Bones and Empty Alleys
In a wide, barren office stripped of equipment—clean and desolate at once, like a new building still waiting for its tenants—a man sat with a phone pressed to his ear.
"So get this. I've been accepted as an official clan. Ahahaha! And look—the Finders pulled out! The whole place is up for grabs! I never liked Korea much, but I've changed my mind!"
The wet crack of bone being chewed came through the line. Whatever amused him so thoroughly, the man kept talking as he spat a fragment of bone from the corner of his mouth. Beside him, a pile of human rib shards—marrow sucked clean—was steadily growing.
"Kkhkhkhkhkhk!"
His blood had already expanded its binding force and drunk them dry. Every last vampire hunter he had hired was dead, absorbed into him.
"That's the thing, see. I wanted a relationship bought with money. They never should have trusted me. Hahahahaha. So what now? Huh? Those brat Jinma—Jeong-ya and Chang-young—I ought to eat them next, right?"
Sarhyuk, newly made a Jinma, sat with his feet propped on the table, clinging to the phone like a gossiping housekeeper who couldn't put it down. Jeong-ya and Chang-young's whereabouts were uncertain. Those two had gone and claimed a Jinma's blood, and still they couldn't fight? Chang-young was one thing, but Jeong-ya was pure garbage. Developing a bloodline ability and growing your power was what you did once you had a Jinma's blood—even if it took time. Or was she hoping the other vampires would simply stop looking for her and leave her alone?
Foolish. If she truly wanted to be left alone, she needed power all the more—authority befitting a Jinma. People hunted you precisely because you held a treasure you didn't know how to use.
"What do you want from me?"
A calm voice asked from the other end of the line. Even the news that his longtime frenemy had become a Jinma barely seemed to surprise him. The tone said only: I'm so bored I could die, so I'll listen to your nonsense. Bark, you mutt.
"You seem like the kind of opponent who could fool my feng shui compass, so I was wondering—got any mystic treasures made by Yuan Gongyao of the Divine Calculation Arts?"
"I'll remind you I'm a monster hunter. If we meet, we become enemies."
The man on the other end was a Taoist formally trained in the arts of Mount Hua. In America—back when Sarhyuk had still been a vampire hunter—they had been colleagues. Now that Sarhyuk was a vampire, they could only be enemies.
"Mail it to me. I'll pay. Or would you rather I donate some blood?"
"Tempting, but I'm not idiot enough to sell a precious mystic treasure to an enemy. Offer me your neck and I might think about it. A Jinma's head would be worth more than one little treasure."
"That's highway robbery. I've been gone five minutes and you've already abandoned fair dealing."
"Call it learning a little about business. Anyway—I'm hanging up. A Jinma placing an international collect call. Really."
With that, the other man cut the line. Sarhyuk chuckled and looked over the heap of human bones. The remains—marrow sucked out as thoroughly as the bones of seasoned fried chicken—lay in a filthy pile.
That dawn, Se-gun followed Rat into the wooded hills where his weapons had been buried. Hills, yes—but after the storm they were as brutal as any peak that stabbed the sky. Se-gun walked on, staring at a path choked with mud and debris that had slid down and filled the ravine. Burying weapons here? Would he even find them?
"Ah. The mountain collapsed. They're buried."
Rat muttered it with complete unconcern and dusted off his hands. The storm really had been too much. It was a miracle the welfare facility itself hadn't been buried in a landslide.
"Dig out about a hundred tons of dirt and we might find them. What do you say? Use your hands as shovels and dig hard enough, it could work."
"Forget it."
Se-gun abandoned the plan of killing the bastard here and now. The USAS-12 was a fine weapon, but it wasn't the only one in the world—he could get another. Buried this deep, neither the police nor anyone else would find it easily for a while. That much was a relief.
Still, not being able to kill him now was a shame. It felt a little like the urge of someone covering up evidence that could hurt them. Se-gun had already accepted that not every vampire was evil—but facing a cheerful bastard like this made him feel pathetic for wanting to wipe their kind out wholesale.
Of course, that resolve itself hadn't changed.
"Well then, I'll head out first. Gonna let the pastor preach at me a while and figure out how to fix that rotten heart of yours, friend. And donations take American Express. Ahahahaha!"
"Damn it."
Se-gun stared at Rat, speechless—but the other man simply put a vampire's physical power to work and vaulted over the hills at once.
In the end, Se-gun rode Pastor Yang Jun-il's taxi back into Seoul. For Yang Jun-il, pastoring was the real work and driving a cab was how he earned money, so for all the hardship he had no choice but to take the night shifts that paid better for the hours. And yet, simply because Se-gun was a passenger, he had come out first thing in the morning to pick him up.
"Your friend left ahead of you, I take it. That foreign friend of yours."
"Ah—yes. He was busy."
He wanted to say the guy wasn't a friend, but explaining every little thing would only look ridiculous. Other people's misunderstandings didn't actually hurt him, and they didn't change the truth. Se-gun leaned back into the seat. Wind noise rose as the car ran. And mixed into that wind came hallucinations.
Aaaaaaah!
Meaningless screams…
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
Roars thick with madness.
I hate you. I despise you. I curse you!
Voices of envy swollen with grudge.
I want it, I want it, I want it…
Endless, unsatisfied greed.
