Chapter 40

"L, what have you done!?"

The Baron sensed something was wrong with the demon-hunter. Now that he was reclaiming his authority, he could feel the change in the youth.

Blood—he could feel every wisp of crimson vapor in the hall streaming toward the demon-hunter of its own accord.

Scarlet mist whirled around the young man like a visible crimson wall, condensing into fine threads that burrowed into his body.

With each breath the demon-hunter drew, sparks or gouts of blood flew from his lips, bringing to mind a dying dragon:

struggling, yet still roaring.

"Done? Only what I've always longed to do but never dared...."

Baron's blood-reddened eyes flickered and shifted to brilliant gold.

He pressed his palms to his face, dropped to his knees, lifted his gaze skyward, and loosed a hoarse, wheezing cry—like the jeer of some devil.

His head felt ready to split; pain lanced through every nerve as though two tiny men were brawling inside his brain....

One voice insisted the Knight Codex must not be defiled; the other proclaimed the demon-hunter's law would punish every blasphemer and every blasphemed.

Two fundamental laws of his trades tangled in his mind, giving Baron the sensation of pulling an all-nighter on a script only to have the director sneer that market trends had rendered it fit for toilet paper.

Yet that hack director—what did he know about scripts anyway?

The two quarrelsome little men finally fell silent and stared at him.

One gleamed like polished gold; the other burned like scarlet fire.

They asked, "Why keep living?"

"Heh..." The youth spoke to himself. "That's as abstract as asking why people have to die."

"You're insane! You've truly gone mad! Dual-contracting two trade laws... I've never seen—" the Baron snarled, "—no Old-Blood across the Prol continent has ever done such a thing!"

"Mad... yes... I think being a lunatic suits me. At least no one will call me an idiot anymore."

Baron and Theresa fell silent—not because they understood the Chinese term the demon-hunter had used, but because of the expression on his face: furious, sorrowful, indignant—heartbreakingly childlike.

The Baron all but roared, though he hardly knew why:

"A Knight and a demon-hunter cannot coexist! No one can master two trades! One soul can only contract a single Third-Law profession! You'll annihilate your own spirit!"

The little men said, "He's right—you'll die."

Blood trickled from Baron's nose and mouth, yet he laughed, hysterical and wild. "Isn't that exactly what you want?"

Amid the Baron's and the nun's incomprehension he muttered, "Come on! Keep fighting!"

He tapped his temple. "Right here."

"Hit me!" He struck his forehead with the barrel of his revolver; blood splattered across the floor.

"As expected," the Baron said coldly, "the two laws have driven him mad...."

Though he spoke the words, inwardly the Baron let out a long breath.

Reluctantly he had to admit the demon-hunter's madness had startled him.

For an instant he'd wondered if Baron wasn't a demon-hunter at all, but one of the Frenzied-Blood addicts who'd burned out their minds on drugs.

"Was it worth it? Just for a hopeless fight...."

The Baron watched the youth kneeling on the ground—now singing, now laughing, now raving, now weeping—and waved to Theresa. "Release him. A lunatic has no need to become a blood-servant."

He glanced at his own hands, growing pale and delicate, felt his body turning youthful and vigorous, and whispered, "In the end I've still come to this."

Sister Theresa's hand shifted into a claw as she gazed with pity at the kneeling youth—who looked asleep yet already dead.

"Mister L, I never thought that in the end I would be the one to send you to hell."

"So noisy... what hell? I'm Chinese—hell discrimination, anyone...?"

The youth, thought near death, suddenly lifted his head. The golden hue of his eyes was submerged by scarlet red.

Then, with eyes blazing blood-red, Baron dodged Sister Theresa's surprise attack and, without a word, leapt into the blood pool!

"Stop him! Stop him!"

Terror surged in the Baron's heart. He screamed orders at Theresa, but it was already too late.

In the space of a single sentence the blood pool was sucked dry—as if a pump had been dropped in—revealing bones at the bottom.

The youth stood at the pool's center. Moonlight poured down; his black clothes billowed; bloody light streamed from his eyes.

He tilted his head back, revealed two sharp fangs, and said softly to the Baron below the altar, "Hey—time's running out."

