The Eve of the Strange One (8)

"You should be safe here."

The place Han Seoyeon had brought Akaba Akane and the little girl was a church nearby. The logic of it was simple enough. Just as a police box was the safest place in a city against crime, a church was the safest place against the anomalous.

"Don't feel burdened. Rest easy if you like. Protecting citizens from anomalies is the Church's duty to begin with... and I happen to know the people here."

Akane nodded at that, and spoke with care.

"...Thanks. For saving us."

"Think nothing of it. This is only part of the duty I just mentioned."

Han Seoyeon smiled, very faintly.

"Ask, and it shall be given you.... The reason I believe in the Lord is that He is a Lord who keeps the weak."

Watching that smile, Akane caught herself thinking it. Faced day to day with the earnest servant this woman usually presented, it was easy to forget—but a cleric was a cleric, sure enough.

"Well. From what I'm hearing over the comms, the Holy Knights seem to have turned that blue pillar of fire we saw off in the distance into a kind of base camp... even so, it's a long way to get there from here."

Had it been Han Seoyeon alone, that would have been one thing. It was far too long a road to drag a half-exhausted Akane along it, or a girl who had already worn herself into sleep. And considering the church was already doing duty as a temporary shelter, once the risk of moving was counted in, it was hardly a choice that made much difference.

"E-excuse me..."

"Yes?"

Partway through the conversation, someone tugged at the hem of Han Seoyeon's clothes. The voice belonged to a girl with quite delicate hands, and yet the other hand held a polearm as tall as she was—taller, even. A Trainee Knight under instruction at this church, perhaps. The face was not one Seoyeon remembered, but she supposed that must be it.

"It's just... there's something I need to tell you..."

"What is it?"

The hesitation felt somehow ill-omened. Still, not hearing it would not make the thing unhappen, so Han Seoyeon asked.

"That pillar of fire you mentioned a moment ago... I think something awful is happening over there...! The vampires suddenly stopped being affected by holy power, and even so many of the Holy Knights..."

"That... is serious."

"And now even the reports are only coming in here and there... ugh."

Would it be better to send support that way at once? Seoyeon frowned, turning it over. If even a good number of Holy Knights were being taken down, this could fairly be called a grave situation. Of course, seen from another angle, one might call it fortunate they had taken refuge here instead of there. They had at least avoided the disaster of charging into a killing ground with civilians in tow.

"Um... but, the thing is..."

That small, nearly nonexistent comfort vanished all at once.

"They say Miss Ninomae Hitomi is over there... eek?!"

Han Seoyeon seized the knight by the shoulder and leaned in until their faces were close. Her eyes had blown wide, sanpaku white showing, and that gaze ran the girl clean through.

"Your weapon. I'll borrow it a moment."

"N-no, I, that's... th-that..."

"I'll be borrowing it. That's all right, isn't it?"

"Y-yes, ma'am...!"

Her grip cinched tight around the shaft of the axe-bladed polearm. The girl's hands shook, and she surrendered the weapon at once.

Then Seoyeon strode out of the church, and on the way she did not forget to plunge the axe-head into the holy water font by the door and draw it out again. One deep breath. She set her weight onto the balls of her feet... and threw herself straight ahead.

She sprang onto a car in the road, kicked off it, and leapt again, then kicked from the wall of the building beside her, cleared the cars, and accelerated further still. There was no time worth wasting. She ran the shortest path there was, and a vampire she brushed past along the way she sheared through at the waist, her speed behind the blow.

It was somewhere in the midst of that sprint that someone reached her through the terminal. She begrudged even the time it would cost, but it might be important, so Seoyeon drew the terminal from her pocket without breaking stride.

"If it isn't urgent, put it off until later."

Alejandra. Muerte. By another name, Apostle Matthias. The one beyond the line was her. As if to prove she meant what she said, Alejandra gave a brief summary of what she herself had been told from above. It was information that never left the realm of conjecture, but if its source was the Preacher Yazıcı, it could not be ignored. Yazıcı's mind was a thing she could trust at least as far as she trusted her own nose.

Han Seoyeon ground her teeth.

Vampires that spread on a cough? It would be stupid to imagine the trouble that invited would be anything small. Worse than that was the fact that Ninomae stood in the middle of it.

