For him I’d walk in the day and relish the burn, loving the sun as I never did when I lived.

A new place hollowed out inside me with an aching where once there had been only indifference.

I no longer felt hatred for the sun, only a dull kind of envy.

Begrudging it only the touch on his skin.

For three days I dwelt in darkness with the quiet constants of the engine, the wind, and pain, dulling everything around me that faded as my body struggled to heal despite the foreign object that had just missed my heart. A wooden bullet by the size of it. Irritating but manageable.

What would my progenitor say to this? A disgraceful, ridiculous, needless situation.

“Geun.” He might chide, bass voice soft “There are easier ways of getting what you want”

But I have always been dramatic.

I let myself be caught.

At first I thought I was dead.

When I realized I was alive I laughed out loud, unheard by anyone in my shrouded state.

Soon I came to know what bound me, the type of object one laughs about until encountering it, a body bag. Not a human body bag for the dead but a sort of preserving container for those like me, a hunter’s object, something I’d never encountered before. This thing was made of a material that ironically kept me safe from the sunlight (if a twilight state between life and death is safety) that I could still feel through the cracks in the cover of the truck bed as we travelled miles and miles from the temperate coast, closer and closer to the middle wasteland.

On a straight track through miles of empty chemical desert, honeycombed underground with caves, nothing apparent but the terrible sun, I was a fish a hundred miles from the sea, the only thing that kept me alive was the water in the bowl which might be emptied out, drunk by the sand at any time.

I knew where he was going. The place everyone like me held in contempt, contempt with a core of hatred and real fear. The only place I thought I would never go. Eternity has a way of opening one to possibilities and I rarely said the word “never” anymore.

Such a passionate human concept.

So I should have known that even this; allowing myself to be wounded, bound and taken to that hateful centre of torture and torment, was a possibility.

And for what? Spoken aloud, it was a thin pretext.

But I didn’t care. I had no need to speak it aloud to myself, and to me it filled my whole world.

Because I could not go back to V without making myself known to him.

When I saw him my ideas of what was possible were overturned entirely.

I had not known what it was to feel anything until that moment. Or at least, I had forgotten.

I thought living like this, in such a simple way, without want, without need, save for one, had made me wise. Had made me like the angels, above such human desires. I was a fool.

After all I had not yet outpaced a single human lifetime.

It was incredible to find how much of me was yet human, weak and foolish and impulsive.

But now I was yet in the flush of euphoria, joy to be near him even in such an absurd position, a captive in the back of his vehicle.

Lulled in and out of the sleep of weakness that overpowered my desire to stay conscious as I sped closer to my own destruction, by the engine which purred beneath me with warmth and power, almost alive.

Being faster myself than almost any vehicle and nearly tireless had made such transport redundant for me, but now I found I had missed it.

As the vehicle was driven by him, I felt this constant rumble, the heat of the engine in contrast to the cold desert night, as thrillingly as a caress.

Is it madness to know even now, two sunrises away from my torment and death that there is no other place I’d rather be than here? Even as a captive?

This euphoria, or madness had come with simple revelation.

More than the hints I’d begun to drop, cautious, coy marks of my presence, I wanted to be seen.

To be seen finally by the one who had captivated me almost entirely without knowledge, to reveal myself to him, those moments of standing finally face to face, to feel the almost unbearable pathos of his humanity, his determination and focus fixed directly on me, had been worth his inevitable violent reaction.

I didn’t blame him. He can’t help what he is anymore than I could. After all, I’d come into his orbit with the intention of assessing him as a threat, and eliminating that threat if I deemed it expedient.

For hours I replayed that moment. The slightest widening of his dark eyes before he steeled himself and fired.

The sweet merciful hesitation as he took in the sight of me that prompted me to say

“It’s alright. Do what you will” but before I could speak, I was falling.

Soulful and self-aware, this boy was a killer, more dangerous for his capacity for compassion.

I was in the hands of fate now and there had been no other choice.

Of course what I had been sent to do was kill him.

It was several days before I realized this was impossible.

I first saw his face in Pusan, in the street, from the roof of an abandoned house, he turned in profile under a gaslight; high cheekbones in an oval-shaped face, wary, intelligent eyes and a delicate jaw.

I’d been following him for two blocks, fairly certain of his identity, his dark blue hunter’s attire slashed with red and orange at the joints the bright colours - insolently highlighting the places where blood flowed close to the skin- had screamed it, despite the pinkish hair undercut with black.

No one wore those clothes anymore, favouring a deep unmarked red, looking almost black in the night, except for this boy- as if anonymity were something he rejected with both hands. Having not yet made his first kill, perhaps he thought to invite one of us in with such flagrant advertisement of what he was, or aspired to be.

It was night of course but something of his tanned skin and the shine on his incongruous hair recalled the gentle heat of the sun.

This is he? The same age as I was.

When I died.

