The Road Runs Red
Silvester brought the battered vehicle to a complete stop at the roadside and took up his chainsaw and claymore.
Wheeeeeee!
The Ingram loaded with Cellular rounds had already run dry. That he had burned through all three hundred sixty of them spoke volumes about how ferocious the fighting on this road had been. The vampires, for their part, had suffered catastrophic losses of their own. Even though body armor and the like had forced him to waste Cellular Bullets, the Jinma hunter’s marksmanship had been nothing short of extraordinary.
Simply putting rounds into the places the vests didn’t cover had been enough to drop a great many of them.
“Well? Getting bored fighting on the run? Shall we get started properly?”
He charged into the vampires. They answered by raking him with submachine-gun fire, but even those enhanced eyes couldn’t track Silvester’s speed. Using the vehicles for cover, he slipped through the blind spots of their fire, then vaulted onto a trailer truck in a single bound.
“Jesus!”
“Sorry—but the Catholic priest business is closed for the day!”
Silvester sawed through the vampire at the front who had been hosing the air with an MP5, then lunged and drove his claymore through two more at once. The last of them drew a knife and charged the hunter whose hands were both occupied. Silvester discarded the claymore without a second thought, spun on his heel, and smashed the chainsaw into him.
Wheeeeeee!
Blood and flesh sprayed as the vampire was split clean in half.
Dududududu!
From the side, more vampires leapt up and opened fire. Others climbed onto neighboring vehicles or scaled streetlamps to shoot down at him. Silvester raised a vampire’s corpse and the flat of the chainsaw as a shield, weathered the storm of rounds, then fell back and dropped between the trailer and the cab of the truck.
“Ah!”
The others rushed the truck in alarm—but Silvester was already gone.
“He can’t have gone far! Find him! Hey! Anything from up top?”
The vampires perched on streetlamps and trees only shook their heads. Then, with a rising whine, the heads of the two who had been kneeling to check under the vehicles went flying.
“Ghk!”
They recoiled from the trailer in shock. But the one who had just been calling for reports from above—the apparent leader—felt the cold kiss of a claymore punch straight through his heart.
“Guhh!”
The blade that burst from his back was lifted as if it weighed nothing, hoisting a body that was anything but light. Silvester thrust the impaled vampire out toward those still firing, using him as a living shield. A frame clad in body armor, backed by a vampire’s regeneration and raw strength, made for excellent ballistic protection.
Dudududududu!
Gunfire rattled. The impaled vampire jerked like a paper doll and coughed blood. Silvester worked the corpse’s hands, turning the MP5 in them toward the enemy.
Dududududu!
Spent casings rang against the asphalt. While every vampire’s eyes locked on him, Silvester vanished once more into a blind spot.
“Look out—!”
The warning came too late. Silvester drove a Desert Eagle up under a vampire’s jaw, squeezed the trigger, and blew the skull apart, then seized the body as a shield and poured fire into the rest of them. He vaulted back onto the trailer he had boarded earlier, snatched up the chainsaw waiting there, and dropped down onto the front of the rear trailer—into the dead angle of the ones standing on it.
“Kyaaah!”
Kwaddeudeudeuk!
The vampire whose flank took the chainsaw came apart and went flying. The sight of him swinging a heavy sixty-centimeter chainsaw in one hand as if it were weightless looked like something out of a hero’s legend.
Chaaaaak!
Silvester sent the whirling chainsaw skidding across the asphalt. Sparks flew as it raced along the ground.
“Ugh!”
The vampires were in disarray. That blistering speed that vanished from sight in a heartbeat, and the tactic of turning their own armored dead into barricades, were grinding them down. Even now Silvester was killing them with their own MP5s, cutting them down with his Desert Eagle and claymore. And yet so many of them were dying without landing a proper blow!
“Ah…?”
