Under a Nearly Full Moon
And so Moojin had cut into his own sleep to attend makeup academy, until he could at least fake the work well enough to get by.
"Hey, Seongchan. What the hell were you thinking?"
Moojin growled even as he worked cleansing cream over the makeup they had worn at the station. It was almost certainly because of Seongchan's earlier answer on air—I don't think about anything.
"…Sorry, hyung."
"Sorry? Forget it. I shouldn't have said anything. If it's really that goddamn miserable and you can't stand it, quit. Huh? You think I'm smiling through this idiot circus because I don't have any guts?"
Inside the swaying van, Moojin began carefully redoing his bandmates' makeup. One slip, one jolt, and he would have to start over; the work demanded every scrap of concentration he had. Just drawing and refining an eyebrow line left cold sweat pouring down his face.
"I mean, hyung—those bastards' intentions were obvious. They just want to make fools of us and sit there laughing."
Danny Yong took Seongchan's side. They had all been under constant pressure, so they understood the impulse. Becoming celebrities had left them with nowhere to vent; the stress only piled up, and they had to swallow it until it felt like they would choke on rage. Moojin only snorted.
"You think we're the only ones who get put through that? They made the whole show so people can say entertainers have no shame. What's so special about it now? Easy money doesn't exist in this world. This is all karma. Karma. Damn it."
"Hyung. If anyone overheard this, tomorrow the sports papers would be running 'ZEN on the brink of disbandment' and 'member conflict rumors.' And Manager-hyung—you'll say the same thing later, won't you? 'Those kids never got along from the start…'"
"…How do you know that so well? If you know it that well, shut up and get your makeup done right now."
ZEN's manager griped from behind the wheel. Something flashed past in front of them.
"What the—?!"
Startled, the manager slammed the brakes—but whatever it was had already gone by.
Screeeeech!
The van skidded with a shrieking howl of rubber, then stalled out completely.
"Damn it! What was that?"
"A deer?"
"This isn't Canada. A deer in the middle of Seoul?"
The members of ZEN muttered as they hurriedly buckled their seat belts. One accident and they would hear about it for days.
Seongchan, though, did not buckle in. He looked out through the window instead. Overhead, a great moon was climbing toward full. In that moment the city itself seemed to have turned into something alien.
The moon was nearly full. With every step closer, the hammering of his heart grew more violent, until he could no longer endure it. Heart racing with wild excitement, he stepped out into the streets. Neon signs, streetlamps, the night faces of buildings still lit—together they formed a sea of light.
He ran through that ocean of light and looked around him. Everywhere, unguarded humans. Prey without a shred of caution, like something out of a fairy tale…
"Haa… haa…"
With every rough breath, every step he took, people edged aside to avoid him. A few brushed past him with deliberate calm—only to fall still a moment later, intoxicated by the powerful scent rolling off him, staring blankly at his face.
"…Where?"
He was wandering the night streets in search of something. But what? When he tried to think of it, no clear word came—only a tangled knot inside his skull.
He had been looking for something; that much was certain. The object itself would not rise to mind. Only the compulsion to find it ruled him. And so he roamed the night.
Thud!
Someone collided with him. Startled, he lifted his head. A rough-looking man with a buzz cut was staring him down.
"Hey, Yankee. What do you think you're doing here?"
"Come on, come on. Looks like a G.I. Get lost. This neighborhood doesn't take U.S. soldiers."
They were picking a fight without any pretense. Local merchants' association types, most likely, mistaking him for an American serviceman and trying to run him off. Recent incidents with disorderly U.S. troops in the area had led the association to hire thugs. Violence breeding violence—the old cycle playing out again.
But they did not understand what stood before them. The man in front of them was no human. And he was certainly no G.I.
"Heh heh heh heh."
He turned his hand over and let his nails lengthen, ready to tear their throats out in a single motion. Then another man threw himself between them.
"Ah—I'm so sorry. That's my friend. He's drunk. We're not G.I.s."
He apologized in fluent Korean, then stepped in close to the one who had just bared his claws.
"Bark. Let's get out of here. You're wasted."
"…Drunk? Me?"
He had not touched a drop. And if a vampire could get drunk, that would make him a has-been of the most pathetic kind.
"Yeah. You're drunk."
