The Chase Begins
Inside a rundown apartment, the interior was every bit as bleak as the building’s desolate exterior. Japanese swords with cold, blue-edged blades caught the morning sun and flashed. A basin of water and a grimy whetstone sat beside them in the same light—proof enough that someone had been sharpening the steel.
If a true Japanese sword meant only those forged by traditional methods, with folded steel, then most of these were not Japanese swords at all in any strict sense. They were stainless products. Crude imitations that had been Japanese swords only in intention. Still, even a cheap knockoff was more than enough to carve deep into a man—or a vampire.
“How many times does this make, when it snaps?”
The young man who had been grinding the blade wiped it clean with a dry rag, then sprayed on a coat of lubricant and wiped it down again. Proper sword polish—pi-kal, the kind made for blades—would have been the correct choice. But to him this sword was neither ornament nor training tool. It was a consumable, a tool that broke when you used it. For a counterfeit blade that snapped the moment it met bone, lubricant was all the respect it deserved.
“Haa. Looks like I’m heading back out. How the hell did I end up like this?”
He finished arranging the swords and laid out his firearms in their place. The guns were already well maintained; even broken down and spread across the floor, there was little left to service. Unlike the cheap blades that went dull if you left them alone, a rifle was a weapon built for soldiers. Without versatility and durability it failed as military issue—so of course there was almost nothing to do to them.
“Maybe I take this one today.”
He picked up the M16A1. Designed by Eugene Stoner, it was the best-selling rifle in the Western world and, for good measure, the standard issue of the Republic of Korea’s reserve forces. Age did not make it something you could ignore. It chambered 5.56mm rifle rounds—the Western standard—and those rounds punched hard enough that they might not be ideal for dropping tough vampires. Hollow-points, though, changed the math entirely.
“Right. Weapons settled… maybe I should check the bike.”
Se-gun talked to himself with no one there to hear, then glanced at the monitor glowing on the desk. On the finder was an ad from Sarhyuk, offering a bounty for information on him. Once a notice like that was up, anything worth knowing about Se-gun would find its way into Sarhyuk’s hands soon enough. Se-gun was no beginner who carefully scrubbed his own trail; scraps of him were scattered everywhere.
In that case, I’m done being dragged around.
He checked the bandages on his shoulder. Silver’s toxicity had slowed the healing, but whether because of the surgery or something else, the wound had closed more readily than expected. Se-gun pulled on his clothes, packed the weapons carefully into a backpack, and carried it out. At the apartment entrance his beloved XR-250 was already waiting, fully serviced and ready.
He had worried that the last fight with a vampire—when the bike had gone tumbling across the ground—might have wrecked something. Fortunately, nothing seemed damaged. The cowl was scraped, but swapping a cowl was pocket change to Han Se-gun.
“No choice but to bet everything on this.”
He muttered the words as he heaved the backpack onto the rear of the XR-250 and locked it down with a hook. The vampire’s bike had been a GSX-R1100; going up against that on a loaded XR-250 was pure risk. And Se-gun was far from whole.
But Se-gun had no fear of death. If a life without any real weight ended here, how great a risk was that, really?
“Kkuh—”
A throb. Sudden chest pain flared, and with it a craving for Psychedelic Moon. Like thirst making a man want a beer. To already show dependence on the drug he took to fight vampires—that was a warning, proof his body had soaked itself in the narcotic. Se-gun savored the pain and clawed at his chest.
“Yeah. This is about the level where you feel alive. If it doesn’t hurt this much…”
He walked slowly toward the bike. Night was still hours away. Even so, Se-gun already smelled the thick, dark scent of blood on the air.
There was a man who reeked of blood despite being human. He had his feet up on the wheel of his beloved Hummer, arms folded, eyes fixed on the window. Sunset was still a long way off—far too early for a beast like him to bare its teeth. But a beast remained a beast even in sleep, and a blade did not lose its edge for sitting in a black sheath. The man called the alchemist, Sarhyuk, was that kind of creature.
“Kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh.”
Right now he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He hunted vampires for money, but he was still a vampire hunter. Money was the process, never the goal. His mind was wrecked and his body alien; he could not live mixed in among ordinary people.
His heart, too, touched the dark. Even the most vicious vampire would have found it hard to boast of its own evil in front of Sarhyuk.
“Boss?”
That Sarhyuk was smiling was strange even to the men who had worked with him for years—men who had been catching up on lost sleep stretched out in the car.
“There’s someone watching us. What do we do?”
“Gotta be the one who sold us the info. Leave him. He’s not brave enough to open fire in a residential street in broad daylight.”
Sarhyuk said it casually and leaned back into the seat. The words were offhand, but every vessel in his body was trembling with pleasure. This job was the best yet.
“So this Se-gun kid is the bait, the vampires come boiling out, we chase them, and then that bastard chases us in turn? Kuh-kuh-kuh. Sounds like too much fun. Tonight’s going to be perfect.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to kill that guy now? We outnumber him hard even without guns. We could take him.”
“Enough.”
Sarhyuk waved a hand. Kill the human here and the fun evaporated. Personal taste aside, anyone who sold information and then lay in wait this deep had to have real skill. A brawl would not touch a man sitting in a car anyway; pointless.
“These guys just won’t cut it.”
They were his team, but they handed every decision to Sarhyuk and followed blindly. Of course they did—a wrong call that cost him, and Sarhyuk’s retribution was savage. So they obeyed without argument. In the end Sarhyuk had castrated their personalities himself, and now he was bored of the result.
He knew it perfectly well, which only made the frustration worse. That was probably why the brat named Han Se-gun appealed to him.
“Anyway, I really like this Han Se-gun kid. He got wrecked once already, took a crossbow bolt not long ago—and now he’s baiting vampires? A pureblood with over nine thousand VT?”
Most vampire hunters had something wrong with their heads, but this level looked like a man who had simply decided he wanted to die. And yet Han Se-gun finished every preparation, swung onto the motorcycle, and immediately tore off toward the ring road.
“Should we go after him now?”
The men waiting in the other vehicles asked over the phone.
“No. We stuck a transmitter on him. Take it slow…”
Sarhyuk said it and lazily turned the key.
“They said this kid wanted to be a motor racer, right? Looks like an off-road type. Wonder how much speed that thing’s got.”
He muttered to himself and looked after Se-gun. But Se-gun was already gone, weaving the alleys at speed.
“Pretty damn fast, actually.”
“Damn it. Modded bikes are illegal!”
It was rich coming from a man who broke the law as casually as he breathed, but Sarhyuk was purely furious as he floored the accelerator. The sleeping Hummer woke with a savage roar and thundered down the alley after him.
The moment Se-gun and Sarhyuk started moving, the middle-aged man who had been watching them fired up his own engine. A used Tiburon sedan joined the grotesque race.
“Shit. Don’t know if an untuned Tiburon can keep up.”
Deok-yeon grumbled as he shoved the gear in, then caught a light and had to stop. In that instant a jet-black Corvette coupe shot out of the alley.
“Ugh!”
Deok-yeon cried out as if he had taken a fist to the gut. The car was all too familiar. So was the man behind the wheel.
“I—I thought you didn’t care about this kind of thing?”
Father Silvester heard Deok-yeon’s shout and raked his long hair back from his face.
“Who knows. A pack of bastards chasing each other’s tails is definitely undignified—but I’m hardly in a position to lecture anyone about dignity.”
He said it and opened the door.
“If you’re worried about that untuned Tiburon, why not get in?”
“W-well, but…”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I know that bastard Sarhyuk is worse than a whore, but he isn’t a vampire.”
Silvester cracked the joints in his fingers. They popped and cracked while a faint smile touched his face—he, too, looked like he was enjoying this. Deok-yeon slid into the passenger seat and looked at him with an awkward expression.
“I just want to see what the kid does.”
