The Phantom Arrives
The Jinma Phantom’s Viper tore down the road at a terrifying speed. The surface was in rough shape, so every time he pushed the car hard it bounced violently, making it nearly impossible to hit full throttle.
“Hmm. Wilhelm’s going to be pissed.”
Driving alone after slipping away, he suddenly thought of Wilhelm. For a Jinma, his young spawn fretted over him the way a parent frets over a child left by the water’s edge. Loyalty was fine and all, but every so often the fretting got so irritating he wanted to snap. Even if the Jinma Phantom counted among the rare pacifists of the vampire world, he was not the sort who avoided a fight. And every time battle called, he left Wilhelm behind and went alone.
“The kid keeps running his mouth, but well… hmm.”
He watched moonlight glitter across the river, then caught the distant crack of gunfire. Far enough that no human ear could have picked it up—yet unmistakably gunshots.
“Damn it. They’ve already started.”
By his reckoning the whole affair was almost certainly a fake. Yangpyeong out of nowhere, and in the off-season when the place was empty? The best way to hide from vampires was still to hide among people. Why would anyone do something so reckless?
“The conclusion that it’s a trap comes naturally, doesn’t it?”
He muttered the thought just as a police station came into view. It still looked quiet—no reports yet—but how long would that last? This sounded like a full-scale firefight, and Yangpyeong was hardly the middle of nowhere. Heavy gunfire would draw calls soon enough. Phantom hesitated a heartbeat, then drove on.
“Looks like I’m about to enter the shootout zone. Better stay sharp.”
Even one bullet would make chassis repairs a nightmare. He only drove this Viper while in Korea, but a man who loved cars still felt genuine pain at the thought of a single hole punched through the body. He could dodge with his own flesh; the car could not.
“Let’s see—ugh!”
A glance in the rearview mirror made him bite his tongue. His speed had drawn a police motorcycle; the rider was already giving chase. He was still pulling away, but for how long? Police bikes were usually high-performance; even a Viper could be caught. The real problem was not a speeding ticket—it was dragging a cop into a fight between vampires and hunters. That would be pure chaos. Reluctantly, Phantom pulled over.
“Damn it. Just my luck.”
He muttered a line any Korean driver might have used, opened the door, and stepped out. The pursuing officer looked suddenly flustered. The foreigner-phobia shared by more than half the population did not spare the police.
“Ah—you were speeding…”
The sentence never finished. Phantom raised one finger and drove it straight into the man’s forehead.
“Guh!”
“Ah, sorry. Just need to… tweak a few things.”
The wound should have punched clean through the skull, yet not a drop of blood appeared. Phantom stirred inside the head as casually as kneading tofu, and the bone simply parted around his finger, then closed again the moment he withdrew it—exactly as if he had dipped a hand in water.
It was a form of psychic surgery. With it he could rewrite a human’s memories and mind.
“All right. Time to go.”
After the adjustments he climbed back into the Viper. On the poorly lit national highway the traffic cop sat astride his motorcycle, staring blankly ahead until Phantom’s taillights vanished.
The Jinma Agni had finished every vampire hunter in the area and had already turned his attention to civilians. Even a Jinma who opposed the ruling Tetra Anax had no interest in letting vampire secrets spill into the open world.
“H-hiiiek—”
Inside a roadside restaurant that served olgaengi kalguksu to passing motorists, the middle-aged couple who owned the place clung to each other and stared up at Agni in pure terror. A scrap of humanity still lived in him; killing a hardworking pair like this pricked his conscience hard. Still…
“Well, can’t be helped. You’ll have to die.”
He was even-handed about humans, at least. He lifted one hand and the ghouls—former hunters in life—raised their weapons.
“Hieeeek!”
The couple shook so hard their teeth chattered. Agni, half-sitting on a table, grinned and waved.
“Bye-bye…”
The ghouls who should have fired never moved. Agni frowned at them, then saw black blood streaming from their eyes, noses, and mouths.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
An enemy had slipped past a Jinma’s senses? He sprang up and twisted into a blind angle. The ghouls, caught in the dark art, vomited up the very blood that had made them and collapsed, dead.
“Kh—who’s there?”
“A bastard who still torments civilians after becoming a Jinma doesn’t deserve to know my name.”
“That voice… Phantom.”
Agni exhaled in relief and looked toward the entrance. A golden-haired young man in a pure white coat stood framed in the doorway, every inch the elegant young master—and every inch displeased. His face wore every possible shade of annoyance.
“Damn it. You’ve already wiped out the civilians?”
“These two are still left.”
“Shut it.”