When I saw the house he disappeared into toward sunrise, breathing deeply at the door as though wilfully returning to prison, a semi-restored Victorian, white paint peeling, the last in a row in an all but abandoned block,

I knew it was him.

Because, of course, as all of us knew. This was the house of Jang Jii.

As I watched his son walking home then and in the days after, I quickly came to memorize his face, his expressions, and the way he moved.

It isn’t hard to remember someone so unique. So upright and friendly and respectful, and yet full of latent power. Violent grace sleeping in his supple spine.

Slim ankles and wrists quick graceful movements, and a narrow emotionally fluent mouth, the top lip markedly wider than the nether.

His face was jarring somehow, utterly unique, I couldn’t decide if he was handsome or not.

The direct stare of his dark eyes, the unselfconscious way he had walked alone through the city… unhurried and poised, sparking with withheld energy against the night as if longing to be found, utterly unafraid to be confronted by one such as me had disturbed me.

I wondered if he knew what he wanted, really. I kept an eye on the house and because of my presence any lesser beings that might have trailed him home were kept away.

This was necessary to keep things uncomplicated.

Overall, my first impression of Jang Junsang was surprise, the determination in his uniquely handsome face and the clear moral strength that radiated from him, so rare in most humans, made it clear why V had kept his maturation in mind all these years. This was no common mortal.

The confluence of the Jang and Mangchi bloodlines was a chilling thought in the abstract, but confronted with the reality of these children the mortal phrase “last generation” began to make sense.

With a chill of almost human fear, I began to see.

He could be the nail that would pierce the heart of us all.

If these terrible human children could not destroy us, nothing would.

It was imperative that I kill him before he could become as much of a problem as his sister.

But I hesitated. I stayed away until I had to catch a glimpse of him once more.

Then I put it off, the confrontation, and I waited, though I did not know what for.

A few days later, I was dreaming of the sun every night.

I woke up in the fresh blue night edged with pink and I was impatient to find him wherever he wandered tonight, part of me hoping he’d visit the district that only came alive at night, the human place I felt most comfortable.

Muscle memory.

In the back of some club, circled by heavy anonymous darkness and lit with the flash of aurora colours, I’d be just another in the crowd, I could see him up close, on even ground, face to face.

Without knowing why I yearned to be that human once more, when I hadn’t wanted that for decades.

There had been no one I clung to, no human threads holding me to the past.

Mine was a lonely life.

If I were still him I could just walk up to this boy out of the night

I was shy then... But I would do it.

My face would serve me well. But without my humanity it's only a mask

I stayed away for a while hoping to shake my ennui but still the dreams of sunlit streets persisted.

I imagined walking with him down the dappled street, trees overhead healthier than they had been when I was alive, no fear no pain, totally comfortable and happy with this stranger in a springtime world I’d never actually experienced, my life was peaceful now, safe, but dark and largely solitary.

Strangest of all was, though I’d never seen it, in my dream he smiled.

His smile was perfect, dimpled, wide and warm and bright as the sun.

I was haunted each night by the lost beauty of what I had come to fear.

The source of all life on earth.

I knew even then what an apt metaphor this was. How what I was feeling was a warning.

How taking that first peaceful step toward him would destroy me as surely as stepping into the sunlight.

But maybe the risk of being destroyed was welcome.

Worth giving up my endless lonely night

And I tried to resist. Really. For weeks I denied the truth to myself. An impossibility, it did not occur to me for some time.

But I’d never been touched by love. Not the love that wants. That dims every other impulse in its urgent purity. I had been loved of course. Though my human life had been miserably lonely, I loved my eternal companions, siblings almost. And of course I loved my maker.

But I had never been gripped by the terrible glance of a beautiful stranger. And it is futile to resist such a touch especially after a lifetime of sheltered loneliness.

Indifference is a terrible thing and maybe I was ready to finally give it up as the only pure evil I had embodied. Even if it destroyed me.

It is incredible to think that a being with 80 years of experience could be unaware of such a sea change working within himself but I was. I put it down to his power; my natural respect for that, admiration even, reluctance to destroy such a promising young human, full of life and fire and sweetness merely because of what he would become. Not because of anything he had done yet. Just because of what he was.

It would almost have been like destroying me before I was turned. Preventative measures.

How rarely those work out. Especially in the face of fate.

It was no different than the way the Institute deployed these hunters to collect us, destroy us if we were lucky, and all because of what we are. No specific crime to be proven other than existing as a non-human.

The first shuddering lurch came as a prayed-for intervention- sixty years since I drove a car and I know that sound. We are breaking down. In the middle of the desert, in the first hour after the dawn of the night.

* * *

Junsang paced, features darkening like the sky before a storm while the vampire lay slowly bleeding, bound in the truck but still alive.

I was outside the cab, tiny in a featureless landscape, under an unreal sky wherein the constellations could actually be seen to slowly wheel overhead, like a vast astroscope dome.