The man seized Bark and dragged him away by force. No number of humans could have hauled him off—yet somehow Bark went, stumbling. The one who had stepped between him and the humans was a vampire as well. Right—now that he thought of it, this one had been the one who goaded him into searching for something in the first place.
Groping through a fogging memory, Bark followed the man.
"You idiot. Grinning like a fool in front of humans. And you still call yourself a vampire?"
"Bark, don't talk nonsense. If I'd left you there, you'd be the one dead."
Summer had not even arrived, yet a choking heat clung to the night. In the black concrete sky, reduced to a palm-sized scrap overhead, a round moon neared its fullness.
For a fallen vampire who lived by the sensory thrill of cutting human throats day after day, it was almost too perfect a place.
"Still… this place is strange."
A metropolis of more than ten million, and yet nearly everyone Korean. Excellent public order, nowhere to hide from watching eyes. Of course, once you actually took a throat, the cries for help became empty echoes—but that was only because so many of them had already lost their reason and become beasts. Bark suddenly noticed a cigarette being held out to him.
"Me? Smoke this?"
But he took it naturally between his fingers and set it to his lips; clearly he knew how. The vampire who had urged him to hunt Lilith's child passed over the cigarette from his own mouth. Bark pressed the tips together and drew hard; the fire jumped across.
"…Never expected Han Se-gun would protect the kid. I didn't know."
"Han Se-gun?"
A sudden throb stabbed through his forehead. A string of sounds born of an unknown country, unknown customs, unknown language system—like a magic spell—drove straight through the space between his brows.
"You don't remember him?"
"…I don't know what he is. But I know he's an unpleasant bastard."
A black shadow. Burning blue eyes. Green hair. A body built for the groove. A living disaster who claimed the night as his own and turned his hatred into fire to scatter among vampires. The Jinma hunter Han Se-gun, spitting bullets as if he were dancing. The faint image came alive in Bark's mind.
There was no question the man was bound to him somehow. Otherwise the impression would never have been branded so clearly into his head.
"That fool Owen got himself stupidly murdered. Every last drop of blood drained out of him, left out under the sun like laundry hung up to dry."
Saying so, the vampire flicked ash from his cigarette. Pale gray scattered into the dark and vanished. To Bark it looked like Owen's flesh itself; he watched it in silence.
"Shall I?"
Suddenly Bark rose, nails lengthening. For some reason it felt like the only thing he could do. Not this vampire's coaxing—a pure impulse rising from inside his own chest.
"Careful. Things have changed. Once Han Se-gun gets involved…"
"Lilith's child is interesting enough, but… I owe that bastard a debt."
Bark pointed at his own forehead. Even through the memory scrambled by Han Se-gun's bullet, that much remained. Yes. He owed the man a debt.
"If you just charge in, you'll die. That's all."
He said it, but he did not seem inclined to stop him. Bark only shook his head.
"Just tell me where."
"He's in Seoul right now. He shows up in Seoul often at night."
"Appreciate it… What was your name again?"
For the first time, Bark asked the vampire's name. The other man grinned and stood.
"Oh dear. Forgotten my name already? I'm Argon."
"Argon?"
A name he had heard somewhere. Someone from the past, perhaps? Well, that would make sense. You only approached someone this familiarly if you already knew them.
"The one who broke the wheel of the vampires… who stands against Tetra Anax?"
"That's right."
Argon did not even watch Bark leave; he simply sat on a park bench. Bark was gone in moments, and at the same time foreigners began to gather from every corner of the park.
"Whoa, Argon. Isn't that a little twisted even for you? That guy's completely lost it."
The Black man with dreadlocks, Rat Gunip, whistled and stepped out a rhythm. Argon raked his fingers back through his hair. Not a speck of melanin or melatonin in the cells—pure white hair, without a single stray color, spilled into view.
"Better to throw him into Han Se-gun's hands than keep feeding him humans. More importantly—are we ready?"
"Ah, about that… We managed to get forged passports, at least."
The frail-looking middle-aged man in glasses spoke with careful deference. Of course he did: Argon was one of the twenty-four Jinma, a vampire lord.
"No idea whether they'll pass. Once we get them as far as Dalian, we can move them by rail into France. Tell them to bribe the officials in Dalian."
"Aren't we pushing it on a budget that barely exists?"
