Only Gold
Gargamel captures the Smurfs—who, while hardly adorable, can still talk—so he can eat them. Or cook them, or transmute them into gold. That is what an alchemist does. Even if he were a man with no need for gold, even if there were no reason to destroy living things for worthless gold, an alchemist remains tormented by the mission of making gold.
Only gold.
Even if alchemy became the father of modern chemistry, people do not count that as success. Blueprints for film? So what? Is that worth more than gold? And so those who fail at producing gold are treated like bastards.
Pew!
With a rather dull report, a bullet hole opened in Kyung’s skull. Once a Cellular Bullet embeds in the brain, even a vampire dies. Neck twisted, head punched through, the vampire was dead.
When the sun rose tomorrow they would clean up that ugly corpse—the body murdered for money—but Sarhyuk had no intention of leaving it there. People want death to be draped in solemnity. They will admit that killing someone for money is an ugly fact, and perhaps try to hide it. Is that why the world overflows with saints who have nothing whatsoever to do with money?
“Hehehehehe.”
Sarhyuk spread his arms wide beneath the moonlight. The moon high overhead would soon sink back into the clouds, but he was savoring this moment right now.
“Creepy bastard.”
Han Se-gun delivered the scathing one-word verdict and closed his eyes. Compound fractures in both arms, crushed ribs—any narcotic could dull the pain, but a scant dose of cocaine was nowhere near enough to drive off the drowsiness pouring out of him with the blood loss.
“Oh my. A little late for this.”
Sarhyuk put on a show of mild surprise as he looked down at the bleeding, collapsed Se-gun. He lifted a blood collector, drew Kyung’s blood, and administered it to Se-gun. Being the blood of a powerful vampire, even a small amount would pack a potent healing punch. Still, the broken arms would probably need to be set by hand.
Watching Han Se-gun wake up and gape at his own elongated arms would certainly amuse Sarhyuk, but he was not so much of a fool that he would lose all sense of what should and should not be done simply because something made him happy.
No—he had long since lost that sense of judgment, yet he was not a fool. With one arm he lifted Kyung’s corpse and with the other Se-gun, then started back up the slope. To deliver him such a bountiful harvest… he simply could not help liking the human called Han Se-gun.
“He’s a good guy.”
Humming under his breath, he climbed the mountainside until, for no obvious reason, he flung himself forward and flattened against the ground. A booby-trap tripwire whispered past just above his head.
“You fucker.”
Deok-yeon, who had already subdued two of the underlings, was aiming a Colt .45 straight at Sarhyuk. In that same instant Sarhyuk hoisted Se-gun up as a shield.
“…….”
“…….”
Silence stretched between them for a beat.
“Both of them dead?”
“Killed them. They didn’t even have Korean nationality anyway, right?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
Sarhyuk’s face fell into disappointment. He would not miss the underlings if they died, yet there was now no way to confirm whether contact with Kenneth Yang had gone through properly.
“This is a problem. Can’t you just give up and back off for today? I’ve got a hostage here.”
“Ever seen a hunter who cares about hostages?”
Deok-yeon kept the muzzle trained with perfect calm. He looked ready to fire at any moment, with no regard whatsoever for Se-gun’s safety. It was not that he disliked Se-gun or thought it fine if the boy died. It was simply that Sarhyuk was that dangerous.
Of course, a stalemate like this did not suit Sarhyuk’s tastes at all.
“Here!”
With Sarhyuk’s shout a human silhouette arced into the sky—he had hurled Kyung’s corpse at Deok-yeon. Deok-yeon lunged forward and dodged the body.
Bang!
Pew!
Two different gunshots crossed. The moon buried itself in the clouds and darkness swallowed both men. Neither fell.
“Damn.”
“Form looked pretty good. But if you miss, it’s embarrassing.”
Deok-yeon and Sarhyuk muttered the words and moved again. Sarhyuk set Se-gun down and charged; Deok-yeon retreated to open distance, trigger working steadily. Sarhyuk simply covered his face with both arms and kept coming. Bulletproof? By the time Deok-yeon realized it, the moment had already passed.
“Guh!”
Sarhyuk’s knee drove into Deok-yeon’s gut. Even through a ballistic vest the impact should have delivered stopping power, yet Sarhyuk’s monstrous strength was not something mere pistol rounds could check.
“Gah!”
Deok-yeon had the distinct illusion that his torso might snap clean in two. The blow was so savage his vision blacked out and the thought flashed through him—oh hell, I’ve really stepped in it this time.
“Die!”
Sarhyuk ripped the pistol from the fallen Deok-yeon and leveled it at his head. One squeeze of the trigger and it would be over. A human skull was far weaker than a vampire’s; there was no chance it could hold. But then—
Bang!
Sarhyuk felt a round slam into his back and twisted around. Se-gun, who had been lying crumpled, was gasping and holding a Tokarev.
“Get lost.”
