The Night Is Deep
Gyeong liked the city of Seoul.
If anyone asked whether he liked Korea, the answer would be no. Koreans, East Asians themselves, were strangely exclusive toward other East Asians. Toward Chinese and Southeast Asians in particular they carried open contempt; even an idle glimpse that revealed someone as Chinese was enough to feel the malice rolling off the passersby.
The Chinese despised Koreans just as thoroughly, so there was little point in feeling wronged—but when frail humans whose necks you could reach out and twist at any moment behaved that way, it became extremely awkward.
Committing murder without meaning to would be troublesome, after all.
Still, even if Koreans were unfriendly, he liked this city. The population density was high, convenient facilities were everywhere, and there were plenty of places to vanish into. Vampires who could not walk by day needed the night to compensate, and Seoul’s night was more beautiful than its day. Was this enough compensation?
“Well, it can’t match the night view of Aberdeen in Hong Kong, but Seoul isn’t bad.”
He muttered the words and quietly drew in a breath. Vampires needed oxygen too, though not as much as humans. In this case, however, he was tracking a scent. Gyeong sniffed like a dog, then shook his head.
“This one’s got some talent. I can’t pick him up at all.”
During their previous fight he had used a little of his own blood to foul Se-gun’s riding. That blood had landed on Se-gun’s helmet; if even a trace remained, finding him would have been easy. Vampires were especially sensitive to their own blood, so leaving it as a marker was one of the classic methods of pursuit. Even if sunlight reduced it to ash, the ash itself could still be tracked.
“Wiped it clean after all, did he?”
Given that the man was a vampire hunter, the odds were high. That meant starting the hunt from scratch. Tetra Anax had already supplied his residence and usual haunts, but tracking a target who knew an assassin was after him was no small chore.
“Damn it.”
He dropped from the water tank on the roof. Sarhyuk had pegged Gyeong’s VT at around 9,800, yet his current reading sat near 10,200. On pure blood quality alone he ranked among the top ten high-class vampires in Juk-yo’s faction. That someone of his standing should be reduced to chasing a greenhorn hunter would have been unthinkable while Juk-yo still lived. Now that Juk-yo was dead, refusing even a minor order from Tetra Anax could bring consequences no one cared to name. Or perhaps they secretly hoped he would fail. Failure justified a lynching, and among vampires the swiftest way to raise VT was to drink the blood of another vampire.
“……”
Vampirism between vampires provoked the same revulsion humans felt toward cannibalism. A stronger vampire sharing blood with his own children was considered a virtue, of course, yet such gifts were rare; far more often the strong simply hunted the weak. Gyeong himself had done the same, so he understood perfectly that nothing prevented Tetra Anax or any other powerful vampire from hunting Juk-yo’s children.
“But this one keeps ducking into Arjuna.”
Gyeong stood on a rooftop with night-vision binoculars and watched Se-gun. Surveillance and ambush were supposed to be free of the clock; you should be able to strike whenever the chance appeared. Being a vampire, however, fixed the hours for him, and that was the problem. The moment an attack became possible, the kid always headed for Arjuna.
The situation left Gyeong thoroughly dissatisfied. If Tetra Anax truly meant to lock down their supremacy as rulers of the night, they should not be borrowing hands to erase some novice vampire hunter; they should kill the Jinma hunter. To every vampire, Silvester’s existence was a concrete threat. Why leave him untouched? If Tetra Anax intended to issue orders—however politely they called them “requests for cooperation”—to other clans, they ought to lead by example.
In that respect humans and vampires were no different. Or rather, since every vampire had once been human, how could they be different?
“Hup!”
He leapt from the roof of a five-story building. A human would never have walked away whole, yet he landed as lightly as a cat. Shadows immediately gathered around him.
“Gyeong. The target?”
“Hard to say. Looks like he slipped into Arjuna. More important—is the bike ready?”
The vampires pointed to the machine parked before the first-floor shutter. A Suzuki GSX-R1100 gleamed in bright scarlet. How vampires of Juk-yo’s faction—most of them illegal entrants—had obtained a bike with legitimate plates was a mystery, but Gyeong was pleased.
“An XR-250, huh. Nice machine, but… speed’s another story.”
He pictured Se-gun’s bike and swung astride his own. The GSX-R1100 displaced roughly 1,100 cc; it simply was not in the same class as a 250 cc XR. Like every racer-replica it was heavy, demanding real skill from its rider, yet the way Gyeong settled into the saddle suggested that would not be a problem.
“Stay well clear of Arjuna. Blanket the district and wait. Ryeo—I’ll signal you.”
He bit his finger, drew blood, traced a circle on Ryeo’s cheek and wrote characters around it.
“Watch yourself. Remember the alchemist has taken an interest in you. He’s a hundred times more dangerous than that brat Han Se-gun.”
The others, still fretting over Gyeong’s safety, melted into the dark. Gyeong gave a short laugh and kicked the engine to life.
Vroooom!
He tore out of the alley at a terrifying speed.