Calming though the stillness was; velvet blue stretching forever and cool dust underfoot I could not relax.

The fucking truck! Why could it not have broken down in the daylight hours?

Really it was stupid of me not to tell anyone I had a vampire in my custody and yet something had stopped me from reporting ahead to the Institute.

I was not afraid really, but I was exposed. Even this close to the vast property of the Institute the rogue V-series, the ones too weak or stupid to survive in the city with their older, stronger kin could be found out here. Subsisting on the incautious of the parvenu community and the few animals that remained, lizards and rabbits mostly.

I had a transceiver for emergencies but hadn’t expected to actually need to use it! I had set the dial to the standard distress call and all I could do now was wait.

But the truck was not the true problem.

I could sleep inside- the prone figure in the back would probably keep the others away should they be attracted to me, seemingly unprotected blood.

The problem was that the Institute was still two days away and I could no longer just drive, ignoring the presence I carried with me like a shadow.

The telltale heart that beat, barely, the dark figure that lay in the bed had to be addressed. Now.

Since the shot, shaking and cool with sweat, there had been a clock inside my brain, counting down the minutes he had left.

I couldn’t put aside the thought of his time running out, this creature who may have been alive a hundred years before the war and had seen kingdoms rise and fall, all his slow eternity winding up to this. To me.

Like it was me wrapped and wounded in the truck. I had anticipated the sympathy for his face, but the empathy for what was once a person slammed into me like a drug.

I didn't acknowledge the look he gave me as he revealed himself which was the real reason the vampire was tied up in the truck as I drove miles out of my way, and not suspended in vivisection at the institute already.

I could have reached the nearest lab block two days ago if I had driven straight for it.

But I went the long way and was now in the old refinery district instead. Traditional home of energy tycoons and newly wealthy current funnelers, luckily close enough to call for help.

The real reason I hadn't sent a message in advance of his arrival ;

He looked right at me.

He looked at me like,

I don't know.

He looked at me like I was a gift from God

Why?

No ones ever looked at me like that.

It reminded me of a photograph of my parents on the day I was born. My mothers exhausted contentment and my fathers bewildered joy.

Is it part of his tactics? I have to be prepared for anything.

Junsang had never come face to face with a vampire. Not alone anyway. What he had not expected was the startlingly human quality of the V-series. Part human, interesting and familiar and part uncanny- strange and unsettling.

Why? Why had I thought I could kill something? I don’t even eat meat.

Closing my eyes I locked down my panicked thoughts. Its done. The hardest part is done.

I just have to remember who I’m doing this for, all of the people; the mothers, daughters, brothers, and sons who had died for his vile appetite. I have to shake it off- to do what I have to.

Like I had described before, this first kill is a sacrifice. Sacrifice hurts. That’s what it means.

Giving up something you want to hold on to in order that it may become something better in the fire.

Maybe his soul can still be reclaimed.

He looked so peaceful laying there, almost human.

What visions could haunt a vampire, dreaming in his bonds?

I stepped up onto the bed the cover of which lay nearby on the sand, looking down on him gun in hand. I hated this part. I made my voice commanding to hide the nausea that rose in my throat.

“Hey!” The vampires eyes flickered open, bright power undimmed in the weak starlight. Like an animal that sees best in the dark

“Wake up.”

He blinked slowly and focused on me. The residue of that glowing look made my skin crawl with confusion and self loathing. This would all be so much easier if he looked more like a monster and less like an angel.

He stared at my face like he was holding on to consciousness only by looking at me.

Desperately, stubbornly I looked back and asked him what I had needed to know for days.

Asking for the answer I both dreaded and wanted more than anything;

“Why did you follow me? Are you .. V?”

Junsang’s heart pounded in his chest... it was not impossible...

In the stillness he could hear his own heart, or was it the vampire’s?

“No.”

My face went hot. I’m an idiot. Of course V wouldn’t be so easy to catch, I looked at the ground, reeling, a strange embarrassment freezing me that this creature should witness my disappointment.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“V sent me to you.”

“What?”

Despite his weakness his voice was clear and unexpectedly deep.

I tried not to look interested, to school my features into a passive mask. How does he know about me? Of course V-series sometimes speak to each other, and yet-

“What did he tell you?” I almost asked about my father but stopped in time. You can’t give away information when interrogating a captive. Odd how so much of being a hunter was like participating in a war. A very broad and yet personal war between humans and V-series, and it always came down to one on one clashes like this. Like a dance between equal and opposite powers.

“V told me you were dangerous. To kill u if I can”

Conflicting emotions overrode the embarrassment that had killed the wild irrational hope in me.

Surprise and anger and relief to have caught my would-be assassin.

“What are you to him?”

“V made me what I am. My Josang.”

