All Dogs Go to Heaven
Even so, Silvester did not evacuate Se-geon. On the contrary, he marked the positions and left the booby-trap setup to him. Whether that meant he was willing to use a man he considered expendable, or whether it meant he trusted him, Se-geon could not tell.
“Hell of a downpour, though.”
The weather service had issued warnings the night before, but the television stations had been so busy shrieking about celebrity scandals that almost no one had heard them. The result was a belated scramble: security guards from every commercial building started making their rounds. That was what drove Se-geon half mad. People moving around made it nearly impossible to plant traps—and any trap meant to kill a vampire inevitably required explosives. Detonating high explosives in the middle of a city street to bag a vampire? Even a lunatic would think twice. Worse, civilians would get hurt. He had long since given up playing the champion of justice, but deliberately endangering civilians still made you garbage.
“Booby traps, huh…”
Tripwire traps and the like were useless against a Jinma-class vampire. Multidimensional spatial awareness was a faculty any vampire with a VT of ten thousand or higher could develop, regardless of bloodline. Like a bat mapping space with ultrasound, they perceived their surroundings without relying on sight; a tripwire would be spotted in an instant.
In the end, killing vampires without harming humans was impossible for Se-geon as he was now. Even borrowing the power of Psychedelic Moon only granted him the strength of a low-grade vampire. How far that would go against the kings of the night—the Jinma—was another question entirely.
“This is no time to stand around.”
Se-geon checked his wristwatch. The hour had already slipped past three in the morning, and with rain and wind blotting out the daylight, the vampires’ active window would only stretch longer. Avoiding the security guards while still building traps that could actually hurt a vampire left him with only a handful of options.
So it has to be this.
Directional blast tubes fashioned from pipe, detonated by remote control—that was the only workable alternative. Se-geon chose sites where civilian casualties would be minimal and began setting the charges.
The rain was coming down with terrifying force. Se-geon clung to a utility pole and worked with grim concentration. He ran conductive wire for the electrical plugs so the charges could be clustered for a chain detonation, then adjusted for blast wave and backblast. Building a trap he might never even get to spring was exhausting work. He let out a long breath.
Screeeech!
A taxi came barreling through the downpour and, of all things, stopped right in front of the pole. Fair enough—anyone who was not dressed as a Korea Electric Power employee climbing a utility pole and fiddling with something would look suspicious. Se-geon’s all-black gear, shotgun, and Japanese sword did not help.
Brave cabbie, though.
Common sense said that even if you thought something looked dangerous, you drove on. This driver, however, seemed to have eaten a dragon’s heart for breakfast. He stopped the car and stepped out into the storm.
“I say there!”
“‘I say there’?”
The archaic form of address—something out of the Joseon era—startled Se-geon for a second, but he kept working. Whether anyone watched or not, the job had a deadline. Silvester had set the time limit because after that hour he intended to drive the vampires straight into the kill zone; if the traps were not ready, Silvester would be the one in trouble.
“What are you doing up there?”
“Get lost. If you don’t want to die, clear this whole area and run as far as you can.”
Se-geon delivered the threat and looked down. The man had a gentle face that did not match the usual taxi-driver mold, and even through the gray sheets of rain he was smiling.
“Come now, at least tell me why you’re up there. If there’s any way I can help—”
“Haaah.”
Se-geon shook his head as if there were no helping some people. He slid down the pole, set a pair of cutters against the heavy drainage grate, snipped out a section, and fixed a pipe in place with metal tape and instant adhesive. Even a crossfire setup would leave explosive residue, of course.
“No choice, then.”
He scratched his head and walked over to the driver.
“What is that, anyway? Some kind of disaster-response gear? Ah, I’m a bit ignorant about these things—”
Se-geon studied the driver’s registration card inside the cab. Even in the dark it looked brand-new; the man had clearly not been driving a taxi for long. He looked middle-aged, yet he had only just gotten the job. With that intellectual face, maybe his business had gone under.
Se-geon sighed and closed the distance.
“Guh—!”
A lightning-fast body blow, delivered like a knife thrust. He pulled the punch just enough not to knock the man out cold. People like this never listened until they had been hit once; Se-geon had no intention of killing him.
“Go mind your own business.”
He half-carried the reeling driver back into the taxi and dumped him into the seat. As he pulled back, something brushed his hair.
“Hmph.”
Se-geon flicked the hanging crucifix with one finger and shut the door. The driver came to his senses, fumbled the engine to life, and fled the scene as if the devil were after him.
“He meant well, I suppose…”
A faint twinge of guilt. Nothing to be done about it. Getting him out of here—even like this—was better than letting him die. Se-geon finished packing the charges tight and scanned the street. A few minutes in the rain had already pruned his fingers into wrinkled white prunes.
“One setup probably won’t be enough.”
He pulled detonating cord from his bag and strung it across a neighboring building’s signboard. From what he had seen of the earlier fight, vampires liked to use signs as stepping stones; a well-timed blast could take a foot off at the ankle.
Vroooooom!
A savage engine note cut through the rain. Se-geon turned his head.
“Hhk— Is that—?”
He doubted his own eyes. A Lamborghini Miura was tearing down the road. A Lamborghini Miura—in South Korea? Given the circumstances, and knowing how obsessed wealthy vampires were with their cars, he could not afford to relax. Phantom drove a Viper, Silvester a Corvette… and this one a Lamborghini?
“Jinma, then.”
He had no hard proof, but Se-geon was certain. If anything less than a Jinma were cruising around in a Miura, the world would already be unlivable—in more ways than one.
Vroooooom!
Whether the Miura’s driver saw him or not, it ignored him completely and swept past. The long, almost indecently sexy body sliced through the rain-mist and took the corner with liquid grace; anyone watching would have fallen half in love on the spot.
