Handed Over to the Magi
When most people hear of secret societies founded by Western magicians, they form a thoroughly mistaken impression. They picture mystics obsessed with Paracelsus’s alchemy, or the summoning arts drawn from the Key of Solomon—or, failing that, they imagine druids. Even that much knowledge already places them among the better-informed students of the occult.
Yet Eastern culture had given those magicians no small measure of inspiration as well. In the early nineteenth century, through contact with the East—chiefly India and China—Western intellectuals absorbed new ideas. Even without converting, growing numbers of them took an interest in Buddhist philosophy, and most of those men were already members of secret societies such as the Freemasons or the Rosicrucians.
Was it so strange that magicians who devoted lifetime after lifetime to unearthing hidden doctrines should study foreign learning? And if a rational weapon presented itself, why would they refuse it? Thus the modern magician had become a bizarre hybrid: a man who carried firearms and commanded the entire spectrum of Eastern and Western magic alike.
And now those same magicians were watching Korea.
To the occultist, the Republic of Korea had never been a particularly alluring land. It possessed a powerful shamanic tradition, yet that tradition was almost entirely practical and petitionary in nature. Believe, and good fortune will come; perform this rite, and wealth and glory will follow—there was nothing mysterious about it, nothing that qualified as true esoterica. Magical technique itself remained underdeveloped, and whatever few secrets had existed were lost entirely during the Japanese occupation and the chaos of the Korean War as the country Westernized at breakneck speed.
But then rumor spread that Jeong-ya—the legendary magician who had first researched the secrets of reincarnation and created the West Asian vampires—had been reborn in Korea. The magicians turned their eyes toward the peninsula.
What followed was the collision and mutual annihilation of two immensely powerful vampires, Juk-yo and Chang-woon, with Jeong-ya caught between them. Afterward a savage struggle erupted among the vampires over who would inherit the blood of the fallen pair, and in the midst of that bloodbath the vampire hunter Han Se-gun annihilated Tetra Anax’s Korean branch.
Even then the magicians largely refused to intervene. Researchers of secret knowledge, seekers of power, they remained neutral toward both vampires and humans—or, if anything, leaned toward the vampires. One of the Jinma, Phantom, had originally been a powerful magician who became a vampire precisely so he could continue his studies. Magicians did not regard those who walked the path of heretical arts as heretics or objects of contempt; after all, they themselves were already society’s outcasts.
To such men, Seo Rin was nothing more than a fascinating research subject. The mighty overlord of the vampires, Tetra Anax, was beyond their reach. But an unprotected youth living openly in human society could, if captured, be bent to their will with ease. Through him they might learn of the primordial monster Lilith—and thereby unlock a new form of immortality independent of the vampire factor, a higher spiritual domain.
Giovanni Vantero handed the blood-soaked Seo Rin over to the magicians. The alliance was not yet a full day old, and even the magicians looked startled. Of course, it had been their own skill that guided Seo Rin into the theater and cleared the audience out of the way. But the ability to subdue him in a public place in a single instant belonged to Giovanni Vantero and his near-miraculous blood ability: space transition.
Space transition—commonly called teleportation—had never been achieved through magic. It was a blood ability granted only to a handful of vampire bloodlines. Because every member of such a lineage was born with the latent potential, the gift might not seem especially rare; yet it was almost always a double-edged sword. Vampires whose blood ability proved too difficult to awaken and develop often failed to master it at all. They fell behind magicians, hunters, and lycanthropes, were hunted down generation after generation, and eventually walked the road to extinction.
Zein, who had possessed the power, had been defeated and devoured by the ambitious new Jinma Sarhyuk; with his death, space transition might as well have vanished from the earth. Yet Tetra Anax had apparently foreseen even Zein’s demise, for fifty years earlier they had already created a new vampire named Giovanni Vantero.
“Moving from darkness to darkness with space transition certainly lessens the restrictions, even in broad daylight. Still—who would have thought he could use teleportation that well?”
Tito marveled anew at Giovanni Vantero’s mastery. No secret art of magic, Taoism, esoteric Buddhism, or Lamaism contained a method for true space transition.
Even so, Giovanni Vantero had reached his limit.
“I’ve captured him, but I lack the means to dig through his memories. Which is why I ask—can you handle that part?”
