Bang
“…I don’t speak English.”
In any case, so long as the man they were after was a bomb-maker, ordinary cops were of little use. The SWAT teams sat fully armed; the bomb squad waited in their vehicles, ready for anything. Jurisdiction over public order belonged to Korea, yet American soldiers had occupied a residential neighborhood as if it were their own and were running an operation at will. They were a thorn in the side, but the Americans held the files, so there was no real way to raise hell. And to make matters worse, the man in overall command couldn’t speak English…
Just then Detective Jo called Superintendent Hwang Seok-yeong over.
“Chief! They say this is a tape found in the terrorist’s house.”
“What? And the terrorist?”
“Already gone without a trace, apparently. They want us to play the tape together and take a look.”
“Of course we look at it together.”
So the entire investigation unit borrowed power from a private house, hooked a small LCD TV to a camcorder, and soon an image flickered onto the screen.
“Playable freeze. Unbelievable!”
Major Ben Topf muttered the words and fixed his attention on the display. The picture was oddly clean.
“What… what the hell is this?”
What appeared on the screen was nothing more than a recording of a television drama. No—not only a drama. Broadcasts, commercials, whatever happened to be on the air, all of it was there.
“Jesus! We’ve been had!”
The major realized at once that it was a stalling trap and went pale. Still, there was no telling whether something else might be hidden inside, so he fast-forwarded the tape. The channel itself never changed; it simply kept playing.
“…In the end, he just plugged in a TV antenna and hit record.”
“Couldn’t the time slot or the programs give us a lead?”
“They might—but if the only link is something only he understands, it might as well not exist for the rest of us. We’re not Sherlock Holmes, and this isn’t a detective novel. If we’ve got time to waste, let’s do our jobs and go after the bastard ourselves!”
Superintendent Hwang Seok-yeong regretted that the tape he had pinned his hopes on was utterly worthless, yet he made a quick decision and put pressure on every district to put out a wanted bulletin through the media. Another strong suspect had surfaced; they could hardly sit still.
At the Korean branch of Tetra Anax, the organization that managed all information, in the core of Flex Medical headquarters, the man who directed the present crisis sat waiting. Of course, last time he had been snatched up by Sarhyuk and treated the world to the undignified spectacle of flying high into the sky—but compared with the other vampires who had been slaughtered without resistance, compared even with a Jinma who had been slaughtered without resistance, Elliot’s struggle had been remarkable.
To Elliot, however, chosen as the hand of Tetra Anax, the fact that he had allowed Sarhyuk even a single blow was an unspeakable humiliation. The proxy of Tetra Anax, who used precognition to read every attack in advance and evade it, had permitted a hit. Had the other Jinma not died at Sarhyuk’s hands, his standing in Korea would have been badly weakened.
“Damn it. I can’t think of any way to stop Sarhyuk.”
He had been dwelling on the problem for days, yet no new idea came. Perhaps he had lived too long and his thinking had grown rigid. Judas had been a worst-case Jinma overflowing with VT and the special power of holy relics; Zein had been short on VT but possessed the terrifying ability of teleportation. The fusion of the two was sheer nightmare.
“Even if I drive him with humans, Sarhyuk has already crossed the line. Keep focusing on him and all I’ll get is more corpses.”
So he had chosen the alternative of taking Han Se-gun. Until recently he had dismissed the man as a joke. He had known the fellow harbored hostility toward every vampire and was planning terrorism against Tetra Anax, the organization that oversaw it all—but it had seemed the work of a single, pitifully weak individual, something to laugh at and ignore. Yet Se-gun had grown at a frightening pace, and in the brief interval when no one was watching him he had quietly stockpiled eight hundred kilograms of high explosives.
Thanks to that they had been able to drive Sarhyuk off—but if the explosives worked on Sarhyuk, other vampires would hardly weather Se-gun’s attacks either. So Elliot had set humans to hunting the vampire hunter instead.
“…Boring.”
He had long since passed the stage of taking pleasure in watching humans dance in the palm of his hand, and he sighed. He rather missed his younger brother. The bond dated from his human days, but the kid had been a good friend as well. There was nothing to grieve over in a death already past, yet enduring boredom was a far heavier torment. Just then his secretary knocked outside the door.
“Master. The item you ordered is ready.”
“Is it? Have it installed on the roof of the building.”
“But… is it really all right to install it?”
“Of course.”