The word triggered an unexpectedly fierce protective instinct in me, indignation and something like the prodding of fate -

This was the creation of the one who nearly killed my father, who changed the course of his life.

It might not be V himself… the idea that the centuries old creature that had only spared my father out of mercy could be caught so easily was almost painful now in its naiveté…

But it didn’t matter, this was almost better, to hold something that was valuable to V was terrifying but incredible good luck.

With him I could finally prove to myself what I was meant to do with my life, finally avenge my fathers honour upon the one who had nearly destroyed him and had taken from him the better part of his identity.

The vampire’s head lolled, swooning from the effort of speaking, he turned to the side to cough, when he turned back blood was dark and shiny on his lips. Junsang stared at this, unseeing.

As I stood still weighed down by the strength of this revelation the unmistakeable growl of an engine drew close, a dust trail visible even in the night across the flat expanse.

I didn’t turn though they approached from behind, just staring at the vampires face in the half light, only when his face was lit so starkly by the flash of the approaching headlights, bright white skin, brandy eyes, and the blood horribly red- did I wake from this tense reverie and turn to face my unknown deliverer.

The driver left the headlights of the heavy sand-hauler on, taking a round lighted helmet off as he dismounted it was clear he was tall, wearing a red scarf and light blue coveralls lined with bronze studs - the uniform of the Bitgaram caste.

He walked up to me, muttering good-naturedly, brushing dust from himself then abruptly he bowed, extending his hand at the same time which I clasped briefly.

“Anyoung haseyo”

His voice was cheerful as his young, dimpled face, he introduced himself to me as I stood in front of the vampire, shielding him from view.

Still in shock I managed at least to smooth my features and nod.

“Kim Bitgaram” he offered with an air of routine despite the stark night setting “This is the Kim estate and facility; Yeong-Wonhi Bichnaneun Taeyang

I work for the owner, I suppose you’ve broken down? Well that’s no problem, we’ll have you-”

before I could stop him he peeked around me at the truck and took a stumbling step back, almost falling down, eyes suddenly as big as oranges.

The vampire merely looked at him. Dignified and mildly interested like a bored patient in a hospital bed.

Kim Bitgaram stood panting eyes fixed on the pale face that watched him, unblinking.

“Is THAT a vampire?!” he whisper-shouted from five feet away.

Junsang nodded, feeling sorry for the helpful Bitgaram.

“Yeah. But please don’t worry. It‘s under control.” I winced internally at this blatant lie.

“And you’re a- you’re a hunter?” he took in Junsang’s clothing, eyes lingering on his pinkish hair.

“I am.”

“Then why..” he trailed off, embarrassed.

I sighed. Desert hospitality guaranteed any traveller near the parvenu village would receive help but this guy had come out in the dark to tow him in the middle of vampire country. He deserved an explanation even if it was a random question- at least it served to distract him from the vampire.

“My hair is this colour because my mother works in the service industry. She used to be a hunter. If she can’t wear it black I didn’t want to.”

Bitgaram looked calmer, he nodded in sympathy. His own hair was a bright blue visible even in the watery light of the headlights. Engineer.

Hair is a curiously emotional thing in our society. A mark of class and a matter of pride. Only the very oldest families including mine, as hunters, were allowed to wear it naturally. Most hunter families are wealthy, we are compensated based on the danger of our work.

Pink hair is the mark of service workers.

The lowest caste.

It was really only a stubborn rebelliousness in solidarity with my mother, who did such work to pay the bills, that kept me dyeing mine. Maybe I wanted to remind my father that the profession he’d chosen to replace the old one was not so demanding of his pride. Nor did it pay so well.

Catering is more in demand than the analysis of old books.

Tactfully Bitgaram said no more about it and actually seemed more at ease as he set about attaching towing cables to the front of the truck.

“Its too dark out here I can look at it back at the garage in the morning- if you don’t mind waiting?” he couldn’t help but glance fearfully at the truck but he said “You’ll stay the night?”

Junsang nodded. Suddenly exhausted.

“Thank you. Truly. I’m sorry for being so rude just now. My name is Jang Junsang.”

The slight widening of his brown eyes meant Bitgaram had heard of his father but he only nodded back politely.

“I appreciate your responding to my signal, but are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to just come back and give me a boost in the morning? I’d understand”

Bitgaram chanced another peek at the recumbent vampire then shook his head.

“With respect, I’ve heard of your family. I trust you have taken precautions?” anxiety warred with mortification at being thought impolite on his easily read face before he apparently decided, suddenly resolute, to trust me.

“Please trust me sir. It will be fine.”

As he worked I leaned against the side of the truck. I didn’t feel optimal about letting the guy assume I had my license, but with any luck I’d be out of here by first light, on to the Institute to receive exactly that as well as the outset reward money, and all of this would be so much dust in my wake.