With those words Vantero surrendered Seo Rin into the magicians’ hands. They stared at him in open astonishment. Was he serious? Handing over a blood specimen obtained with such difficulty, just like that? The alliance had been founded on exactly that condition, yet vampires rarely kept promises made to humans. Beings who had escaped the cage of mortality tended to look down on those still trapped inside it. In Korean terms, it was rather like a discharged reservist casually belittling active-duty soldiers.
“We’ll have to examine him first. We need to know whether drugs can put him into a trance at all.”
Lycanthropes possessed physical capabilities far superior to vampires; their livers broke down any drug in moments. A chemically induced trance was probably too much to hope for.
“Still—never thought we’d end up doing this in a hotel suite.”
They clicked their tongues at the sight of Seo Rin lying on the floor of the suite. Giovanni Vantero had used space transition to seize him and had brought him straight into his own room. That way the hotel front desk would never know, and they could safely conduct torture and interrogation on the premises. In a luxurious, spotless hotel room, acts of the purest inhumanity were about to unfold.
Seo Rin glared up at the magicians, half in disbelief.
“You people again?! Don’t you ever get tired of this? Why don’t you just give up already? Now you’re teaming up with vampires to pull this crap?”
Mackenly snorted.
“Give up? Look who’s talking—you’re the one lying here in chains.”
“Damn it!”
Seo Rin clenched his teeth and strained against the thick steel cables that had been driven through his arms. Something like that meant nothing. Tear the flesh free by force and the wounds would regenerate in an instant.
At that moment Lance Bernardo—the elder of the Bernardo brothers—raised a pistol and leveled it at Seo Rin’s skull.
“Don’t waste your strength, kid. Not unless you want a hole in your head.”
“…….”
Seo Rin let the tension drain from his limbs and slumped back down. In this situation he had no confidence he could dodge a bullet. Experience was still his absolute shortcoming. Han Se-gun, who had long forgotten what it was like to be a tadpole, had simply left him to his own devices; yet Se-gun himself had spent a brutal year under the veteran hunter Song Deok-yeon learning how to become a proper hunter. One year on paper, but every waking hour had been devoted to training—the equivalent of five years, or even ten, for anyone else.
Seo Rin, by contrast, had never felt the need for training; he had been a lycanthrope from the start. And Se-gun, unlike Deok-yeon, was no systematic instructor. One way or another, Seo Rin still did not even know how to use his own abilities properly.
“Well then—shall we start with the drugs?”
Paolo, the most skilled among them in pharmacological methods, drew a truth-serum ampule and filled a syringe. One was not enough; he immediately opened a second and packed both into a single barrel. Truth serum was dangerous enough in ordinary doses; an amount like this looked for all the world like an attempt at murder.
“Urgh—!”
Seo Rin thrashed, but with a muzzle pointed at his head he could not flee. The needle sank into his arm.
“……Now we wait for the drug to take effect.”
Paolo withdrew the syringe and, while the serum circulated, set up a stand light and aimed it into Seo Rin’s eyes. For a simple statement that would have been sufficient. Once a subject entered a trance, the mind’s defenses crumbled; the subject lost all sense of the cost of revealing information and spilled everything with ease. But they could not rest easy with so little.
Memories related to Lilith were almost certainly sealed. Otherwise ordinary hypnosis or some chance trigger might have brought them back already. Given how skillfully Lilith had eluded Tetra Anax’s pursuit until now, she would never have left such a foolish opening. Opening those sealed chambers required means that belonged not to a hypnotist but to a magician.
“Do the mental sensing carefully.”
The magicians left the rest to Barey. From his robes he drew a Dokgojeo—a solitary pestle—and gripped it.
“These bastards always dump the dangerous jobs on me.”
He planted the Dokgojeo in the floor and uncoiled a sacred rope to form a barrier. Mental seals often contained vicious traps designed to crush anyone who tried to peer inside through psychic contact; the victim of such a trap was left a broken husk. A safety device that dispersed the force was essential.
“Grrraaaaah!”
Suddenly Seo Rin began to thrash with renewed violence. Ignoring the cables driven through his arms, he wrenched both limbs outward with raw power. Skin tore with a wet rip and blood sprayed. The wounds sealed almost instantly, and the transformation began.
“Grrrrrrrrr!”
In full beast form Seo Rin lunged at Barey, claws first. Startled, Barey raised the Dokgojeo, but a human had no chance against a werewolf.
“You little—!”