Phantom stepped inside and regarded the panicked couple. They must have seen a savior in the sudden newcomer, because they latched onto him at once.
“P-please save us! We haven’t done anything wrong!”
“W-we go to church every week!”
“Hmm. Ch-church…”
Phantom looked momentarily awkward, then laid a hand on each of them. The same psychic art he had used on the traffic officer—capable not only of memory erasure but of broad hypnosis and mental control—put the couple gently to sleep.
“Memories wiped, both of them asleep. No need to kill them. Understood?”
“Hmm. Is that erasure complete? I’d like to learn it myself.”
“Not content with being Agni of the Blazing Flame?”
Phantom laid the couple down inside the shop and fixed Agni with a stare. Those crimson eyes looked ready to devour flesh; they made the depth of his anger unmistakable. Phantom rarely lost his temper, but when he did, it meant death for whoever had earned it.
“Well, if I had memory erasure I wouldn’t have needed such a vicious method either.”
Agni answered with breezy shamelessness while digging in one ear. Phantom rose and studied the fallen ghouls. They were loaded down with every weapon a hunter could carry, dressed in full hunter kit. The sight only confirmed that the entire affair was a carefully baited trap.
“Still no other Tetra Anax types showing up. Damn. Is this a trap meant for non-Tetra vampires?”
“Hardly. Then why would I be here?”
Phantom walked past the corpses as he spoke. Agni watched him with open distrust. That unguarded back, that soft-spoken manner—he looked easy prey. But attack him and the true form appeared at once, and no one who had ever seen that true form had lived to speak of it. That was why he was called the Jinma Phantom.
“Tch. Huh?”
“Hm?”
Fresh gunfire reached both their ears. Agni, who had personally erased more than forty hunters earlier, looked puzzled as he fed a belt into the .50-caliber and chambered a round.
“Still hunters left around here?”
“Probably latecomers just arriving.”
Phantom started for the door, then paused as if something had just occurred to him and glanced back.
“Oh, right. You’re the type who stands by his word, aren’t you?”
“Yeah—so?”
“I simply recalled what you said when you asked me for information. You declared you wouldn’t mind going in first as a scout, jumping into the incident ahead of me and gauging the reaction. I respect that resolve, so I’ll just stay clear.”
“What!? Hey—Phantom!”
But Phantom had already vanished exactly like his namesake. Agni stared after him in blank disbelief, then snapped orders at the remaining ghouls.
“Reform ranks! Team One, cross that road and hide. The rest of you stay here and hit the vehicle the moment the signal drops. Clear?!”
The command was sophisticated, yet ghouls were not mindless; they moved at once. Whatever else, Agni had drunk an enormous quantity of blood today—hunter blood, emergency vampire extract, everything—and he was more than satisfied. A bullet or two no longer even counted as a loss. He settled comfortably by the roadside and waited for the car that was roaring toward them through a storm of gunfire.
Vrooooom!
The vehicle began to take shape against the horizon.
Se-geon was riding when he thought he heard gunshots ahead. Come to think of it, something that looked like spent casings glittered along the roadside.
“No way.”
He muttered the words to himself and kept going. Once word of the Jinma Jeong-ya had leaked, a collision between the humans and vampires who would flock to her was inevitable. Still, even they should have possessed basic sense—would they really open fire while racing down a public road? Yet the faster he rode, the clearer the gunfire became.
“Crazy.”
He eased off the throttle. Se-geon was not reckless enough to charge straight into an active firefight. Dying to a stray bullet would be the most ridiculous end imaginable.
“Ugh!”
He realized his mistake a second later. A man who had been lying in the roadside brush—dropped there mid-battle—rose and planted himself squarely in Se-geon’s path. Taking rounds to the torso and still standing up to block the road: the aggressive stance alone told Se-geon he was facing a vampire. A foreigner in a ballistic vest did not simply appear in the middle of a Korean highway for any other reason.
“Tch! Like I’ll just take that!”
He rammed the vampire full-force with his brand-new bike.
“Guaak!”
The vampire flew, smashed into the guardrail, and tumbled over the far side. Se-geon rode out the impact, righted himself, flipped up his helmet, and immediately inhaled Psychedelic Moon. After years of fighting as a vampire hunter he knew the difference between using the drug and not using it was night and day.
“Grrrr… What the punk!”
The vampire hauled himself over the guardrail, coughing blood and snarling. Se-geon leveled the Glock and answered.
“So… I’m fucking punky. Good night.”
With the YZ-125’s headlight blazing at his back, Se-geon squeezed the trigger. The suppressed round shattered the vampire’s skull.