The Brothers Fall
At the tip of the matte-finished barrel’s sight picture, a massive van tore down the road with its body half-shredded. The windshield was gone entirely, the hood crumpled, and not a single side mirror remained.
If the vehicle had been a Humvee, the damage would have looked believable as something that had rolled out of the Battle of Mogadishu. And yet the van kept running. Even with the front bumper scraping the asphalt in a continuous screech, it charged down the road like a wounded bull.
The hand gripping the handguard went still. Breathing settled. The finger on the trigger went slack—then slowly squeezed.
BOOM!
The sound was closer to an explosion than a gunshot as the round left the barrel. The instant it struck the driver’s seat head-on, the huge van lurched as if it had hit a speed bump.
Screeeeech!
Tires shrieked against the pavement. Momentum carried the van into a violent pitch; the axle kissed the road and threw sparks. At last the vehicle plowed into the sidewalk and flipped over exactly like a scene from a movie.
“Jesus Christ!”
Under the streetlights the van’s door tore free and a man spilled out.
“Urgh—Royce!”
He stood atop the sideways wreck and stared in horror at his brother still gripping the wheel. A single shot—and everything below Royce’s chest had simply ceased to exist. Not regeneration. Annihilation.
And that was not all. Something like black smoke boiled from mouth, ears, and nose, keening in thin screams as it coalesced into a death mask.
“Ha!”
He tore off his broken sunglasses and shoved a fresh pair into place. Wounds like that left no chance of survival, even for a ghoul.
They had been brothers who had leaned on each other since childhood in the slums. They had killed to live and brushed death more times than they could count. A hitman’s life was a mayfly’s life—no one ever knew which day would be the last. The Bernardo brothers had clawed their way out of that killing ground. Death had always been part of the contract. Even so, standing over his brother’s corpse, an unstoppable rage surged up through him.
“Tch!”
But there was no time for grief. The moment you leap from a downed vehicle is when you are most exposed to a sniper. The realization hit Lance and he dove straight into the side alley.
Screech!
Cars slammed to a halt to avoid the overturned van. Bystanders stared at him with wide eyes. This was no place for a satisfying fight—but the same held true for the enemy.
A van taking a hit and flipping could maybe be blurred out of human awareness, but Lance’s head exploding under a sniper round would not be something any recognition-warping spell could quietly paper over. The fact that no second shot had come while he stood dazed over his brother was probably for that very reason.
“So you want me to come to you, is that it?!”
Lance ground his teeth. He would kill him. He would wring every last drop of blood from the bastard’s body, then devour the corpse completely as a memorial for Royce.
He checked the shotgun hidden under his coat and started walking.
“H-hello? A-are you okay?”
One of the rubberneckers, a man, approached him in a fluster. Fair enough—watching someone stroll calmly away after crawling out of a flipped vehicle would rattle anyone.
A few others were already swarming the wreck, climbing onto a car that could still explode at any second just to pry the doors open. The rear hatch was too mangled from the impact to open by hand, so the only option was a side door—and because the van had landed on its side, that door now faced the sky.
The vehicle was tall enough that no one could reach it without climbing. And still they climbed, oil already leaking, as if their own lives meant nothing so long as they could pull someone free.
Lance stared at them, appalled. The sight dragged up a memory of childhood—kids swarming a tipped Coca-Cola delivery truck to rip out the car stereo. He had been in that pack. Royce had been there too. These people, of course, had come to help, not loot.
But no one could help the brothers now.
“Fuck!”
He shoved past the crowd and vanished into the dark.
“What the hell?”
Han Se-gun frowned down at the wreck. The one in the driver’s seat had died on impact. The second had bailed. But the one who actually mattered—Giovanni Vantero—was nowhere in sight.
Come to think of it, the man had space transition. No need to leap out under every eye when he could simply teleport.
Still, the way the ghoul had moved after climbing free felt off—awkward enough to suggest Giovanni had never been inside the van at all.
“More importantly… hope the girl inside is still breathing.”
Had the thrill of the shot made him careless? He had opened fire without a second thought for the high-school girl who might still be captive. Human life was stubborn one moment and fragile the next; the impact alone could already have killed her.
“….”
Se-gun swapped barrels in silence. Footsteps were already echoing up the stairwell.
Whoosh!
Whatever it was came at a speed no human could match. A white man in a long coat vaulted the stairs shotgun-first and opened fire without preamble. A converted full-auto SPAS-12 spat flame.
“Hmph.”
Se-gun simply kept climbing; the bend in the stairwell let him slip into dead space in a single step.
Lance Bernardo, former mafia hitman, knew that trick as well as anyone. He yanked a stun grenade from his coat and ricocheted it off the wall so it would arc onto the upper landing.
Clack!
The moment it cleared the edge, the grenade came flying straight back. Se-gun had anticipated the move and simply kicked the rolling canister back down the corridor.
“Shit—!”
KA-BOOM!
White light swallowed the stairwell. Lance threw himself backward, arms shielding eyes and ears. The permanent sunglasses and his own reflexes saved his senses—but by then Se-gun was already kicking off the wall and charging.
“Damn it!”
Se-gun rebounded off the concrete, cut the corner at full speed, and came on like he was flying. In his hand a massive black blade already gleamed.
Clang!
Lance managed to get the SPAS-12 up in time. The next instant the world yanked away and a sledgehammer impact slammed into his back.
“Ghk—!”
His body slammed into the far wall. Before he could even recover, detonating cord uncoiled toward him like a living snake.
Shrrrrrk!