“The kid—you mean Se-gun?”
“When I saved that half-dead brat I had no idea… Looking at him now, I seem to have saved someone truly remarkable.”
“Well, the guts alone are impressive, sure.”
“Guts? That’s not it.”
Silvester put the Corvette into gear and surged forward, murmuring to himself.
“Not guts at all.”
Se-gun looked out toward Haengju Bridge and let out a low breath. White vapor coiled around him and scattered.
Winter sunsets came early. Beyond the bridge the sun was already sliding slowly west.
“Cough—cough—”
He coughed and lifted his helmet. Night was settling in. Sarhyuk was keeping his distance; it would not be strange if the vampires showed themselves now. Of course there was no guarantee they would appear tonight. With this many other vampire hunters out, only a fool would step into the open.
But the way those creatures had gone after Detective Sim Gu-jin suggested that Tetra Anax’s orders carried absolute force. Lower ranks had no room for judgment or choice. Even a man who was not a fool might still have to play one.
In other words, even if they knew it was a trap, they would have no luxury of refusing.
Se-gun decided as much and cracked open a can of coffee from the vending machine. White steam streamed away on the night wind. The can held little; it was empty the moment he put it to his lips. Still his body kept trembling. From the cold? Or from fear?
“Idiot.”
He did not fear death. He had thought about suicide more times than he could count. There was no reason to start fearing it now. It was just the cold. Yeah. That had to be it.
“Kkuh.”
Se-gun clenched his teeth.
Vroooom—!
A jet-black Corvette coupe rolled up beside him and stopped. Deok-yeon showing was understandable. Silvester was a shock. Se-gun’s face went blank with surprise.
“Why?”
“Who knows. Felt like stretching the engine after a long time. Looks like Seoul’s crawling traffic didn’t sit well with me.”
Silvester leaned back against the seat, voice cold. Beside him Deok-yeon sat rigid as stone, still ashamed of having sold the information.
“Heh.”
Se-gun only laughed.
“If you’re here the vampires will get cold feet and never come close. You’re in the way. Why not take off?”
He said it with a rare smile. Silvester, for reasons of his own, opened the door and stepped out.
“I don’t know. They didn’t look that scared to me.”
Silvester rested his weight against his beloved car. Leaning on the coupe’s elegant chassis, long silver hair hanging free, he gazed up at the sky. In a posture bent like a drawn bow he lifted a hand and pointed. After sunset, black clouds were massing across the night sky.
“Call today a hunter’s day off.”
“And Deok-yeon next to you?”
“This one has temporarily become a hunter of men.”
“Eh—seriously?”
Se-gun asked, but he did not sound especially surprised. Even a high-school dropout could see how simple it was: what Sarhyuk was doing cut the livelihood of every vampire hunter. Se-gun swung onto the bike and grinned.
“Think you can keep up?”
“A Corvette with a V8 is fast. You’re not in a position to worry. An XR-250 doesn’t have much machine power.”
Silvester spoke with easy confidence without even looking at Se-gun. That was when a raucous blast of exhausts rolled up from behind. Leading on a GSX-R1100, vampires on every kind of vehicle and bike came into view.
“Shit! That’s—!”
“I know! Damn it! That brat—!”
The vampires screamed when they saw the car of Silvester, the Jinma hunter and priest. Even so, even if the enemy was a Jinma hunter, they could not fall back.
“Looks like it’s starting.”
Se-gun watched them and inhaled Psychedelic Moon through his nose. He should have been used to it by now, yet the moment the drug hit, a wave of dizziness crashed over him. The rebound of that dizziness was pure pleasure, and with the pleasure his senses sharpened to a razor edge.
“Come on…”
Trembling with something that might have been pleasure or fear, Se-gun pulled on his helmet. Distance about three hundred meters. At a hundred twenty kilometers an hour they would cover it in eight or nine seconds—starting now would not shake them. Still Se-gun turned his head toward Gimpo. Curves forced even vampires to slow. And that much time was enough to slip free.