Even the necklace Han Seoyeon had given her would be of little help now. Ordinarily, petty spirits like these would never have been able to come near at all... but if the enemy no longer fell under the category of ghost, it was a very different story. The thing still warded off lesser spirits of sickness, so the chance of the disease passing on something like a cough was vanishingly small. It simply did not promise safety all the way to being bitten by an anomaly.

It meant she could not expect much help. In the end, the only one who could answer right now was Han Seoyeon. She bit down and drove her legs harder.

Before long the blue pillar of fire in her sight swelled larger, and the nearer she drew, the more she felt a warmth that seemed to ease the heart. That, of course, was never going to loosen Han Seoyeon's mood. Rather than let herself settle, she brought the shaft down on a vampire that chose that moment to lunge out of the pillar and struck it flat.

She looked down at the sprawled body for a moment, then creased her face again.

The inside had surely been serving as a shelter for civilians. Which was to say—though it sat poorly to put it this way—that the interior was packed with the vampires' food. And while the blue flame could no longer do the work of a barricade against them, it still managed, at least, to hide the view. From within you could not see out, and from without you could not see in. Would a mindless vampire really abandon a feast laid out before its eyes and throw itself into some unknown space beyond its sight, with no idea what waited there? On that point, Han Seoyeon was doubtful.

Which meant, perhaps, that the living food inside was nearly gone... She called up the worst possibility, one that was by no means unlikely, and tightened the hand on her weapon.

Passing through the wall of blue-flickering flame, Han Seoyeon kept on. The stench of corpses stabbed at her nose, and she narrowed her eyes—then drew that dreadful air deep into her lungs anyway, searching for the thread-thin trace of someone precious that still remained. Slowly, she turned her head. That way. She broke into a run down a street where anomalies wandered without restraint.

A city fallen to pandemonium. Indoors would be better than out, at least. You would not have to keep watch on every side at once.

On that judgment Ninomae had come inside a building, and she brought a pot down hard across the back of a vampire's head as it stood turned away. A bright clang, and the anomaly's body flopped wetly to the floor.

"Whew..."

"A shopping mall... it may not have been such a bad choice after all, Contractor."

"...Even if the inside of a building is safer, if it's too narrow you can run out of anywhere to flee, and then you're in trouble."

The angel at Ninomae's side—no, the demon wearing an angel's face—said it while keeping watch on the surroundings in her place, and Ninomae nodded.

It had been some time since vampires began spawning at random inside the wall of flame, and Ninomae had been hiding well among the fixtures scattered through the mall.

"Even so, if we think about the faith it burns, it would be better to let the pillar of fire go..."

"No. Please keep it up."

"It doesn't even work on those monsters anymore!"

The angel, Shirase Hikari, had offered the suggestion, and it was refused on the spot.

Heard in passing, it sounded entirely right. Faith was a finite good, and in an emergency like this one had to choose carefully where it was spent. The ambush just now was proof enough. An Epsilon-2 might be the most inferior sort of vampire there was, but an anomaly was an anomaly. It was not an opponent a woman with no relationship to exercise could put down in a single blow on arm strength alone.

Bodily reinforcement, through a demon's art. That was the only reason the strike a moment ago had landed at all. If what they wanted was a better chance of living, the faith poured into a rampart of blue flame that no longer worked on vampires would have been better turned toward strengthening the body.

"The more power I spend on that, the more it benefits you, doesn't it, Miss Shirase? Don't tell me you're worried about me."

"Worried. Well, yes. I don't happen to have a hobby of cutting the goose open just because I fancy a little gold."

If that counted as worry, then it was worry. At those words, Ninomae smiled a little.

"Even so, no. Please keep the wall of flame going. It has an effect all on its own."

Even with things as they stood, vampires coming in from outside were all but absent. Whether the flame still truly worked on the ones out there, or they only believed that it did, she could not say... but they were clearly reluctant to throw themselves into the pillar. Perhaps they simply did not know there were people inside, because they could not see. Either way, what was certain was that the blue wall of flame was still doing the work of a barricade, however minimal. If it vanished and more vampires poured in, even those who had stayed unharmed until now could be put at risk.

