She Couldn't Leave Him Behind
"What do you mean, 'vampire'?"
"That's…"
But before she could finish, the roar of a motorcycle engine cut in from behind them. Chang-hyun shoved Jeong-ah behind a utility pole at once — a dead angle against a charging bike or vehicle — then kicked off the wall, caught the pitch of the pole, and hung himself up above it.
"Let it pass once, then run for the other side as fast as you can. I'll hold him."
A motorcycle still carried inertia; to reverse the way it had come, you had to bleed speed almost to zero. Stopping a bike that was already flying at you was hard, but keeping a stopped bike from leaving again was comparatively simple. Chang-hyun finished the calculation in his head, told her as much, and fixed his eyes on the machine. In that same instant his mind went blank. Wasn't that the XR-250 that had, not long ago, scooped his collapsed body off the street and carried him all the way to school?
"No way…!"
So the man had rented a room nearby just to catch this woman — some kind of foreign intelligence agent? But no matter how you looked at him, he had seemed Korean. Hanging from the pole, Chang-hyun thought that through and pulled his body fully behind the concrete. If the man started shooting, he would die; the pole was cover. The shock was real, but protecting someone else only became possible once you kept a single surge of feeling from owning your body — once you stayed cold.
Screeeech!
The man locked the XR-250's brakes, cornered in a fluid lean, and laid the bike's tail against the wall. Jeong-ah, who had taken Chang-hyun's order to heart, sprang the moment the machine stopped. In one bound she was on top of the wall; then, like an astronaut bouncing across the lunar surface, she jumped the house in a leap that ignored gravity altogether.
"Wha—!"
Cold professionalism or not, bodyguard duty or not — who in the world would not flinch when the person they were protecting suddenly took flight?
Twang!
But the man astride the XR-250 did not so much as twitch. He loosed a crossbow bolt at her on the spot. Jumping far was fine; even a Jinma, once airborne, followed a fixed trajectory.
"Kyaah!"
The bolt skimmed across her back. The instant Chang-hyun saw it, blood roared in his skull. The situation was strange, yes — but a man who could aim a weapon, without a second thought, at a woman that polite and that lovely had no excuse. He dropped from the pole and drove a kick at once.
"Hmph."
The target rolled sideways off the bike with startling agility. The only one who nearly sprained an ankle on landing was Chang-hyun, who had jumped down for the kick in the first place.
"Ugh— damn it."
He tumbled once across the ground, then sprang up like a coil and spun around.
"…"
The man — Han Se-gun — still had not taken off his helmet. He simply slung the crossbow across his back. Chang-hyun clicked his tongue at the stance.
Kickboxing, is it?
Chang-hyun himself was mindful of Muay Thai, which posted strong results in mixed martial arts; the thought left a sour taste. On top of that the man was wearing a helmet, so punching the face looked like a bad idea.
"You'd be better off forgetting about that woman."
Se-gun offered the surrender. Chang-hyun shook his head hard.
"I don't know what your reasons are, but I am not taking orders from someone who points a weapon at a woman!"
"What woman in the world do you think can hop a whole house in one jump?"
Se-gun asked it back, half incredulous, then closed the distance in a single step and threw a punch. Chang-hyun faded with very fast footwork and fired a low kick.
"Hmph."
Se-gun simply lifted his leg and let it pass. With Psychedelic Moon still running through him, even a national-level taekwondo athlete like Chang-hyun was a child. Chang-hyun came on hard anyway, chaining the low kick into a side kick. The third side kick, the pivot foot spinning fast to cover far more distance than the expected reach, was one of Chang-hyun's specialties — and Se-gun turned his body with almost lazy ease and let it slide by.
Watching him evade without even setting a guard, pure natural movement, set Chang-hyun's pride on fire.
"Kaat!"
The instant the side kick landed he twisted and threw a back-spin knuckle — no longer pure taekwondo. Se-gun weaved under the fist as if it were nothing and planted a punch in Chang-hyun's ribs. It looked like a light touch; as a counter it was anything but.
Thud!
"Kh—!"
The fist buried in his gut called up a white flare of pain; for a second he thought he would black out. The streetlamp above the pole seemed to lunge at his eyes — his back had folded. This young man was, shockingly, far stronger than Chang-hyun. Of course it was the Psychedelic Moon, but Chang-hyun had no way of knowing that, and the shock was absolute.
Thud!
Another fist drove into the other side of Chang-hyun's doubled body. Right on its heels came the sound of wind wrapping past his ear. Chang-hyun swayed back in alarm. In that same breath, with a terrifying rush of air, Se-gun's kick skimmed past his temple. The roundhouse out of the blind spot came completely outside his field of view; without the rapid footwork of a trained taekwondo fighter he would never have avoided it.
"He's good."
To fight a Psychedelic Moon user this well — Se-gun revised his estimate of the taekwondo man. He had written the art off as soft; this one had gone past it. The way he refused to lock himself into competition rules and rode a practical flow meant that without the drug, Se-gun himself would have been the one on the pavement. But Se-gun had not come out here for a martial arts match.
