Rain of Blood
KWA-AAAANG!
A single bike tore down the national highway at an insane two hundred kilometers an hour. It was an MX-125, though you would never have known it—heavy bags and hard cases hung from both sides in a mismatched procession of gear. Then again, every motorcycle in Korea gets forced into cargo-hauling modifications sooner or later. This one, however, had been rebuilt for one purpose only: raw speed. The chassis itself had been cut and reshaped to make room for a racing engine, a water-cooled radiator, and a six-speed racing transmission. Calling it an MX-125 anymore was a joke.
"Damn it! The road's a disaster!"
Potholes he never even noticed at a hundred fifty turned into launch ramps past two hundred. The off-road tires only made it worse. No matter how confident a rider he was, there was a hard limit to what you could do on a highway with knobby rubber under you.
Se-gun still refused to ease off the throttle. After accepting tea and a quick physical at Maya's place, he had pointed the bike straight at Jeongseon in Gangwon Province. An informant had already told him Tetra Anax had begun moving vampires by trailer. When he had hit the Island Astate vampires he had made a habit of ambushing their convoys in daylight, so he had assumed they would stop running trailers during the day. They had just shoved that assumption right back in his face.
These vampires had almost certainly been dispatched to deal with Sarhyuk. All they would accomplish was dying and feeding him more power.
Should be seeing them any second now.
Doing two hundred on a national highway was a death wish. A curve you could take casually at ninety became serious at a hundred thirty and a full-blown nightmare past two hundred. Even at midday on a weekday with almost no traffic, using all four lanes of the dual carriageway to carve every bend still felt like his life was ending each time. One oncoming car at the wrong moment and it would all be over.
"Ah!"
Finally the trailers slid into view. They had tried to spread their forces, but even so Se-gun counted six vehicles in a single glance. Twenty vampires per truck would put the total well into three figures. Without thinking he glanced up at the sky.
"…Ugly weather."
Storm clouds were pouring up from the south, swallowing the sun. It would not give the vampires full night-time strength, but it was more than enough for ordinary ones to move freely.
BUAAAANG!
Se-gun twisted the throttle and blasted past the trucks at a terrifying clip.
"Ah!"
The mind-controlled drivers spotted him and screamed. He ignored them, overtook all six in a blur, and blew past the lead vehicle as well.
"Damn it! What the hell kind of bike—!"
Eighty kilometers an hour against two hundred. Closing speed of a hundred twenty. The pass was over in a heartbeat.
Flutter-flutter-flutter!
Mind-controlled birds dove into his path. At two hundred, a bird strike was not a bruise—it was a potential funeral, even with a ballistic helmet. Se-gun ducked under the first bird, then hopped the bike over the next low-flying one. Only the insane speed and the road's own irregularities made the jump possible. Anything less and he would have been dead.
Even so, the reflexes required were already past human. Once clear of the entire convoy he cut speed and drew the Beast.
"Humans under mind control, huh…"
Innocent, yes—but once a vampire's hand had touched them, there was no bringing them back. Se-gun leveled the Beast at the lead truck and fired.
KWAANG!
One shot erased both drivers. Scarlet blood and shredded meat painted the entire cab. The windshield looked as if someone had hurled tomatoes at it; the horror defied description.
Screeeeeech!
Driverless, the truck slammed into the guardrail and rolled onto its side. The vehicles behind had no choice but to stand on their brakes to avoid the wreck.
"KRAAAAAK!"
The vampires locked inside the trailers screamed loud enough to punch through the steel doors. Se-gun had no intention of stopping there.
"All right then—starting from the front, let's wipe every last one of you out!"
He spun the Beast once in his palm, holstered it, and lifted his leg. The move looked showy and pointless, but he peeled a rectangular block of TNT free from the strap on his calf. The detonator was already seated; all that remained was to set the timer and throw. Then ordinary civilian cars appeared coming the other way.
"Tch!"
He had already killed two mind-controlled humans whose only crime was being controlled—yet he still would not drag ordinary people into this. He stowed the TNT, twisted the throttle, and punched straight through the gap.
"Lucky break, vampires!"
He shot forward, weaving clear of the oncoming traffic.
Whoosh…
A hard wind drove up from the south, flooding the air with moisture, and then the first raindrops began to fall. They had fully entered the typhoon's grip.
"Whew…"
Rat whistled as he dropped down from a trailer. The way that man had obliterated the lead truck in a single lightning strike and then peeled away—Han Se-gun fought like someone who had spent most of his life on a battlefield. That could not be true, of course, but even among seasoned mercenary companies you rarely found skill like that.
"What the hell turns a human into something like that?"
"Hatred."
Monty grumbled the answer, stood up, and brushed dust from his clothes. In seconds the drizzle became a torrential downpour hammering the entire country. At the same time the sky vanished under black cloud; night had effectively fallen.
Sound rippled outward through the casino hall. Zein fought the Cry of Darkness with his own anti-magic force, but the humans—who had none—froze solid under its power. The entire floor turned into a tableau of mannequins mid-panic, a scene so hellish it was hard to believe it still belonged to the living world.