Eyes closed I suddenly wanted nothing so much as a place to sleep, weak as that seemed. Too much had gone on in the past few days to process, and I reflected; getting what you want is exhausting-

Wrrrng wrrrng

A vibrating buzz made me jump away from the truck though the vampire had not moved.

I dug my phone out, expecting Trin but it was an unknown number.

Wrung out, I answered.

“Yes?”

A bright female voice chimed, incongruous with the velvet night. It called up sterile white rooms, rows of steel walled cubicles… surgical theatres… The Institute.

“Hello Jang Junsang. This is Lab A1. We’ve picked up your signal. Do you have a V-series fatality to report?”

Throat dry he could not speak. They tracked my phone… every hunter got one on their eighteenth birthday regardless of whether they had already attained their license.

“Hello?”

“Yes I’m here”

“I think I’m right to suppose by your silence Jang Junsang, that you have yet to make your first kill?”

“Well I-”

She laughed, almost warmly.

“Your proximity to the outer reaches merely prompted this routine call. May I ask what you are doing so far from K-sector 2?”

“I’m hunting” I replied almost calmly, on instinct

“Great. We’ll monitor your progress and expect to see you within the week. Good luck Jang Junsang. I know you don’t need to be told that the Institute expects great things of you”

She clicked off then, abruptly as the call had come it was over. But this meant I was now being watched.

Why had that last statement sounded as much like a threat as a compliment?

Why I had lied to her was unclear… technically the vampire I had in captivity was still alive, that was partly why.

And yet… I turned to look at the vampire who presumably, had heard the entire conversation with his superior senses.

He was weak but he smiled at Junsang. Disarmed, and somehow, because with the urgency of the call this had became much more real, he felt emboldened to look more closely at him.

Lips pale as lotus petals, cheeks gaunt, beautiful as ever though clearly, starving.

Lain out in the coffin bag, arms at his sides, posture disturbingly passive, his hair had fallen back to reveal a beautiful white brow.

Junsang felt revulsion but not at the weakened creature, at himself.

I forced myself to confront the thought that I had danced around for days now as I drove,

I was hoping he would just die before I got here, so I wouldn’t have to deal with this.

I felt ashamed.

Doubt as to what my whole life had been aiming at for the past five years arrested me.

I had not touched him since the warehouse, hefting his unexpectedly substantial body out through one of the ground floor windows had left me drenched in sweat.

Now that he was conscious, I found the thought of it impossible. The memory of the sparks that passed between us still buzzed in my palms.

“Put me in the sun” he whispered suddenly, imploringly, eyes widening in emphasis

His eyes were focused with an effort on Junsang and he gazed at him as at a longed-for salvation

Unconsciously I leaned forward to hear what else he might say, the vampires rough whisper was as pretty as his face.

Everything about him was designed to gently seduce.

There's nothing I can trust- not his words not his calm, pleasant face.

Despairing, captivated and at a loss I let him engage me;

“What?”

“Don't take me there. You know what they'll do to me there.” his words were imploring but gentle, reasonable and not desperate as might have been expected. He still did nothing to resist or escape though he must have been able to, weak as he was in spite of the threat of Junsang’s weapons.

This was to be expected, V-series almost always begged for their lives before the end, but still I was surprised to hear it.

I felt Bitgaram approach, he was silent though the hook up was done. All that remained was to replace the cover of the truck bed.

Neither Junsang nor the vampire betrayed any notice of him.

“Please. Just put me in the sun.”

Junsang looked at the vampires youthful, diamond-shaped face, heart gripped with something like panic.

It seemed he could see vividly that face contorted in pain, wasted with dehydration, those glittering eyes sunken- then empty.

The image was poisonous -an awful waste.

I took it for granted now that I could not kill him before taking him there. Hatefully I considered the very likely fact that because of my last name I might get away with not presenting a first ‘kill’ at all.

I’d never set foot inside the Institute, for much of my life it had been just a word, for even less a word that meant anything to me personally. But always the thought of it, even for one such as me, a scion of two of their most renowned hunting families, had been accompanied by a frisson of distaste, an instinctive shrinking from the least savoury aspect of the business of hunting.

If this is a villain what are they to destroy him in the most painful way possible?

I could not look away, helpless I waited for him to speak again. I had not even reached for my weapons.

The vampire spoke again with gravity leaning up on his elbows with the last of his strength, feverish eyes reaching into me like spoons scraping hungrily to the bottom of a deep bowl;

“I ask you one thing. Let me feel once more, the same touch that kissed your skin and then I will die”

Junsang blinked, heart pounding as he realized he'd been holding his breath

“Don't- don’t be ridiculous”

I was conscious of the third presence at my back, though he was silent out of confusion or embarrassment.

The vampire just went on looking at me, into me, eyes sad and knowing.

A minute passed as we looked at each other. High in emotion I was conscious of the movement of time I felt its presence and its loss.