He nodded and signed the papers the secretary held out. He had just authorized the mounting of a 30 mm chain gun beneath the heliport of the Flex Medical building. Naturally the state would never permit such a thing, so the vampire Oracles’ powers would be used to impose a perception-impairment field.
“A 30 mm Oerlikon cannon. Even Sarhyuk would be blown to pieces.”
Elliot muttered the words and took a cigar between his teeth. Well then—preparations were complete. He would prove why the bloodline of Tetra Anax had never once relinquished the throne of the Night King.
Han Se-gun, foolish enough to challenge them in a human body, and Sarhyuk, who claimed he would destroy vampire society only to serve his own greed—both would learn how powerless they were before the Night King.
Day after day the broadcasts poured out images of Sarhyuk and Se-gun. In Se-gun’s case there were far more people with old ties than with Sarhyuk, so everyone from former schoolmates to middle-school band friends to old girlfriends appeared on television and talked about him.
“Tch. They sure know how to run their mouths.”
Se-gun sat in a dark corner of the room, glaring at the TV while doing push-ups in a handstand. He had already passed a hundred and felt not the slightest fatigue. That meant the transformation into a vampire had already begun.
“Haa…”
He rose and stretched. With nightfall he could feel his whole body coming alive. An ability like this might even be better for facing Tetra Anax. Attacking the vampires’ central stronghold in a human body had always felt… distasteful. The problem was the Jinma.
“Well then—time to go out.”
Se-gun jammed a motorcycle helmet onto his head and walked outside. Leaving the unauthorized greenhouse structure on the outskirts of Gyeonggi-do, he swung a leg over his bike. The beauty of a motorcycle helmet was that you almost never needed to take it off. Even if the broadcasts were raising hell, what did it matter if he went around without showing his face?
“Damn it.”
Now that the transformation had begun, seeing old friends—even only on television—left him bitterly conflicted. People talked about a pain that tore the heart, and the phrase was exactly right. Of course they had never been that close. The kinds of people whose disappearance would not have been strange, old girlfriends he had broken up with long ago—watching them casually smear him now with lines like “He always had a screw loose, so of course he ended up a terrorist” or “He was always living off how great he thought he was” turned his stomach.
Of course, anyone who showed their face on TV to resurrect a friendship and trust that had vanished so thoroughly no trace remained would have been even more contemptible.
Vrooooom!
“Haa…”
In the end the place Se-gun stopped was a nameless stretch of coast. He had no clear idea how far he had ridden, but in a place with almost no passing cars a small street stall stood waiting. It seemed to cater to summer visitors, and he could see it selling the usual instant coffee and the like. Circling wide around the stall and looking about, he found a scenic cliff ahead and a broad stretch of wave-washed rock.
To the left the slope was gentler than the cliff, lined with pines twisted into fantastic shapes by the sea wind.
“….”
Se-gun gazed at the squid boats rocking beyond the horizon. The fishing boats drifting the sea with their lights on to catch squid were, in this place without a single streetlamp, a scene of pure beauty. The view was lovely and the sea breeze cool; for a moment Se-gun forgot his cares and lost himself in the landscape.
Vroooom.
Then a familiar engine note reached him. When Se-gun turned his head, a black sports car rounded the corner and came to a stop.
“Finished with the repairs?”
“….”
“Hahahaha. How did you find me? Did you plant a transmitter? Or a dog collar?”
The silver-haired priest made no answer. He parked on the shoulder, walked over, and stood beside Se-gun.
“If there were a dog collar, I’d dearly love to put it on you. I told you not to go wandering around when you’re a wanted man.”
“Well… there isn’t much of ‘this’ left now.”
Silvester climbed onto the guardrail and simply faced the wind. His long hair streamed out, then fell; he raked it back with his fingers and shook his head.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. I have a favor to ask.”
Silvester nodded without a word. Se-gun turned his back on him.
“Hold Phantom off for me. I’ll handle the rest somehow.”
“Why Phantom?”
“He’s your enemy—shouldn’t you know better than anyone? They say the heretic Phantom is invincible on nights when the moon is out.”
Se-gun gave a soft laugh. Clouds parted and the moon showed its face; the shadows of the pines fell across Se-gun’s back. The beautiful priest with the long silver hair and the vampire hunter ready for death never turned their heads, speaking the whole time with their backs to each other.
“So in the end you’re going through with it.”
“Yes. There isn’t much time left.”
Se-gun walked slowly toward his bike. Moonlight, the lights of the squid boats, and the stall lamps on the ridge above blended together and cast a long shadow from him.