"Kaat!"
Sarhyuk crashed down on Zein with terrifying force. Zein planted a hand on the floor and spun aside just in time.
Kwang!
Instead, Sarhyuk's fist smashed into a bank of built-in slot machines. The machines toppled sideways in a chain reaction like falling dominoes, vomiting coins across the carpet.
Krrrrrumble!
Zein twisted in mid-air and landed lightly on a blackjack table. Cards still lay fanned across its surface.
Shrrrrrak!
He skimmed a hand along the felt as he launched himself; the rebound sent dozens of cards flying like blades. Sarhyuk raised both arms in a tight guard and wrapped himself in darkness. A sound like leaking wind followed, and nearby furniture shredded itself into sawdust.
Wail—wail—wail!
Distant police sirens drifted in. Of course it was a hotel. Even after wrecking the stairs, cutting the elevators, and smashing the communication lines, the police still came.
"Before the pests get in the way—!"
Sarhyuk ignored the flying cards and charged. In that same instant Zein vanished by teleportation.
Clack-rattle…
At the same moment a roulette wheel slowed to a stop. Sarhyuk snorted, rose, and inspected the result. The blood-caked ball had come to rest on enemy six.
"I win. Heh-heh-heh… HAHAHAHAHA!"
Sarhyuk threw his head back and roared with laughter, his face twisted into pure malice.
A pearl-white Lamborghini Miura knifed through the rain at frightening speed. Silvester had received the intelligence late and was only now racing toward Jeongseon in a hurry.
BUAAAANG!
"Hm?"
Then he saw it. Silvester clicked his tongue at the flash of scarlet in his rearview mirror. A Viper GTS was filling his glass. National highways were simple things; there were only so many routes into Jeongseon in Gangwon. Even so, meeting here felt like far too much coincidence.
Shhhhhhhhh!
Rain sheeted down the windshield like a waterfall. The tires already skated dangerously on the wet asphalt; conditions were nowhere near ideal for speed.
Yet the Viper GTS still closed the distance as if glued to the road, kicking up a wall of spray—as if the very weather that was a nightmare for Silvester barely registered as an inconvenience.
"This is why having a mortal enemy is such a headache."
Silvester sighed, rested a hand on the gear lever, and stamped the clutch while snapping through a shift. Rain made the tires spin for a heartbeat; then the new gear bit and the Miura surged even harder.
The red Viper answered by matching the increase. Two sports cars tore down the four-lane national highway at murderous speed, each pass throwing up pale sheets of water. Had there been any sun left, rainbows would have followed them the whole way.
"My, my. A man of the cloth who simply hates to lose."
Phantom clicked his tongue as he watched the car ahead throw spray into his face. In weather this heavy, the lead car's wake completely blinded anyone following. Yet if he fell back, his racing line would fall apart, so he had no choice but to stay glued to Silvester's tail, every nerve stretched tight.
"Well… the drive to Jeongseon was getting dull anyway. Might as well settle this with a race."
Weather that would have meant death to any ordinary human was, to Phantom, simply another form of entertainment. A vampire's spatial perception worked just fine in a downpour; visibility was irrelevant. What remained was pure racing skill and machine power.
Police had rolled out after reports of a bizarre disturbance inside the hotel. The station chief, however, stopped his men the moment the order left his mouth.
"Hold it!"
"Sir?"
It was only a small station, but it still fielded three motorcycles, two patrol cars, and the corresponding officers and auxiliary police—a respectable force. The chief stopped them all and held out his own key.
"Sergeant Seong. Arm everyone with rifles and live ammunition."
"S-sir?"
Every officer froze. Full combat armament was not issued unless North Korean commandos had crossed the border. They had only just received a call—and he was already handing out rifles?
"What's going on?"
"Direct order from headquarters. Military units are en route as well. This is going to be a joint police-military operation, so stay sharp."
"Sir…?"
The officers looked at one another in confusion. A few tried to joke about writing wills; no one laughed. The atmosphere collapsed into grim silence.
The hotel entrance was pure pandemonium. People who had escaped the casino on the one guest elevator that still worked were already on their phones calling the police. Sarhyuk had smashed the nearest cell tower, but Korean phones were good enough to hop to the next one over.
"A monster—there's a monster!"
The survivors all shouted the same thing. Survivors, plural—there were only six or seven of them. Looking at the scale of the casino floor, the death toll was already in the triple digits.
"Have these people all gone crazy together?"
That was what the officers thought as they listened to the survivors babble irrational nonsense… until they realized they themselves would soon be facing that same irrational thing. Their faces went dark. The emergency call-up had dragged countless off-duty officers out of their beds.
Rrrrumble!
Thunder roared and hurled lightning across the sky. With that sound, a man walked out of the lobby. He was a giant large enough to make jaws drop, long coat flaring around him as he advanced with casual, almost elegant steps.