And countless other things besides, sticky as the smog that wrapped the whole city. The urban landscape beyond the window was a vast idea in itself—a whirlpool of those obsessions. Countless human grudges coiled through the gray concrete jungle, and from those grudges were born vengeful spirits, or the true ghosts left behind by the dead, all flowing together into a river.
Se-gun clicked his tongue as he watched. Having to live in a world like this from now on was a thoroughly hideous prospect. An ordinary person who had to hear those sounds would not last a single day.
In Se-gun's case, though, irritation outweighed fear, so all he felt was annoyance. Turning his head with that thought, he suddenly noticed the meter wasn't running. A taxi with the meter off?
"Turn the meter on."
Se-gun said it to Pastor Yang Jun-il. The pastor only smiled with his whole face.
"I'm only giving you a lift into the city. I have to start working from there anyway. Better to use the LPG that way than burn it alone, don't you think?"
"…"
An infuriating man. Se-gun chewed on the thought. To feed that many people as a cab driver, he ought to be greedier about money.
"Where shall I let you off, then?"
"In front of my house…"
Se-gun said it without thinking. Ah—more importantly, he needed to get his bike back. Retrieve it and drag it home. But that could wait. What mattered right now was doing something about this intolerably pure human. But how?
In the meantime the taxi had already reached the spot Se-gun had indicated. He couldn't have had his taxi license long, but his sense of direction was sharp enough that he must have driven a great deal. Of course—the moment he got the license he would have been out every day without rest. Otherwise the operating costs of that shabby mountain welfare facility would never have been covered.
"…"
For Se-gun, who handled large sums simply by killing vampires and plundering their blood, it was pocket change… and yet the man drove a taxi every single day to earn that kind of money? It must have been unimaginable drudgery. And as a pastor, he would never have sworn once while driving; whether a drunk picked a fight or vomited all over the cab, he would only have faced it with a full smile. Se-gun himself was the man who had once driven a fine punch into the pastor's gut, wasn't he?
"Wait here a moment."
Se-gun got out in front of the detached house that served as his hideout. The pastor murmured as if surprised.
"It's a big house. Do you have family?"
"No. Anyway—wait a moment."
Se-gun said it and ran inside. Ordinarily he would never have let anyone near his hideout. It would expose what he was. But something was off with him now.
Mentally cracked, maybe? That a man who wouldn't flinch if someone were carved up in front of him could take this kind of psychological hit… Se-gun felt a stubbornness rising. He went into the hideout, opened the safe, pulled out cash, and stuffed it into a backpack sitting nearby. Thirty or forty million won, roughly? The bag was small, so even that much packed it full.
He should have packed it more carefully so the bills wouldn't crumple—but this would do. Se-gun walked out of the hideout with the bag.
"Ah!"
But there was no trace of the taxi. That damned pastor hadn't taken a word of what he'd said seriously. Couldn't even wait that long before driving off. Se-gun dropped the cash-stuffed backpack on the ground.
"Why?"
The hallucinations came. At ten in the morning the alley was so quiet that the only thing he could hear was them.
"Ugh."
His stomach turned. In an alley emptied of people, the owners of those hallucinations lived. Ghosts wanted to interfere with this world somehow, but without a medium they couldn't. Among humans, though, there were those with unusually strong spiritual power who could see such ghosts.
Ghosts never left people like that alone.
"…They say it goes from bad to worse. That fits."
Se-gun muttered. Alone at an hour this deserted, if you formed a link with evil spirits, they would boldly try to swallow a living human body.
Still, the ghosts approaching him now were weak things he could drive off without any special magical means. Mere stray spirits that would melt and vanish like snow under spring sunlight the moment he showed a little force of will… But what about at night?
"First get the bike back, then head to Arjuna."
Se-gun thought it and clicked his tongue. He needed to recover the bike and acquire new weapons. Not only anti-vampire gear as before—he needed spiritual weapons forged by powerful mages, Taoists, or monks. Properly tempered steel was said to hold the power to scatter evil spirits, but every Japanese sword in the house was a fake made by Yankees; none of them would have the strength to cut a stray ghost. From now on he would have to face not only vampires, but evil spirits as well.
By the time Se-gun found his bike and reached Arjuna, the sun was already sinking red in the west. The sun vanishing between the giant forests of buildings stained the sky, and between the twilight clouds, other clouds writhed—the obsessions of the humans who ruled this vast metropolis, flushed and boiling. Se-gun watched it with cold eyes and swung off the bike.
"Hasn't been long, but it feels like ages."
By the calendar only a few days had passed, but so much had happened in between, and he had lain there like luggage with his injuries, so the gap felt even wider. Se-gun parked the bike at the curb and went into Arjuna. When he opened the door, the familiar brass bell chimed to announce a customer's arrival.
"Welcome. It's been a while."
Kim Seong-hui greeted him with a full smile. In the empty hour, Lee Jin-hye—who had been resting at the counter—shot to her feet.
"Ah, Silbi was waiting for you. Should I call him?"
"No need. More importantly…"
"Right. That man left this for you. Said to give it to you when you came."
Before Se-gun could get a word out, Kim Seong-hui set a large case on the counter. Made of lauan wood, finished in black sanding sealer and varnish, it was about a meter sixty long and fairly wide—rather like the Barrett case Silvester carried around.