"Sorry — work is work!"
He shouted it and drove a push kick straight in. Muay Thai fighters used the push kick as a check, but with full weight behind it the story changed. Block it and you got shoved off balance; dodge it and the height was awkward. And for a man whose feet had been sealed by clean shots to the ribs — what then?
"Kh—!"
Chang-hyun switch-stepped sideways and slipped the push kick. Se-gun rode the momentum in and drove another punch into his body. Chang-hyun folded his arms to catch it, but the blow still knocked him sprawling.
"Khh—!"
"Damn it. All I did was waste time. I'm going first."
Se-gun righted the fallen bike and turned it around. He had been so busy playing with Chang-hyun that he had not noticed; with this much time gone, Jeong-ya's ability would already have put her beyond any hope of pursuit.
But would it, really? If she were the kind of person who could throw a man away without a second thought just to save her own life, the clumsy behavior she had shown earlier made no sense. Anyone who knew how to look after number one would never have been that awkward.
"Right."
A hard wind blew in from ahead of him.
Jeong-ah had fled the scene at first — and almost at once understood her mistake. If the man was dangerous even to a vampire, how was Chang-hyun, whom she had sent ahead, supposed to face him? The drug the vampire hunters used, Psychedelic Moon, gave them power beyond ordinary humans and put them nearly on equal footing with vampires.
I have to fight.
Fear rolled in. Why was she such a coward? Chang-hyun was buying time for her even at the risk of his life — so why was she, who was stronger than Chang-hyun, clinging to her own skin? Was she afraid of dying? Legally, she was already dead.
The clan vampires still wore human identities and kept half a foot in the daylight world; she was a pure vampire who could live only in the world of the moonlit night. What joy, what happiness, was there left in a life like that?
She ran back the way she had come, praying Chang-hyun was unhurt.
"Ah—!"
Far off, the sound of a motorcycle. She vaulted from building to building, hunting its position. Han Se-gun, astonishingly, was steering the bike with one arm while pinning Chang-hyun under the other, threading out of the alleys.
"W-what do I do?!"
She checked the strike she had been about to throw and dithered. If Chang-hyun, unconscious and dangling from the bike, fell, he would be badly hurt; he was as good as a hostage in a vampire hunter's hands. And once she realized that the only reason he was being taken was to draw her in, the feeling went past awkwardness into guilt. In the end she had done nothing but harm him — and she had even tried to run. Why had she become someone who only forced sacrifice onto others?
Screeeech!
Then the bike stopped. At a small crossroads one block short of a police box, Se-gun leapt off, laid Chang-hyun beside him, and drew a silenced Tokarev. He leveled it at Jeong-ah as she sailed between the buildings.
"You take one hit and still don't learn!"
Se-gun snarled and pulled the trigger. In the air the trajectory was fixed; a vampire could not use its trademark reflexes and became an easy target. She had already been hit that way once and was doing it again. What kind of head was that? To be a Jinma and still this wasteful with blood.
"Kyaah!"
She went over backward with a scream. It felt exactly like shooting a bird out of the sky. Only for a moment, though — the instant she hit the ground she kicked off and came at him like lightning. The monstrous recovery of a high VT erased the bullet damage in a blink. Se-gun immediately drew both the Tokarev and a Type 54 and hosed the space in front of him like Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow.
"Aaaaaah!"
But she charged through the rain of bullets with both arms wrapped around her head. Pistols of the caliber Se-gun was holding could not stop her.
"Kh—! Not enough stopping power!"
He saw her hand reach for him and rolled hard to the side. In that instant he had genuinely cursed himself for underestimating a Jinma — and then what? The form of her swing was clumsy beyond belief. When Se-gun rolled clear, she could not kill her own momentum; she skidded straight on and smashed magnificently into his bike.
Crunch!
"Good grief."
Se-gun loaded a shotgun heavy slug into his knuckle and scowled. Watching what she was doing made him feel ridiculous for having been even briefly afraid. Knuckle on, he swapped pistol magazines and rose slowly to his feet.
"S-stop it! Do you really have to go this far for money? Against someone who has nothing to do with any of this!"
"Shut up. A vampire lecturing me about money and life — that's rich. If it bothers you that much, try crying about it."
Her face went pale and rigid. Se-gun quietly raised a pistol and aimed it at her. In the narrow residential street, her breath left her as white vapor in the cold dawn air and scattered the wan streetlight. Whatever she decided, she seized Se-gun's bike and hoisted it over her head. He frowned at the sight but did not so much as twitch, pistol still trained on her.
Well. I did think I'd been riding it a little too long.
Ever since the day he had watched a vampire hurl an RX-125, Se-gun had treated motorcycles as consumables. He put two or three rounds into the woman about to throw the bike, then flung himself behind a parked car. He thought he had scored a few hits to the head, but a Jinma did not die from a bullet in the skull. Ordinary vampires collapsed from brain damage; a Jinma's recovery was so fast that the worst it amounted to was something like a concussion.