Se-gun knew that Silvester was giving him special treatment.
No matter how thoroughly Silvester had discarded a human heart, he was not human garbage like Sarhyuk. He was not the sort of man who could simply ignore Se-gun after the chaos Se-gun himself had dragged them both into.
That did not make him Se-gun’s guardian. Silvester was always cold, always clear-eyed, always arrogant. The attention he paid Se-gun amounted to a scrap of conscience and a thin acquaintance—nothing more, nothing less.
Above all, Silvester hated trouble. If he ever learned that Se-gun was fleeing into Arjuna with enemies on his heels, he would not leave Se-gun alone. “Special treatment” meant only that he refused to look the other way; it did not mean he would come running the moment Se-gun was in danger.
Screeech!
Se-gun braked the bike. Silvester sat on a park bench at the entrance to Arjuna, staring blankly ahead. Se-gun had just been thinking about the man, and here he was, out in the open.
“……”
“The stink of blood is thick. How did you find the alchemist? Work that rivals the making of gold itself, wouldn’t you say? Hm?”
Silvester asked without even glancing toward Se-gun. From the tone alone it was clear he had already anticipated events would reach this point.
“He proved quite useful. Truly broadened my horizons.”
Se-gun ground his teeth at the memory of that filthy workshop. The man called the Alchemist—Sarhyuk. Capturing vampires, feeding them humans, raising them like livestock: the practice was unforgivable. He kidnapped innocents to serve as vampire fodder, then harvested the blood of the vampires he had fattened. The humans themselves were not merely killed; every organ was stripped and sold on the black market.
“He also claimed that Father Silvester’s excommunication dates back at least two hundred years.”
Se-gun put the question carefully. He had long harbored a deep curiosity about Silvester. Interest from a vampire hunter toward a Jinma hunter was natural, yet this went beyond simple curiosity—more like the scrutiny of a man who had already been investigating Silvester for some time…
“1727, in Vienna. Nearly three hundred years now.”
Silvester answered with unexpected calm. Se-gun felt no surprise at the open admission of longevity. It seemed only natural. Without transcending humanity, how could anyone keep winning against such powerful vampires? But then—what exactly was he?
“You’re not a vampire yourself, are you?”
Se-gun asked the question that had been waiting for years. Silvester simply shook his head.
“In my case, ‘wizard’ is the more accurate term. Father Silvester was burned at the stake in Vienna in 1727 on charges of sorcery.”
He spoke the words lightly and laughed.
“Heh-heh-heh. A joke, merely a joke. Don’t take it to heart. Silvester is a rather common baptismal name among priests.”
Se-gun stared at him, speechless. The man called it a joke, yet the way he delivered it was as good as a confession.
“In any case, the alchemist has driven more than a few madmen over to the vampires’ side. What about you?”
Silvester asked the question as casually as if he were discussing the weather. Hunting vampires for money was, in the end, little different from killing people for money. Se-gun felt that truth in his bones.
Vampires who were not feral still possessed reason and self-control. They could feed without killing, and clan vampires could obtain blood legally drawn from humans. To put a silver bullet through their skulls and drain their bodies for profit simply because their diet was unusual—how was that any different from Sarhyuk kidnapping people and harvesting their organs?
In the end, both sides killed for money. Should Sarhyuk be condemned simply because he made more of it? Claiming that a professional organ harvester was somehow more valuable than a street mugger who stabbed someone for pocket change was absurd—yet under the logic of capitalism it was exactly right. At least the fact that a person died remained the same.
“……”
Se-gun did feel pity for those vampires. But pity itself was a cheap, worthless emotion. Anyone could feel sorry for the starving and the displaced; almost no one actually traveled to distant lands, raised funds, or ran charities to save them. Se-gun pitied vampires, yet he had no intention of hesitating when the moment came to put a silver round through their heads.
“My concern was misplaced, it seems. We’ll leave it there. The night is deep and the vampires many—best stay sharp.”
Silvester rose from the bench and walked toward Arjuna. Se-gun remained astride the XR-250, watching the man’s back. It was fortunate Se-gun still intended to remain a vampire hunter. Had he shown any desire to quit, Silvester would almost certainly not have let him live. Before Psychedelic Moon, erasing the memories might have been enough; once the body itself remembered the drug, memory alone would no longer suffice.
“Damn it.”
Even though Se-gun himself had chosen this path, the place was a living hell. An endless tunnel with no exit in sight. To fight vampires forever, high on narcotics until the day he died—
Throb!
Pain shattered the thought.
“Son of a bitch…”
Se-gun groaned at the wound that vampire blood had failed to erase. The silver-arrow injury he had taken while fleeing Sarhyuk was throbbing again. To heal a wound from silver he would have to find another black-market doctor. Silver, poison to vampires, did not yield easily even to vampire blood. Pouring enough blood on it would close the wound, but that much blood cost far more than a back-alley surgeon.
Weapons forged to kill vampires proved just as lethal against the hunters who used them. What greater irony could there be?