Silvester gazed at the endless horizon and sighed.
“Han Se-gun!”
“…Yes?”
Se-gun stopped and turned around.
“If you become a vampire… I’ll kill you.”
“Huh? I’m soft-hearted, you know. If I turn into a vampire I might decide I want to live and fight back.”
Even hearing talk that concerned his own life, Se-gun smiled with the pure innocence of a child at play. Silvester turned on the guardrail. His long silver hair caught the moonlight and shimmered, translucent.
“Han Se-gun. If you become a vampire, you’ll make a good one.”
“…?”
Hearing the unexpected words “a good vampire,” Se-gun hesitated. As far as he knew, Silvester was not a man who said such things. Se-gun himself hated vampires; Silvester hated them just as fiercely, and both of them knew perfectly well how absurd the remark was.
“And the only good vampire is a dead vampire.”
Silvester said it with a smile—truly the smile of a child without a shred of self-interest—and pointed a finger at Se-gun.
“Hahahahaha.”
Se-gun burst out laughing as well and pointed a finger back at Silvester.
“Bang!”
“…Bang!”
The two of them aimed at each other’s hearts with their fingers and pulled the triggers. The gunshots were only the sound of their mouths. And that was the end. Already sensing that the next time they met they would be enemies, they still laughed with the pure innocence of children.
And so the two parted. Se-gun turned his head in a slow circle, walked to his bike, and rode back the way he had come without looking back. The moonlight was bright, the fishing boats to the west kept their lamps lit, and the stall waited endlessly for customers—an ordinary summer night like any other.
“Vampire. Vampire ooooh. The flesh and blood of beautiful vampires are fattening me up. Hahahahahaha.”
On asphalt stretched long by warped darkness—perhaps some of the midday heat still lingered—the great buildings bent as if seen through a fisheye lens, and the world twisted and warped like an image trapped in a giant round fishbowl, ridiculous and grotesque.
“Ah, but I really ought to diet a little.”
In the center of that distorted world, a massive man with a contorted face wandered without end.
“The day I achieve everything isn’t far off. But… what was I trying to achieve? What was I trying to gain?”
He barked like a mad dog. He cried out like a prophet. Yet not a single person paid him any attention. In the warped space, people ignored him as if he did not exist, and he ignored them the same way. With every step, darkness rose like heat haze and mingled with the foul miasma of the city. The huge man walked forward, foaming at the mouth.
“Haa… haa. The moon! I need the moon! I need the moon!”
But the city’s darkness had swallowed the sky. The filthy desires of humanity had swallowed even the heavenly bodies and cast that black hunger—that darkness of unfillable craving—across the heavens. Compared with that, Judas’s darkness was a joke. That was true darkness!
“Well then… hell is about to begin. Get ready, humans! Get ready, you sons of bitches!”
Just then a massive truck came barreling straight at him. Yet neither the truck nor the man seemed to notice the other; both pressed forward without a hint of slowing. And in that instant they passed straight through each other.
Se-gun had successfully infiltrated the CAD database of the construction company that had built Flex Medical’s headquarters and extracted the plans. Of course such critical files were kept not on the internet but on an intranet at the company’s core—but for Se-gun, already half-vampire, slipping inside was easier than taking candy from a baby.
Once he had the blueprints, careful calculation would make it possible to bring the entire Flex Medical headquarters down in a single blow. No—with eight hundred kilograms of explosives, that alone would be enough. The problem was transport and placement. Vampires were not blind; they would hardly look the other way.
And even though he had already thrown his life away, he still preferred not to be caught by the police. Of course, after fighting the Jinma Sarhyuk he was certain the full transformation had begun; once the coming battle was over, Se-gun would no longer be human. Even so, he needed to plan an escape route first.
“Escape routes, resupplying explosives and ammunition… it’s going to be a headache either way.”
Se-gun muttered to himself and sketched routes in his head. How to attack the vampires, how to lure them—he would move according to the plan he already had. The problem was the Jinma, who defied prediction from the start. He had no idea how they would react once he moved, and he did not even know what abilities the other Jinma possessed.
“Haa…”
Was this how a condemned man felt on the way to the scaffold? Se-gun quieted his tangled thoughts and sank into a seat. At once the voices of the wraiths returned. The wraiths weakened sharply once he left the city… yet that one cynical bastard always followed him no matter how far he went.
Charging straight into death, are we? Going to die? Then give that body to me instead. If you’re Adam cowering with your manhood covered, I’ll tear that fig leaf away for you. Hm? Dying a virgin would be a shame, wouldn’t it?
