graze the pale face.
Chrrrrr-clink!
Chains rattled as his arms moved. Bent at grotesque angles, they held revolvers that made ordinary pistols look like toys—barrels a full fifty centimeters long. To their shock, the guns were identical to Phantom’s Beast Double, only slightly smaller. Every detail matched.
One of them recognized the weapons and screamed.
“Beast!”
“What? Beast?!”
Only one man in the world carried twin Beasts. They knew it—and it was already too late. Two explosions roared. 666-grain bullets tore out and shredded vampires.
The rounds were monstrously powerful. Hollow-point Beast loads punched through one vampire before expanding, then raked the ones behind like a shotgun blast. Unlucky vampires became ground meat. One survivor who had been standing at a safe angle launched himself off the ceiling, vaulted the corpses of his kin, and dove at the pale man.
“Kyaaaaaah!”
Without moving, the man simply released the chains coiled around his body.
Chrrrrr-clink!
The thick black links shot out like a whip, smashed into the vampire, and snapped bone. Blood sprayed like rain; glass shards from the shattered décor glittered under the wild lights. The struck vampire spun like a pinwheel, slammed into the ceiling, and crashed to the floor. For a single frozen instant every vampire’s thoughts stopped.
“Sinsayer!”
One of them cried the name. Sinsayer Juyda. A vicious Jinma who hunted vampires, a madman no one could predict. Hecate herself was mad, yet even she never casually slaughtered her own kind.
But Sinsayer Juyda was a vampire who killed vampires—truly a hunter worthy of the title Jinma hunter. His strength and cruelty were the stuff of legend. Ordinary vampires would simply curse their luck and die.
These vampires were different. Hecate’s children were every bit as insane. They drew weapons, eyes blazing with killing intent.
“Kill him!”
“Yaaaaaah!”
Some charged from the front, some slipped around to strike from behind, some opened fire from the flanks—dozens of vampires rushed him at once. He simply kept shooting the ones in front. In that split second a vampire with a razor-sharp Japanese sword leapt in and brought the blade down on the black demon’s back.
Kang!
The blade snapped like cheap glass. Even the strongest vampire’s body was still flesh and blood—so how?
Krrrrrrrr.
With a flash of light a jet-black blade erupted from the darkness. The black-edged Zweihander sliced the vampire cleanly in half at the waist.
“Gyaaaaah!”
Across the severed cross-sections… black darkness was already eating the flesh. More shocking still: above the two arms that held the greatsword, two more arms still gripped the Beasts.
The expressionless face turned toward the remaining vampires. They themselves were inhuman, yet his movements filled even them with dread. Twin muzzles leveled, the greatsword rising slowly—Sinsayer was the living nightmare they all feared.
“Jesus!”
A name vampires should never speak, yet they cried it. The only answer was gunfire.
Bang!
The blast and muzzle flash swept the hall. Nothing remained but shredded vampire corpses. Sinsayer Juyda did not stop. He strode forward and swung the Zweihander into a private room.
Kwak!
Black smoke billowed as the plywood wall exploded. Vampires hiding inside raised assault rifles, but the black-and-crimson Beasts punched through the wood like tissue paper and detonated the bodies behind it.
“Kraaaaagh!”
When the Beast cylinders swung open, residual gas alone ejected the empty casings. The gesture announced that the guns were empty; other vampires bravely rose and opened fire. Their bullets merely sparked and ricocheted.
“Guh! What the hell is that?!”
Only then did they see the true form of the Sinsayer inside the darkness: a body wrapped in chains thick as a man’s thumb. Those links could shrug off ordinary bullets with ease—if anyone else could wear them like that.
Chrrrrr-clink!
The chains coiled around his arms uncoiled again and cracked like whips. Bones shattered, flesh twisted, bodies burst. Even vampire regeneration meant nothing against that force. One chain raced across the ceiling like a black snake, then snapped downward without warning and crushed the skull of a vampire who had been using a sofa as cover. The skill was almost admirable—if you weren’t the one on the receiving end.
“Krrrrgh!”
Pressed against the far wall, barely dodging the chains, one last vampire watched the comrade who had just been drinking human blood get reduced to fragments. Sinsayer Juyda walked toward him, black sword in hand. The face was blank—so lifeless it looked as if the death mask of a corpse had been peeled off and worn.
“Krrrgh!”
The vampire grabbed the sofa and hurled it. Black darkness howled through the air and sliced the furniture into eight neat pieces. Then the hand on the Sinsayer’s shoulder slowly pointed a finger.
Puk!
The vampire’s head burst and he flew backward. Disbelief frozen in his eyes, he slid down the wall. In those fading pupils the last image that formed was the pale face of the Sinsayer—like a death mask itself.