Rat grinned as he looked at Argon. Unlike the other vampire bloodlines, Esprit refused to cooperate with Tetra Anax and possessed almost no social power.
Hippies and gypsies—wanderers of that sort—were not supposed to be rich; it would have been strange if they were. Given Esprit's circumstances, buying officials was a serious gamble. And with China's economy exploding, what percentage of Esprit's budget would it take to bribe the right men?
"Doesn't matter. They're expensive guests. We have to get them out somehow—while everyone's distracted by the Lirim affair."
The vampire incidents in Korea had begun with the blood-feud between the Jinma Juk-yo and Chang-woon. Those who inherited that blood and became new Jinma were Chang-hyun and Jeong-ya.
The two of them had received the overwhelming blood of Jinma, yet still did not know how to use that power, making them easy prey for other vampires. The Jinma hunter Han Se-gun had crushed, one after another, the vampires who came hunting Jeong-ya and Chang-hyun—proof of his own hatred—and Jeong-ya and Chang-hyun had wanted them dead as well.
Evading Se-gun's eyes—he had already begun to interfere heavily with Korea's black networks—and getting Jeong-ya and Chang-hyun out of the country was impossible on their own. So Argon meant to use the leftover vampires, to draw attention, while he protected the two and smuggled them abroad.
However formidable Han Se-gun was, in the end he was only one body.
"Then you won't touch the Lilith's-child matter, my lord? I thought you would take an interest."
The pale-faced white man, Karen Monty, adjusted his glasses and asked after Argon's intentions. Argon clenched the cigarette he had been smoking. In an instant it flash-froze and shattered like a biscuit.
"It'd be a lie to say I have no interest. But… for now, let's just look at the moon."
Argon muttered, pulled his red beret low, and lifted his face to the sky.
The mages arrived at the Ritz-Carlton to meet Giovanni Vantero—the famous drug lord, the hitman raised by Tetra Anax, and a Successor who had inherited an ancient vampire line. Having already heard the situation from Sa Jun, they had all put on formal wear and headed for the hotel casino.
"…Why does he even want to meet us?"
Mackenly, growing uneasy, adjusted the knot of his suit tie. Anthony answered flatly.
"Because we can move in daylight, obviously? Vampires can't stand under the sun, so they can't catch a lycanthrope who walks free under it."
"True enough. But he knows we're after Seo Rin. What kind of deal is he trying to make with us? A negotiation only works when both sides have something to give and something to take."
"Maybe he wants to split the kid in half, like Solomon."
While they talked, the elevator stopped in front of the casino. The moment they stepped inside, they spotted Giovanni Vantero at a glance.
Broad shoulders, a muscular frame, coffee-colored skin and yellow hair, thick lips studded with piercings, and a smile that never quite left his face—yet this was a king of the underworld who treated human lives like flies. That was the first impression Giovanni Vantero made.
He sat at a roulette table with women on either side, flirting, then turned toward the mages.
"Ohhh. Honored guests. So—any trouble on the way here?"
"Spare us the nonsense. Get to the point."
Paolo said it and took an empty chair at the roulette table. Giovanni Vantero radiated the strange allure common to most vampires, but it found no purchase on mages who kept their own minds under control.
Still, they were tense. Giovanni Vantero was no mannered aristocratic vampire, not by any measure. Given the brutality with which he had crushed the Daston family, and his abilities specialized for hunting lycanthropes, walking into this room was as good as walking into a death trap. If the talks collapsed, he might kill them on the spot.
"What exactly do you want us to do, and what's the compensation?"
"Find the boy Seo Rin in broad daylight and guide him somewhere without light. Night works too, but I doubt I'll need your help after dark. Do that much, and I'll hand him over to you."
The mages stared. Hand Seo Rin over to them? Then what did he stand to gain? Paolo did not waste time theorizing; he asked straight out.
"And what do you get out of that?"
"A chance to speak alone with a young descendant of Lilith, more or less? Others seem to equate the boy with the great Tetra Anax simply because they share an origin—but Tetra Anax's greatness was never born of their birth. I'm not one of those fools who can't grasp that. My only interest in the boy is how much of Lilith's memory he still carries. That much."
Giovanni Vantero said it and looked to the dealer. Already bitten and turned into a thrall, the dealer expressionlessly cast the ball toward the roulette wheel.