Get lost.
Se-gun felt no need to deal with the wraith and drove it out by sheer force of will.
“Everything is my will. Yes. This misery, this pain, the terror of death and of becoming something worse than death—all of it is my will!”
It was the resolve he had forged the day his family was slaughtered. By now even the motive had sunk into faint memory, yet the resolve alone pierced every recollection and had taxidermied his soul. His soul was pinned to the wall by that overwhelming resolve, drying and twisting. And now the thrashing was nearly over. But the end… would be a grand banquet.
“Yes. A banquet of hell. The blood and flesh of vampires will soak the asphalt.”
Se-gun clawed at his own flesh and ground his teeth. The itching that swept his whole body, the thirst, grew worse by the moment. He had already drunk more than enough water—empty plastic bottles rolled about the warped greenhouse interior—yet with every beat of his heart the thirst only intensified, showing no sign of easing.
“Haa, haa… No. No.”
Se-gun shook his head hard and sank himself into the dark. The instant he pictured blood and flesh, saliva flooded his mouth. Unbearable agony pulsed with the beating of his heart, and the thirst layered on top of it.
Jinma, of course, felt no thirst because of the vast power they had already stockpiled—but those who became vampires under their influence were condemned to suffer the thirst that low VT brought. Bastards. The old saying that a king’s dignity is built on the pus and blood beneath him was not wrong in a single particular. No matter how many decent ones there might be among you, no matter how you call yourselves noble aristocrats of the night, the fact that your essence is that of filthy monsters will never change.
“But just you wait. You’ll feel in your bones how terrifying a vulgar human can be!”
Se-gun rose and sat at the workbench. Driven by nothing but hatred of vampires, by that obsession alone, he set his body to work.
On a night of passing showers, Kim Seong-hui set an old record on the turntable and sat on the sofa. She placed coffee on the table, hummed under her breath, and looked out the window. Then a harsh screech of tires cut through the rain and headlights swept across the glass.
“…Honestly.”
She muttered and sighed. The door burst open and Silvester came in, a little wet from the rain.
“Did you find Sarhyuk?”
“I found him, but as things stand I can’t touch him.”
Silvester clicked his tongue, recalling the absurd sight of Sarhyuk reduced to a wraith-like state. Argent Harpesion or a few spells might inflict damage, but that was not the true body, so it could never kill him. As in the old vampire legends, until a wooden stake was driven into the main body, no matter how many times you “killed” him he would simply revive as something thin as mist.
“He must have overused the power he just acquired… his brain’s probably melted. If he’d been a pure vampire he would have become a harmless wanderer of another world and simply faded away—but he was originally a werebear as well, so he won’t vanish that easily.”
“That’s the tenacity of a lycanthrope for you.”
Silvester shuddered. In a certain sense lycanthropes were even more troublesome opponents than vampires. Wound a vampire and its power weakened by that much; a lycanthrope’s regeneration was not based on VT, so food alone restored strength and healing. Some bloodlines possessed lineage abilities similar to a vampire’s, and their sheer physical power was outstanding. Had their lifespans been as long as vampires’, they would have shared dominion over the world of the moonlit night in balance with them.
“And Se-gun? How was he?”
“….”
Uncharacteristically, Silvester avoided the question and walked into the room.
“Don’t tell me you’ve already disposed of him? His life is mine to take—Silvester, don’t lay a hand on him.”
“It’s already too late. If he hadn’t fought Sarhyuk—if he doesn’t go on to fight the other Jinma—he might have lived out a short life as a human.”
Kim Seong-hui nodded and set down her coffee cup.
“Se-gun is far too kind and far too adorable.”
“That brat?”
“Isn’t he? He’s so tormented by his own fastidiousness that he can’t forgive himself for being the only one who survived when his family was wiped out, so he drives himself into deathtraps. He deliberately avoids happiness and affection because he feels he can only atone by throwing himself into mortal danger. He’d be better off taking it easy, playing around a little, and harassing vampires at a reasonable pace. Why does he take an accident and make it his own responsibility?”
But a person capable of that would never have entered this world in the first place.
The shower soon stopped, and the park’s mercury lamps cast a pale light through the rain-wet window. The shadows of water droplets on the glass were reflected in Silvester’s eyes.
“The boy is simply a fool.”
“I happen to like that kind of fool very much.”
Kim Seong-hui smiled and finished her coffee. From the old record, vintage jazz spilled from the speakers.