Even the officers who had just arrived understood at once that this man was no victim. He looked far too relaxed—and the survivors began trembling like aspen leaves the moment they saw him.
"U-uaaaaah…"
One man's teeth chattered so hard they clicked. Another chewed his own fingernails until blood ran and still could not stop. Their reactions differed, but every one of them was drowning in a terror that bordered on madness.
"Heh-heh-heh-heh… So this is how big the mess gets. The price for standing against Tetra Anax—stripped of any chance to live as a human?"
Sarhyuk stood in the pouring rain and smiled at the humans arrayed before him. The open plaza in front of the hotel lobby, the panoramic wall of people—it was almost cheerful. Seen by this many witnesses, living as a human was finished. He had accepted that the moment he turned against Tetra Anax, but looking at this crowd still left a foul taste in his mouth. What were they thinking under the rain?
"Suspect, place both hands against the wall immediately!"
A detective who had volunteered as negotiator shouted into a megaphone. Sarhyuk only sneered; conversation never entered his mind.
"Damn it. Do we open fire?"
The gathered officers felt something wrong in their bones and asked the question. The chief, however, was still waiting for higher command.
"Hold. This is not something we can handle on our own initiative—"
"Hup!"
The chief saw the sudden shock on his men's faces and turned. In that instant absolute blackness filled his vision.
KWAJIK!
Sarhyuk crossed the twenty-odd meters from the hotel lobby in a single bound and landed among the police. Mid-flight he drove his hand straight through the chief's chest. Officers armed with K2 rifles swung the muzzles toward him, but Korean police were not in the habit of firing live rounds without hesitation; they fumbled.
"Uwaaaak!"
Drrrrrt!
One man finally managed to squeeze the trigger. Sarhyuk closed the distance with vampire speed, seized the barrel, and twisted the weapon back toward the officers. The remaining rounds tore into his own comrades in a spray of blood.
"Aaaah!"
Watching bullets from his own rifle cut down his colleagues, the officer froze solid as ice.
"My, my. Guilt over killing your friends? Boring way to die."
Sarhyuk muttered the words, clenched his fist, and coiled his body like a pitcher winding up. Then he drove the punch home with terrifying force.
Puk!
A living man shattered like a statue of ice and scattered into the rain. Rivers of blood washed down the gutters with the stormwater.
"Even with the binding force raised, the rain keeps me from drinking much. Should've dragged them inside."
Still talking to himself, Sarhyuk tore through the police line. Hooked claws carved arcs through the air; humans came apart with wet cracks and blood fountained upward. At this range a firefight was already impossible. No one left could stop him.
"Hieeeek!"
Terror-stricken humans simply turned and ran like beasts fleeing a hunter. The hunter behind them was more brutal and more powerful than any they had ever imagined. He flashed forward like a gale and drove his claws into the back of a fleeing man's skull.
The head split cleanly into three pieces; the headless body pitched face-first into the rainwater. For the people who had just escaped the hell inside, it was a nightmare made real. Watching the police they had trusted flutter apart in Sarhyuk's hands like paper dolls stole even the will to run.
"Heh. Heheheheh. Heheheheh."
One middle-aged man whose mind had already broken laughed like a madman, not even bothering to push his glasses back up.
"Ahahaha. Go on, laugh. Laughing feels good, doesn't it?"
Sarhyuk smoothed rain-slick hair back from his forehead, stepped up to the smiling man, and returned a bright grin of his own. Then the knife in his left hand flashed once and took the head clean off.
A human head sailed up into the storm-black sky.
"Aaaaaaa…"
Zein rode the glass-walled elevator and watched Sarhyuk butcher the police below in pure despair. Not Tetra Anax, not Agni, not any of the violent vampires who loved to flaunt their power would dare slaughter a nation's armed forces so casually. Only now did Zein understand the scale of his mistake.
He had been certain that no matter what Sarhyuk tried, Tetra Anax would remain untouched. The opposite was true. Whatever sanctions Tetra Anax might levy meant nothing to the man Sarhyuk had become.
"Huk!"
When he forced himself to look again, only butchered corpses remained. Sarhyuk himself was gone.
Shiiiiik!
A vicious rush of wind, and something came flying. With a single terrifying leap Sarhyuk cleared seven stories and drove his fist straight into the elevator. Glass exploded with a crunch; the car itself jolted so hard the emergency brake locked.
"Tch!"
The cabin was already empty. With teleportation, Zein could vanish the instant he chose.
"Damn it. Now that is a power worth taking!"
Sarhyuk laughed and looked upward. Zein was waiting for him on the hotel's top floor—the heliport. In the end, for all his posturing, Zein was still a small man. A world where Tetra Anax's order had collapsed was simply beyond his imagination. That was why he was trying to lure Sarhyuk onto the roof—to keep human casualties as low as possible.
"Well then… I'll honor that noble self-sacrifice and follow along."
Sarhyuk's eyes glittered with greed as he glanced toward the guest rooms, but he only snorted, sprang back out into the rain, and began climbing the outer wall of the building.