The cord writhed with a genuine serpentine hiss. Guided by Se-gun’s telekinesis, it wrapped Lance from head to toe.
“Goddamn it.”
The curse left his mouth on its own. Ordinary bullets could not touch a body like his—but detonating cord was another matter entirely. To die without even putting up a proper fight against the human who had murdered his brother… He had accepted death the day he became a mafia hitman—hell, back when he was still scraping by in the slums. He had never imagined it would be this pathetic.
Se-gun watched him with an empty face. Blue phosphorescence bloomed from within those eyes, utterly devoid of feeling. He could kill vampires and monsters the way a man snaps a free toothpick without thinking about it.
And because he was that kind of man, he did not bother with the stupid theatrics of asking how an enemy felt, or interrogating a mere ghoul about his master’s whereabouts. He simply pressed the switch on the electric detonator.
The cord ignited.
BAAANG!
Blood and meat packed the stairwell. One human body came apart in wet fragments and painted the corridor. Every step Se-gun took made blood and flesh squelch under his soles.
He stepped away from what remained of Lance Bernardo and looked out the window. The van still lay on its side. A knot of people had crowded around it and were carefully extracting an unconscious high-school girl. From this distance he could not tell if she was alive or dead—but one fact was certain: Giovanni Vantero was not among them.
“What the hell? His men are getting slaughtered and the bastard’s nowhere to be found?”
An ugly thought surfaced.
Seo Rin’s younger sister Yeong-eun only had value as a hostage if she could be used to draw Seo Rin out. Yet Giovanni had abandoned her this easily. And where had Giovanni Vantero himself gone? Ordinary ghouls were disposable tools—but the Bernardo brothers were different.
They possessed extreme bullet resistance and close-combat power that outstripped most vampires. Creating them would have cost a fortune in VT. And he had thrown them away like trash?
“Yo, soul brother! Boom-chiki-boom-chiki, chakka-chakka—”
A familiar beatbox riff preceded a dreadlocked black man sliding in through the window as easily as a spider climbing a wall. This was Rat Gunip, member of Esprit—the free-spirit faction among the vampires.
Se-gun had met him once before, but they were nowhere near close enough for warm nicknames like “soul brother.”
“You—!”
Se-gun lunged without a second glance, claymore flashing. Rat leaned back, planted one hand, and launched into a furious chain of Thomas, windmill, airplane, and airtrack. The giant frame spinning through the already cramped stairwell kicked up a small hurricane.
Se-gun jammed his fingers into the concrete ceiling and hung there to avoid the flurry.
“Shut that dogshit music up. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Ohh~ so that’s how it is? I’ve been practicing hard on Argon’s advice, but at this rate Billboard Number One is looking rough. My friend! I gratefully accept your critique! Anyway—looks like you got played this time, Han Se-gun, my man.”
Rat rolled the words with theatrical flair.
Billboard Number One? What kind of bullshit is that supposed to be?
Se-gun was irritated, but the content of the remark forced the question out of him.
“Played how?”
“Giovanni already left to grab Seo Rin.”
“…Of course.”
So kidnapping Seo Yeong-eun had been nothing but a feint to separate Se-gun from Seo Rin. Looking back, the deliberate destruction of cameras and microphones had been pure theater, and the whole operation had run just a little too slow.
Besides, back at the house was Hyuk-jin—already once kidnapped by Giovanni Vantero. If Giovanni had set this kind of scheme in motion, the odds were high that Hyuk-jin was part of it.
“Tch.”
Se-gun glared at Rat with open regret. Leaving a vampire alive when one stood right in front of him violated every principle he lived by. But Rat Gunip was no soft target, and every second counted.
Seo Rin’s skill had improved since last time—but if Choi Hyuk-jin was the enemy, the situation was dangerous. Seo Rin was not yet ready to match Hyuk-jin. Se-gun kept his eyes locked on Rat while angling toward the window.
“Anything else? And why the hell are you the one blabbing about it?”
“Ohhh, my friend! Black equals hip-hop. Understand?”
“….”
The same brand of cartoon prejudice that said every Chinese person was a kung-fu master, every Korean a black-belt in taekwondo, and every Japanese person a ninja, samurai, or geisha—except this time a black man was saying it about himself.
Se-gun stared at him, speechless. But there was no time left for lectures. At this rate Seo Rin would be taken by Giovanni Vantero. Anyone else might have been negotiable—but he would not hand that kid over to any vampire of the Tetra Anax line.
“I’m gone.”
Se-gun dropped straight out the window.
Seo Rin felt consciousness sliding away as he stared up at his friend.
Dying by a friend’s hand… Westerns were full of that kind of thing, but he had never imagined it would happen to him. And without even understanding why.
At first he had hoped Hyuk-jin was being controlled or hypnotized by Giovanni. That had been pure wishful thinking. Hyuk-jin had attacked him of his own free will, start to finish.
Choi Hyuk-jin had always been a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing among the flock. Peel away the fleece and, in the dark, the savage teeth came out.
No… am I the wolf?
Seo Rin asked himself the question and managed a bitter smile. In that instant the world before his eyes flooded red.
Awoooooooo!
Somewhere a wolf howled. No—that was his howl. The wildness that reason had kept chained finally woke; every sense sharpened to a razor edge. Fresh, exhilarating vitality flooded his body as if he had just woken from the deepest, sweetest sleep.
Yes. This was how it had to be. It had to come to this. Seo Rin chuckled low in his throat and opened his eyes. Two crimson irises burned in the darkness of the night.