Lance and Royce Bernardo opened fire, emptying their pistols into Seo Rin. He paid the bullets no mind and raked his claws toward Barey’s throat. One clean hit would take the head clean off the shoulders.
Shhk.
Yet Barey vanished. In his place stood Giovanni. With space transition he had swapped their positions in an instant.
“Showing your true colors, kid! Round two it is!”
Giovanni slipped the wild, clumsy swipes of Seo Rin’s claws and drove a counter-punch into the youth’s face. A long hook, then a short left uppercut, then a switching step that launched a straight like a thrown spear—each blow landed solidly on Seo Rin’s head. Every strike was a vampire’s full-power blow, the kind that could shatter concrete. Seo Rin absorbed the barrage, tumbled backward, and landed on his feet as though scarcely damaged.
“Grrrrrrrrrrr!”
He drove his claws into the carpet, snarled, and charged again. Giovanni scooped a handful of ice from the whiskey bucket on the table.
Shhhk—!
An instantaneous teleport. One of Seo Rin’s eyeballs exploded from the inside as the ice materialized within it.
“Gotcha!”
Giovanni did not miss the opening. He put his entire body into the next punch the way a baseball pitcher empties himself into a throw; the blow carved the air and smashed into Seo Rin.
Crack!
Seo Rin’s jawbone and Giovanni’s knuckle shattered together; blood sprayed.
“Whoa!”
Tito threw himself sideways as the massive lycanthrope came tumbling toward him. The transformed youth rolled across the floor, demolished an expensive Nancy Colzan sofa, and crashed to a stop.
“Tsk, tsk…… The repair bill on this place is going to be ugly.”
Giovanni reset his broken knuckles, muttering. The outcome, however, was no longer in doubt. Even in beast form, the present Seo Rin was no match for Giovanni. A full moon would change little; the gap in skill was already overwhelming.
“All right—finish the job. I’ll make sure of it this time.”
Giovanni jerked his chin. The Bernardo brothers fetched a chainsaw. They started the logging saw and began severing Seo Rin’s limbs one by one.
Wrrrrrrrreeeee!
Already unconscious, Seo Rin could only twitch with each cut instead of screaming. The wet grind of flesh and bone and the spray of blood filled the suite.
“……Ugh.”
Even the magicians, hardened as they were, turned their faces away. Still, it was the most effective way to neutralize him. Once the limbs were off, the brothers wrapped Seo Rin’s torso in Kevlar bands so the pieces could not reattach.
“Should have done this from the start.”
Giovanni smiled cruelly and gestured for the magicians to continue—silent pressure to resume the work.
“Th-then……”
Barey’s face had gone deathly pale. He took up the Dokgojeo once more.
Se-gun found the R-1 parked beside the theater and clicked his tongue. Three showings should already have ended, yet Seo Rin had not returned. Something had clearly gone wrong.
“This kid—how does he always end up on the receiving end? Do I really have to hold his hand for every single thing?”
By Se-gun’s original estimate, Seo Rin should already have been able to look after himself. Experience was thinner than Se-gun’s, but Se-gun had managed when he was still human; a lycanthrope who could not handle his own problems made no sense.
The problem was that the opponent had been a heavyweight like Giovanni Vantero from the start. As a descendant of Lilith, Seo Rin drew the full attention of the vampire world—unlike the human Se-gun, who had offered no profit if captured. Seo Rin had been born into a destiny of being hunted. On that point Se-gun could not deny his own mistake.
“Even so—me, playing babysitter at this stage? Pathetic.”
If he meant to keep Seo Rin out of Tetra Anax’s hands, Se-gun would have to cover for him step by step. For a man who had always been a lone wolf, the prospect was enough to drive him insane.
Only now did he appreciate the patience of his own master, Song Deok-yeon. Turning a greenhorn into a real person, lesson by painful lesson—it was this irritating?
“Ready to believe me now?”
Sa Jun sat on the stairs, clearly sulking. He had wanted to head for the hotel immediately, but Se-gun had insisted on confirming whether Seo Rin had truly been abducted and had dragged them here instead.
“If we wait until night this gets a whole lot messier. You planning to fight vampires after dark? Fighting in daylight is still better, right? Don’t tell me you actually think you can take Giovanni Vantero without breaking a sweat?”
“That’s what you get for having zero credibility. Why the hell should I trust you enough to charge straight into the middle of enemy territory?”