"You're a foolish person, Contractor."

"Am I?"

Ninomae went on with an ehehe of a laugh, and, deciding this ought to be relatively safe by now, hid herself behind an escalator that had stopped running.

"Haaaah..."

Only then did a little of the tension seem to leave her, and she let out a long breath. If she hid here for a while, she would probably be all right.

"...Huh?"

She realized she already had company only a moment later. A man, slumped as if spent, leaning against the back of the escalator. Ninomae flinched, then, seeing that he did nothing but tremble and offered no other reaction, she settled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠herself again. He did not seem to be a vampire, at least. She sat a little apart from him and rested.

"Miss Ninomae...! Can you hear me?!"

The rest did not last, because Han Seoyeon's voice reached her from far off—urgent, and wretched, a voice difficult to connect with the woman she usually was. This time it was the crouching man whose shoulders jerked. A sudden shout would startle anyone.

Ninomae put him out of mind, sprang to her feet, and raised a hand.

"Miss Shion! I'm over ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠here!"

"Miss Ninomae?! I'm coming right now!"

She still could not see her, but the voice came through clear. At the welcome sound Ninomae smiled brightly and waved toward the woman she could not see.

"Contractor! Behind you—!"

"Kgh?!"

In that instant Shirase shouted, sharp with alarm. Ninomae heard and whipped her head around, but the body tackle had already driven into her. She let out a pained groan and tumbled across the floor, and even in the moment the man beside her seized her by the throat, her eyes were still lost.

A v-vampire...?!

Clouded eyes. Gums drawn back so the teeth jutted all the more. Those were the marks of so many vampires she had seen today, and Ninomae had no choice but to panic.

"Ghk... kh..."

Hadn't he been frightened and shaking only a moment ago? If he was a vampire, why had he been like that, and why was he showing his teeth all at once now? There had not even been any sign of him changing. But there was no room left to think about it. She tried however she could to tear him off, and his strength was too much. Shirase Hikari clung to the vampire's back and hauled at him as well, and it still was not enough.

Honed fangs drew closer to her neck. Through a stopped breath Ninomae twisted her head, trying to open even a centimeter more of distance, and she took in the sight of Shion drawing a pistol, her face utterly shaken. The last thing she remembered as her awareness dimmed was a gunshot that reached her strangely muffled, and a numb, stinging pain at the nape of her neck.

The acrid smell of gunpowder rose. The finger on the trigger trembled.

Watching the bullet punch through a head, Han Seoyeon let out a shaking breath.

"Ah..."

She looked at the vampire with its fangs driven into the nape of Ninomae's neck. By a hair, the vampire's strike had been faster than the bullet finding its mark. She had drawn the gun as fast as she could the moment she understood, but by then it was already too late to stop the vampire.

"Miss Ninomae..."

If only she had found Ninomae a little sooner... Self-reproach, thick with regret, began to eat at her mind a bite at a time. Vampirization into an Epsilon-2 could not be undone, not even by Han Seoyeon's power. If she had chosen the wrong one to shoot, it truly would have become something she could never take back.

The vampire looked down at Ninomae, pierced by the round, then lurched upright in horror and began to flee.

"Ah. So that's how it was."

Han Seoyeon turned a cold gaze on him. Ninomae was no fool; she would never have meant to stay beside a vampire, so he must have been hiding his aggression and keeping still from the start. That was why she had mistaken him for human. What kind of vampire, after all, hides in terror of a vampire outbreak?

"...Because of me, then."

And in this place there was one being that even the vampires feared. Ninomae had tried to call that very person over, right beside that vampire... and what followed was just as Han Seoyeon had seen with her own ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eyes. Understanding that this had come about because of her, she laughed once, emptily, and her eyes, which were not smiling, stayed on the vampire as it ran.

Two gunshots rang out, one after the other. The vampire slammed into the ground. It was a distance she could have closed easily at a run, but there was no longer any need to spare the bullets.

Han Seoyeon approached her carefully and crouched, and laid a hand lightly on her forehead. A moment later she drew the communications terminal from her pocket and worked it.

The voice was flat to the point of emptiness. But the demon watching from beside her, Shirase, was thinking something else.

That woman. Her eyes are completely gone.