Before he knew it, the last remaining vampire stood stupidly in the middle of the highway. Blood lay thick as a lake all around him, and at his back stood a silver-haired priest in a billowing black coat. A long-haired priest whose very shadow seemed to gleam silver; the scent of wax that clung to him; a faint salt on the tongue; and the sweet fragrance of blood—it all drove the vampire half mad.
“Aaaah…”
“You’re the only one left.”
The cold voice at his back snapped the vampire back to himself. He had to run. Somehow. Right now he and that man stood back to back. If he just bolted, he could live. It was a gamble with odds.
Shiiing!
Silvester vaulted over him in a flash of steel and headed for his Land Rover. He left the ruined chainsaw—blunted from bone and flesh—lying in the road, walked forward, and climbed into the vehicle.
“Ha… hahaha…”
In that instant, blood began to well from the vampire’s brow. How had he done it? Stories of a blade so fast it left the flesh still joined were the stuff of martial-arts novels, and for a vampire with regeneration such a cut barely counted as a wound. Yet this one would not close; blood poured from it without end.
“Krrrgh!”
The vampire thrashed and floundered in the sea of his own blood. The blue full moon overhead cast its pale light across the surface of that pool, sending ripples racing outward.
Driving the Land Rover, Silvester checked himself over. Even for him, the fight just now had been brutal. Two trailer-loads of vampires, every one of them fully armed—the damage was hardly trivial.
“Damn it. When things go wrong, they go this wrong.”
He muttered as he prodded at his body. For all the lead that had been flying, only about six rounds had actually lodged in his limbs—almost miraculous. One-handed at the wheel, he lifted his arm and shoved it back into the wound.
“Ugh!”
He groaned at first—but even with the arm driven into the injury, not a drop of blood spilled. Instead the bullets reversed course from inside the wound, tumbled free, and rolled under the seat. Like Phantom the Jinma, Silvester was capable of psychic surgery.
Using this to patch myself up… it’s been a long time.
He clicked his tongue. Psychic healing was the sort of thing that thrived in Southeast Asia and poorer countries, and most of it was sleight of hand or outright fraud. Silvester, however, had just used the real thing to extract the rounds buried in his flesh.
“Mm.”
He finished pulling the bullets and caught his breath. Expanding rounds, so he’d expected the cavitation damage to be severe—but putting vampire corpses out as barricades had clearly paid off. Most of what hit him had already fragmented once or spent most of its force. Even so, wounds like these were dangerous. They wouldn’t kill him, but if he kept fighting vampires while carrying them, he could make no guarantees about his life.
Then again—would a Jinma hunter ever cling to his life?
Agni spotted the Land Rover coming on, trailing a thick scent of blood. Bullet scars on the windshield and side windows left no doubt: this was the star of that firefight.
“Impressive. Who the hell is it?”
He muttered the words without thinking. To walk out of a gun battle that heavy and still be rolling—and in a car with no light-blocking rig, no less…
Follow that line of thought and the answer was obvious. Across the whole world there was only one hunter who could ignore sunlight and crawl out of a storm of gunfire like that.
“Christ. The Jinma hunter?”
For all the theatrics in his mouth, Agni kept his composure. Judging by the state of that vehicle, even the dreaded Jinma hunter was nowhere near fresh. And Agni had a surplus of ghouls he was going to burn through before the night was out anyway.
“Hold. Draw him in, then hit him.”
He gave the order and waited. The Land Rover, as if it could read his mind, came on slowly, almost lazily. With this kind of numbers and preparation, it would have made sense for the driver to accept he’d been spotted and come in hard. Instead Agni’s people held their breath and stood frozen. The agonizing seconds crawled by—then the car’s headlights suddenly blazed on.
“Oh, you son of a—!”
Spending a long time in the dark made the eyes sensitive to light; that wasn’t only a human failing. Vampires weren’t free of it either, and the driver had counted on exactly that—he hit the high beams and, in the same instant, surged forward at a terrifying speed. Agni didn’t hesitate; he ordered fire on the vehicle.
“Shoot! Shoot the bastard!”
Dududududududu!