“I won’t do that” I said, tired, hot faced and conscious of being watched.

The vampire blinked slowly, as if clinging to consciousness. His look was unanswerable.

They did not seem to be speaking the same language even.

Junsang felt twelve years old suddenly, awkward and incapable of responding in any meaningful way.

“I’m closing the hatch now”

The vampire merely nodded, eyes closed in infinite dignity and Junsang avoided Bitgaram’s eyes as he got into the cab of his dead truck to be towed back to the Kim estate.

Later the creature either slept or pretended to on the floor of the small room as Junsang wrapped him in the light silver chains that would secure him and allow him to sleep too.

In theory.

The thought that persisted, where I lay in the featureless white staff-house on the edge of the Kim property, the irritation that would not let me fall asleep, was that the Institute had more to learn from a healthy V-series, communicating in peaceful co-operation than anything gleaned in the painful rending of demonic soul from human body

Annoyed I tried to sleep, trying to cast out every conscious thought. But the words remained, haunting as a snatch of strange music I could find no steps for.

He was half dead, why speak that way?

I pictured unwillingly the boys bright eyes and matted black hair

Why keep up the charade? Why whisper those loving words to a stranger? Not merely a stranger but one who had hurt him, one who held him in detainment.

Is it just a strategy? A ploy for sympathy? Would he strike the moment Junsang let his guard down? Or merely bolt?

I kept hearing those incomprehensible words. Put me in the sun.

The zealot-conviction in his tone.

His unexpectedly deep voice hoarse, his lips dry. Let me once again, feel..

Junsang shook off the discomfort of guilt. He's far older than he looks. He's cunning.

He let himself be caught

It was impossible. I couldn’t sleep. All I could see was the blood at the corner of his mouth.

The sweet expression as he closed his eyes, looking at me as long as possible before he passed out.

No accusation there, no anger, only forgiveness and acceptance, as if whatever happened to him were alright. But why?

The wooden bullet inside was what weakened him, all that prevented him from escaping and doing god knew what.

If I save him he won’t be my first kill.

He won’t be. The deep clarity of this knowledge was surprising but comforting.

It isn’t right. He didn’t fight. He didn’t even try. I can find another.

But I need to do so now. There’s no time left.

I ignored the voice that wondered what I would do with the V-series I had and got up to find a vehicle Bitgaram had left the keys in. I had to act.

The night was deeper now. But not really darker. I found an unattended sand crawler easily and pushed it out of hearing range of the garage and the apartments above to start it.

That garage was a work of imitation prewar indulgence, all fluted and decorated like a temple. Big enough to house a fleet of vehicles and at least thirty of the cubicle in which I was staying. The roof bright yellow with green tiles. No stark utilitarian design here. I hadn’t even seen the house yet. The only thing plain so far on the estate were the houses for the hired help. White and angular and clean.

The compound didn’t even have a fence, it was marooned outside the main cluster and protected mainly by a network of sentinel cameras that Junsang wasn’t sure anyone was actually watching. No one apprehended my borrowing the vehicle in any case.

I didn’t have far to go to find the clear signs of V-series. Bones and fur littered the central valley of a honeycombed rock an hour’s ride from the last signs of inhabitation.

Not that I needed this detritus to know. I had the sense and it burned with the presence of a vampire.

It had been interesting, but strange, to feel the presence of the vampire in the cabin slowly ebb and fade until it was gone. That was how I knew I did not mistake what I was feeling now for the other.

I was running on pure adrenaline now, that and the urgency prompted in me by the call from the Institute. I hadn’t slept in nineteen hours and was now in the grip of that manic hyperawareness that comes right before the crash of exhaustion. I didn’t have much time.

It was probably about midnight.

Luckily I didn’t have long to wait.

From nothing, in instants, I was surrounded. Dark shapes melted from the openings of narrow caves, looking too thin to be human, eerily silent.

Though I had felt the presence of what I thought was only one, I noted in my brittle, elevated state that the sense of power and presence I felt around him was equal to these half dozen that surrounded me now.

The knowledge was not exactly useful but it did increase my confidence.

This night would decide everything. All I had to do was move.

Silent with a centre of purpose I had not felt since I danced in the warehouse as the sun went down, I drew my knife in one hand and gun in the other.

“Wala.”

After that it was a dance. Just a dance. I’d never really fought a V-series and there is only so much practice can teach you, for a long time I held my own, at least it felt like a long time. The hits they landed on me were glancing and inconsequential. At first.

But these were not sophisticated city dwellers, they were not averse to working together.

They were more animal than human, no light of emotion showed in their blurred genderless faces and I was the biggest prey they had come across in probably years.

But I got tired, careless, I stumbled and one fastened his hands like claws on my shoulder, reaching with cold breath for my throat, in throwing him off I was distracted and borne under by the weight of three more who, though smaller, pulled me to the ground easily.