"You monster," the Baron whispered, trembling.

Never before had there been such a thing—a dual-profession enforcer—yet here he stood! A sense of absurd unreality made both onlookers gasp. Theresa prayed devoutly, "A miracle of the Blood God."

"My efforts have nothing to do with any god!"

Like an arrow loosed from a fully drawn bow, the youth shot forward—descending from the sky—blood and fire, unstoppable!

Theresa, trying to block him, was blasted aside by a single punch.

This time nothing hindered Constantine. He passed through the blood wall like a hunting hawk, appearing instantly at the Baron's side.

The Baron did not hesitate, accelerating his absorption of the vampire corpse.

Fists pounded again and again against the crimson barrier rising anew around him, sending out strange ripples of blood.

Still he could not break through!

The Baron laughed coldly within the shield. "Too late. When I become Viscount... even your unprecedented dual profession will be useless!"

But Constantine did not falter. As though struck by a thought, he looked toward the mutilated vampire body on the cross—dragon eyes and blood eyes overlapped into a cross.

The blood-path demon-hunter's initiation rite was not yet complete. It called for a vampire corpse... but had never specified how to use it....

Baron glanced at the Baron wreathed in blood-light and realized he could not stop the rite once begun. The little men voiced a mad idea....

The Baron saw the demon-hunter smile.

Fear seized him—terror like he had never known flooded in.

"L! What are you doing!?"

"What else could I do!"

Demon-hunter L—Dragon-Knight Constantine—looked at the corpse hanging on the cross and wiped blood from his lip.

"Of course—snatch the dish!"

The moment the words left his mouth, flames compressed beneath his feet and detonated, hurling him toward the cross!

The demon-hunter blazed, instantly igniting the vampire remains. The smell of roasted meat filled the hall.

Under Theresa's and the Baron's horrified stares, under the little men's echo of [Eat it], driven by an uncontrollable hunger rising in his gut—

Baron Constantine clutched the vampire corpse and began to devour it!!!

"Madman! You absolute madman!!"

The Baron watched in terror: as the demon-hunter feasted, the vampire corpse dwindled and the surging power within him melted away!

He tried to call Theresa, but the nun was still reeling from the demon-hunter's earlier blow.

He tried to stop Baron, yet the rite, once begun, could not be interrupted; the barrier that had protected him now trapped him in place.

He could only watch as Baron, like a starving beast, wolfed down every last scrap of the vampire corpse!

The barrier vanished. The Baron collapsed, reverting with the loss of his power source to the bloated man he had been, writhing like a seal flopping ashore.

Baron, wiping his mouth, dropped from the cross and stood calmly before the now-powerless Baron. He tugged the blood-soaked kerchief from the Baron's breast and dabbed his lips.

A moment of silence, then he said mildly, "A bit stringy."

Those words snapped the Baron's last thread of composure.

"You maniac!!!"

The Baron screamed, driving the cross like a stake—but the cross, like Theresa's earlier blade, lodged against the muzzle of a gun.

This time no flame emerged; instead blood condensed along the cross-barrel into a crimson blade.

Constantine raised the gun in both hands, crossed blades descending from above, right to left, piercing the Baron's skull and left shoulder.

Fire and blood intertwined—a brutal, brilliant cross.

But the crucified was not Christ; it was the Baron.

"Why... why go so far for people who have nothing to do with you... I know... you're not a good man...."

The Baron heard his own bones crack, felt the vampire power ebbing, and gathered his last strength to speak.

"But I'm not a bad man either," the demon-hunter replied quietly, eyes shifting between blood and flame.

"But if you really want a reason why I've come this far..."

He bent to the Baron's ear and whispered, "It's simply for the rage in my heart, the injustice I can't abide... and the innocence of one girl."

He pulled the trigger. The fiery sword plunged in; the gun-blade withdrew; the body fell with a hollow echo.

Then he turned to Theresa, to the nuns stepping from every corner of the hall—all familiar faces from the Crimson Cathedral. Mondra village, it seemed, had long since been infiltrated by the Blue-Blood nuns.

Twin guns became twin blades; fire and blood flowed along them into keen edges.

Like a god nodding in benediction, he said, "Come then. I will grant you the punishment you deserve."