“Bourgeois bastard…”
The grumble slipped out before Se-geon could stop it. A Jinma could not have failed to notice him. Ignoring him meant the creature intended to sit back and pick up the spoils. Every last one of them wanted to wipe their nose without lifting a finger. Se-geon clicked his tongue.
His wristwatch beeped. Silvester’s operational window had closed. Silvester had never specified exactly how many traps to prepare, but a half-finished trap only telegraphed the rest of the layout; better none at all. Even remote-controlled charges were useless once a Jinma knew where they were. And Se-geon would have to stay nearby to trigger them himself.
“Damn it. This really is a suicide job.”
He finished the detonating cord and chaff settings in a rush and ducked into an alley. The instant he cleared the mouth of the lane, a sound like a fighter jet ripping the sky open tore past, and a streak of pure black darkness clawed down the road.
KRA-KOOM!
The asphalt heaved as if in an earthquake. Juyda dropped onto the ruptured street. He had arrived far faster than Se-geon had calculated; there had been no time to spring the traps.
Shit…
And where were Phantom and Silvester? Neither was in sight. Only Juyda stood there, turning his head this way and that.
“Krrrrraaaaah…”
Eyes as hollow as a corpse’s found Se-geon in the alley. He did not fear death; that vow had been carved into his bones the day he became a vampire hunter. But human emotion was never that simple, and Jinma were monsters who ruled human terror.
Shhhk!
Black darkness tore the air and flew at him. Se-geon threw himself backward—
Splat!
—and by the time he hit the flooded alley floor, his blood was already mixing with the rainwater. The near-miss alone had laid open his calf; bright red welled through the tear. Even as he fell he skidded on his back and emptied the shotgun in a continuous roar, then planted a hand and bounced upright like a spring.
Juyda was already clinging to the alley wall with one arm. Four rounds of short-shell in a narrow lane, and every one of them dodged.
“Son of a bitch!”
Se-geon bolted for the alley mouth—the entrance Juyda had used—so he could bring the booby traps into play. Startled, Juyda released the wall and dropped to crush the human slipping under his feet; Se-geon launched himself into a long slide across the flooded street and fired upward again. Juyda simply wrapped himself in darkness and turned the storm of pellets aside.
“Kh—!”
Se-geon dragged his blood-soaked leg and limped clear. Juyda was too fast; running would only buy seconds. But this stretch of road was seeded with every trap he had planted. Used properly, the odds were not zero.
“He said that bastard doesn’t attack humans!”
Se-geon spat the fury at no one in particular and slammed a steam pack of vampire blood into his own vein. From the mouth of the alley, Juyda emerged at a leisurely walk.
“Haaaah… Aahahahaha!”
A bizarre, broken laugh. The mind was clearly shattered. A vampire who had lived for centuries yet still felt guilt—this outcome had been inevitable. Yet something about him felt more alien still. Every other vampire Se-geon had met was a human twisted by disease; this one felt like a different species from the start.
And yet, in the pouring rain, the shotgun-wielding Se-geon and the advancing Juyda looked strangely alike—two figures facing each other across a mirror.
Because the creature was broken. Se-geon gave a short, bitter laugh. In the hammering rain he raised the remote and watched the vampire charge.
“All dogs go to heaven, right? Go to hell, you son of a bitch!”
He pressed the switch. The claymores he had built himself chain-detonated. Storm-winds and steel bearings howled from every direction, making the asphalt buck and thrash like a sheet on a bed.
People believe religion arose naturally because God is perfect. The idea resembles Plato’s Forms, which predated Christianity. For the Western peoples who built their civilization on Hellenism, that belief was only natural.
That which is perfect, that which is inevitable, must of necessity manifest.
Thus they were certain that somewhere in the East there existed a Christian kingdom founded by a king called Prester John. When the Mongol invasions threatened the West, they yearned for that imaginary ally—a Christian realm that would gladly raise its sword on their behalf. Those who stood against the vampires felt the same hunger.
But the earnest men of the Church exhausted themselves fighting vampires, while the worldly ones poured their strength into their own greed. Only one order possessed both the will and the power to oppose the vampires: the Knights Templar, grown fabulously rich through the Crusades. Then the Templars were condemned as heretics and destroyed, and their vast wealth vanished into thin air.
And that sin, in the modern age, has become the punishment of rule by Tetra Anax—the iron-fisted sovereign, the eternal emperor. That is why…
It is a demon that must be destroyed!
“Krrraaagh!”
Phantom collapsed into the driving rain. Blood freed from its binding force surged up his throat and spilled across the ground. The late-spring, early-summer deluge washed the blood away as fast as it fell.
“Your tears shall prove your innocence. Weep, vampire!”
Silvester advanced, voice thick with blood-scent and drunk on frenzy. Phantom had already spent vast quantities of blood under Juyda’s assault; the rain and wind made his specialty—mist-form—all but unusable. Flight would have been the wiser choice. Yet he was one of the few remaining great magicians left in the world. Even stripped of his vampiric gifts, being driven back by a mere human was unthinkable.
Except he isn’t human, is he?
Father Silvester—the Vatican’s chosen anti-monster weapon. A pitiful creature given no true name, his existence sealed by a single anointing. But no matter how powerful the monster, Phantom had beaten him once and deliberately spared his life. To be hammered like this by that same opponent now—!
“I was… far too careless.”
Self-reproach was useless now. He had known by instinct that rain would fall tonight and still failed to prepare. That was his own mistake.
Another detonation roared toward him. Phantom borrowed the power of judicial magic and blocked it, but it was not enough. Even in broad daylight he could shrug off a PSG-1 round; a Barrett, however, packed far greater penetration, and these were consecrated silver bullets. Vampire force-fields and judicial barriers alike were punched through like paper, the rounds boring into living flesh.