Before I could get my feet under me again my head hit a rock, sharp dizzying pain disoriented me and at several points I felt the sickening pressure of teeth against the tensile, platinum-fibre fabric that covered my body.

The sense multiplied rapidly, and I felt the cold rush of despair- there were too many now-

Blinded by blood from my brow, struggling against the dry ground, I screamed in pure frustration and, as if in response, the weight of all three bodies was lifted.

Struggling to see I blinked, in between the darkness and the blood I could make out the black form of one of my attackers fly across the lighter background of the stone to smash against it with a devastating crunch as of several bones breaking at once.

Stumbling, reeling I gripped my knife though I was left alone, seemingly forgotten, as another dark shape burbled and cried in an inhuman shriek, abruptly cut off as his body was rent in two ragged pieces.

The one who held the halves up as if they were flags of warning to the rest who scrambled into the caves, was no bigger than they, yet strength radiated from him like heat from a live wire.

His speed made the rest look clumsy, and in stillness he threatened, a wellspring of coiled energy.

I struggled to focus on him, dark all around but his face a white flower, streaked with red.

Eyes slits, teeth shining, bared wide in a rictus-hiss.

Curiously, I was not even afraid of him. I was relieved as I sank into unconsciousness. Whether I would die now or be saved, it was over and I would not be awake to find out.

When I did wake up I was alone in the bathroom. Somehow I’d made my way back to the compound and into the staff-house again.

My head ached and my hands were filthy. I couldn’t think. Groaning to stand I peeled away my grimy, bloody clothes and stepped into the shower. I watched the blood and sand, sweat and dust running down the drain against the white tiles as I stood shaking in the hot water.

While the vampire I hadn't decided what to do with yet sat free in the next room.

Wait- Did he? I don’t know that he’s there… god my head hurts.

How did I get back here?

With a pulse of headache that made me wince I faced another revelation.

The vampire who'd saved my life tonight- flashes came back- the moon white face, blood on his chin and hands,

I felt a chill though the hot water blanketed me.

It was him. He brought me back here…

There was a marked difference. They had been starving, the scum of the outskirts whom had scattered the moment he appeared like so many rats.

There was no doubt, as soon as he'd shown up, over who would win the fight.

My ego was taking as many hits as my body today. I lost the prize I’d spent weeks being stalked by, and almost killed myself trying to find a replacement when I wouldn’t or couldn’t just kill him.

Less and less did any of this feel like my idea.

Somehow in the hours of silent companionship, foolishly, in the prettiness, the weakness of the other, I had forgotten what a powerful adversary he was, even if he seemed determined for some reason so fat not to turn that power on me. Even to the point of bringing me safely back within the compound before making his escape.

Dry and clean again I felt both like a giant bruise and a fool, shot through with guilt at stirring up hell in the vicinity of Bitgaram’s garage and the unknown Kim who owned the compound.

Though on the bright side somewhat refreshed by my involuntary nap I walked into the bedroom of the tiny apartment head still reeling and not sure what to expect.

Probably the vampire was gone. No first kill and no captive. Great progress.

But the vampire sat on the edge of the bed, in shock Junsang noticed that his face and hands were now clean. He looked at me calmly as ever, waiting for me to speak first. When I didn’t he picked up a box of bandages, stood and gestured for me to sit.

He wants to stitch me up now. What’s one more weird experience tonight? Senses alive but too depleted to do anything Junsang sat.

The vampire still didn’t speak. His hands were deft and sure, he barely touched my skin as he dressed the wound over my brow that still leaked a steady stream of scarlet blood.

“Doesn't this bother you?”

He shook his head and tore another ready plaster bandage open with his teeth. His fingernails were useless, all cut to the quick like a child's. No obscene claws.

“You were starving when I left u here. I'm bleeding. This must be killing you”

He finished his ministrations and looked at Junsang with something like annoyance. The acid expression on his catlike face cut Junsang unexpectedly, this calm was so at odds with the staring, crazed wildness of the attack. Or, a maddening voice whispered, with the fervent strain of his suicidal declaration in the truck.

I looked away.

“I’m not going to by the way. Kill you, I mean”

His expression softened, unseen by Junsang

“You aren’t?”

“If I were going to I would have at the warehouse.” It was true. Just because I only fully realized that now didn’t make it any less so.

“Oh”

“You thought I was taking you out of the city to kill you?” This bothered me. Even if I were still planning to use the younger vampire to somehow get to V.

He shrugged.

“It's your job isn't it?”

Junsang didn’t know what to say to that.

“It's alright. I understand”

“You understand?”

“We are natural enemies. I don't begrudge you doing what you were born to.”

His gaze was slightly hooded but very direct. He gave nothing away when he did not wish to yet seemed to

cut into you with those whiskey eyes

Junsang's response was cold, this creature might think he knew me, but he didn’t.