No long speech was needed. Se-gun packed every ounce of hatred into the briefest possible shout. To despise him this thoroughly just because, as a vampire hunter, he hunted vampires in a slightly different fashion… Sarhyuk somehow felt like a boy who had just heard something cruel from the girl he secretly loved.
“Hey. Why go that far…”
Sarhyuk laughed it off with easy nonchalance, but the answer came as another bullet. Of course the round was stopped by the ballistic coat and failed to penetrate, yet that was more than enough to convey Se-gun’s meaning. In that instant Sarhyuk felt every blood vessel inside his skull dilate at once. Like the blood itself was surging upward.
Should I just kill him?
He even asked himself the question. For a man who carried slaughter around like a second skin, murder was the simplest thing in the world. Actually killing someone, regretting it for a moment, then slipping back into ordinary life was never difficult. No matter how much fun the kid was, Sarhyuk did not possess the patience to endure this level of humiliation.
But then came the dry whisper of grass being brushed aside behind him. When Sarhyuk turned his head, a silver-haired priest in black cassock and overcoat was walking toward them.
“Oh? I didn’t know a Jinma hunter played favorites with a few hunters.”
“Rather than favoritism, it would be more accurate to call it selective hatred, wouldn’t it? And can I even call you a hunter? Herding livestock and hunting are clearly different things.”
Father Silvester answered Sarhyuk’s protest that way. Yet he showed no intent to kill the man; instead he simply advised Se-gun to disarm.
“Put the gun down.”
“But…”
“Then the two of you can settle it yourselves. Even if he is an alchemist I selectively hate, I still possess enough discretion not to interfere in the work.”
Silvester folded his arms and radiated leisure. At any moment the people who had heard the gunfire and been dispatched might surround the mountain. For Sarhyuk, dragging this out any longer would only be a loss.
Besides, he knew perfectly well that neither Se-gun nor Deok-yeon could truly become his enemies. The coat he wore was woven from Kevlar and Stabond—ballistic and stab-proof—and his strength and speed rivaled a vampire’s. With a rifle, perhaps; with pistol rounds they were facing a monster they had no business challenging. It was the same as one man fighting with only eyes and muzzle protruding from a bunker while the other fought naked.
“Nah. Let’s leave it at this. Greed is the shortest road to wrecking your health.”
Sarhyuk chose the rational course after all. Killing Deok-yeon or Se-gun would have been nothing, but doing it while Father Silvester watched would only leave an even worse impression. Of course, leaving a good impression at this point seemed equally impossible.
“You’ve got the temperament to live a long time.”
“I don’t have the confidence to live as long as you, though.”
Sarhyuk scooped up Kyung’s corpse and climbed into the Hummer.
“Well then—let’s meet again if the chance arises.”
He turned the key. Watching the Hummer’s rear end, Silvester gave a dry snort of laughter. He had no idea what kind of nerve had prompted it, but the vehicle actually carried a U.S. military identification number.
The man could violate every traffic law a hundred or a thousand times and never receive a single ticket. Checkpoints would be easy too. Stacking vampires neatly in the back seat would have been another matter, of course, but with the exterior windows closed—he had fitted ballistic window shields—even that was hard to see.
“The bodies?”
“Tell the ones who killed them to clean up.”
Leaving the two corpses of his own underlings abandoned where they lay, Sarhyuk drove down the mountain.
With a thoroughly indifferent expression Silvester prodded Deok-yeon’s head with the toe of his boot until the man stirred, then hauled Se-gun upright as well.
“Grrr… that son of a bitch…”
Se-gun ground his teeth as he watched Sarhyuk disappear. In this particular case he had actually been saved by the man, yet the image of the alchemist’s workshop burned into Se-gun’s mind made acceptance impossible.
Abandoning moral superiority and admitting that one is nothing more than a feral dog is the unwritten rule of vampire hunters; therefore every vampire is to be killed equally. But as long as one remains human, one cannot simply discard one’s own moral viewpoint.
“You were one of those biting dogs yourself.”
Silvester finished helping Se-gun to his feet and turned away. The cold winter wind blew as if embracing him from behind, whipping his long silver hair.
“Biting dogs, huh. Both-sides-ism? You’re bad and you’re bad too?”
“Right and wrong are unnecessary for a vampire hunter. Is what you’re holding in your hand a legal weapon?”
Silvester muttered the words as he started down the mountain path.
“If you’re thinking of playing the apostle of justice, quit it right now. Someone who burns himself with pitch-black malice is better than an unstable adolescent boy. At least as a hunting dog.”
Se-gun watched Silvester’s retreating back in silence. He was still on Psychedelic Moon, the drug’s effects lingering, yet even so ugly emotions writhed up inside him.
But… they possessed that much reality. At least while there were enemies left to fight, he could keep living on hatred.
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Se-gun lifted his head and looked at the sky. The moon hidden among the clouds was melting away. A night of the multicolored, tangled moon… As a feral dog broken even worse than the vampires, how much longer would he be able to look at that moon while he lived through this night?