From both sides of the road came a sound like beans popping in a pan. The Land Rover was built tough, but under that volume of fire it came apart all the same. Agni, though, already knew something was wrong and threw himself sideways.
“Damn it! Got played!”
Two reports like small explosions tore down the vampires lined along the roadside in a single sweep. Another shot—and the vampire across the way had his head burst open and went sprawling.
“A Barrett!”
Agni knew the M82A1 Barrett the Jinma hunter favored; the man used the same caliber of ammunition as Agni himself, so of course he did.
And there he was behind the Land Rover—Silvester, launching himself clear with the long Barrett gripped in both hands. But his trademark black coat was riddled with holes, and his long silver hair was matted with blood. The road here had clearly not been an easy one.
“Damn it! Team Three—fire!”
Agni hosed the area with his Caliber while shouting orders to Team Three—the hunters with long-range weapons waiting on the roofs of a supermarket and a motel, the higher ground. Silvester fired once, slipped Agni’s stream of rounds, and dropped below the river embankment, vanishing from sight in an instant.
“Shit!”
The shot had been aimed at Agni. He’d barely twisted clear—but the round had, absurdly, cut his ammo belt clean through. Deliberate or not, it killed his sustained fire mid-burst.
“Khh!”
Worse, rounds shattered in the belt and flung metal fragments into his side. Agni was wearing a ballistic vest stripped from hunters, but that didn’t mean he took no damage.
“Tch. Still the same old hide-and-seek.”
He triggered his fire ability toward the thick reeds on the embankment, setting them alight while he reloaded the Caliber. If the reed bed burned, Silvester would be forced into the open—but the stalks stood half in the river and were too wet to catch easily.
Splash. Splash…
The sound of water. Silvester must be walking through it. Even a monster with a body to match a vampire’s wouldn’t be swimming while hauling a Barrett. Swimming would make noise; walking…?
Still. If he’s watching me from the reeds, walking straight at him is suicide.
Nothing was more foolish than closing on a fully camouflaged opponent while exposing yourself. But he had a direction now. Time to dig in and wait for a killing shot. Agni set his weapon on the ground and carefully sank into cover along the embankment.
Aeeeeeng—!
From far off—far enough that ordinary humans wouldn’t hear it—came the wail of police sirens.
“Cops.”
Any more open gunfire was a risk. He clicked his tongue. For a vampire of the anti–Tetra Anax faction, a Jinma hunter was not an enemy that absolutely had to die. He was a deadly threat to vampires, yes—but he was just as deadly to Tetra Anax. If anything, with Tetra Anax as the mainstream of society, he was a greater threat to them.
It might be an odd comparison, but it was like a young generation that had never voted suddenly turning out at the polls: even that alone raised the danger for the entrenched conservative elite. The mere possibility of change was enough to put their position at risk.
Bang!
The other side, however, showed no interest in stopping. The monster who seemed to live on hatred of vampires would kill them whenever the chance presented itself.
“Khh… A Jinma, and I can’t even refuse a fight that’s walking up to me. Pathetic.”
Agni stayed behind cover and waited, silent, for a reaction. The Barrett made precise shooting possible; one by one, the vampires of Team Three were dropping to Silvester’s fire. Agni counted rounds and focused on sound. The moment the man came up the embankment, he would take the head. He was like a sentry on post. To eyes that knew the dark, the embankment was as bright as day, and the moonlight actually laid sharp outlines across it. Those edges of light and shadow glittered as if dusted with silver powder; you couldn’t ignore them even if you tried.
Rustle.
Then, with a sound of parting brush, the shadow of a man with a Barrett rose into view—like a dolphin bursting up through a silver sea. Agni did not hesitate on the trigger.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa…
It was a dance of firepower that could have been mistaken for a waterfall—except it was twice as loud as any waterfall, and twice as deadly again. A waterfall would not shatter a grown man and a boulder. The exposed shadow, though, came apart in a single burst—and beneath it, a second shadow lifted its head.