“I was born among books. Raised to hide in libraries.”

“Well clearly you read something about fighting in there.”

His light, admiring tone annoyed Junsang

“You didn't even try to kill me”

He looked away for the first time, lips compressed slightly before answering lightly again;

“I missed my window”

“No. You tailed me for two months.”

“Four.” He amended quietly

Junsang didn't think he was lying and a shiver feathered up his back half revulsion and half -what?

“There were many opportunities…You could've done it so many times. Why didn't you?”

The vampire looked at the wall

Junsang looked at the vampire

After several seconds he spoke again, voice even and calm, still surprising in its richness every time he spoke.

“My name is Yeongi. Not "you"”

Junsang looked at him, startled. Yeongi?

The name hung like a banner in his head. Yeongi. Black silk against white smoke. Yeongi. Two syllables, heavy on the tongue, dissipating in the air

It was just a noun… yet it fit.

“Like most humans you don’t wait for an answer before you ask another question so I’ll answer the first.

This is blood, yes.” He said bitingly, holding up the soiled towel he had been pressing to Junsang’s head “The same way a ragged armadillo at the roadside is meat. I can restrain myself thank you.”

“You're comparing me to road kill?”

I laughed though I tried to feel offended, even the vampire’s ivory brow puckered for a second.

“You're wounded. In shock.” His voice betrayed a hint of disgust though his tone was even, dismissive.

It was not personal. He did not direct those negative emotions at me. In fact, under his gentle efficient ministrations I felt, amazingly calm and almost sleepy.

Despite myself I felt guilty. He’d come after me, though wounded, escaped his bonds only to save my ass from some low grade leeches when I had gone out in a state of exhaustion, with one thing in mind, to find a V-series to replace the one I already had.

Why was a question I told myself I’d address in the morning.

Yeongi rubbed his upper lip in a very human gesture as though tired and perhaps he was, then held up his wrists, as if to be arrested.

“I'm done.”

I swallowed. “Um, what about-”

“The vehicle?” I nodded, grateful he understood so easily, in my tiredness not questioning how

“Back in the yard”

His voice was calm, tired, human.

“Oh. Good. And the bodies?”

He looked up cat eyes flat and unflinching.

“I buried them. Save for one.”

“Huh?”

He looked away.

“In the bag. Outside. I chose one that you got before I arrived.” his tone was offhand, tired but the pallor of his face under the industrial lighting belied his true state. Like me he was clearly close to total exhaustion.

I felt awkward. Not only because this V-series had for some reason packed up the corpse of one of his fellow creatures and brought it home (along with an unconscious me) but because in the morning Bitgaram would see the bag and assume…

What could I say to that? He’d saved my life, my reputation with the Institute and spared any awkward questions I may be asked here too. There was nothing to say except

“Thank you”

He shook his head slightly, eyes averted “Anieyo”

I stared at the floor, tiredness stinging my eyes worse than the blood and sand had done, then grabbed the restraints impatiently, the thin silver chains that had failed me.

“These are clearly useless”

“They delayed me a few minutes” Yeongi offered, hands still up in a gesture of peace

Junsang sighed.

“I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm deciding to trust you.”

“You can. Why? I’m curious”

I lay back on the bed and shut my eyes.

“No one would do what you just did in order to only kill me now. It defies reason. And I’m too fucking tired to care. Just don't kill anyone while I'm asleep.”

“The sun is rising in an hour. Anyone I want to kill is way too far away to reach in time.” the vampire murmured

I didn't respond to this but, exhausted, let sleep take me.

I woke again in the late morning. The heat was soporific and the strain of last night pulled at every fibre of my every muscle.

I rolled over, heart pounding as the events of the last twenty-four hours rushed back to me-

Where was the vamp- no, where was Yeongi?

The room was air-tight, no windows interrupted the four walls of the tiny cube that was the staff house.

Wincing, I leaned over to look under the bed. Nothing.

I stood and stretched, still wearing the thin robe I’d found in the shower room last night though my pack lay by the door.

I froze- heart dropping as I realized I could no longer feel the presence of any vampire- had he lied and run?

I jerked open the door to the shower room and stretched out face down on the tile was the one who had dressed my wounds last night. Dark head turned away from me. Motionless.

No-

I dropped to my knees and without hesitation lay hands on his back- it was hot to the touch, I flipped him over, pulling the black jacket from one slender arm, Yeongi was dead weight, unresponsive as a doll.

I lay my head against the surface of his shirt, the faintest pulse just discernible like a clock with a dying battery tapped against my ear drum.

I ripped the faded black silk of his shirt in half- his skin beneath was white as paper and radiating from his chest like a collapsed star was a hideous wound from where I’d shot him four days ago, black veins reaching out like cracks in the surface of the desert soil.

End of Ch 3

Note :

Josang : father, ancestor

Wala: come

Anieyo: no problem, you’re welcome