Part Five: Moonlight Boy

He remembered the heat and claws of light raking through the dark. Chris lay in a smoldering ruin on the floor of a hagwon classroom, unmoving and staring at the night sky. He thought that it should have been a clear aquamarine with intense white specks that were stars.

 

 

Chris had the vague sense he was remembering the past.

 

“ Upsy daisy!” Jack took Chris by the throat again, partly because if he took the boy by the hospital gown that burnt flimsy material would fall apart. Bits of it were already floating past Chris's bare legs to the floor. The boy was dazed but somewhat conscious. As Jack studied his face, a flash of crimson seared through Chris's eyes and his features briefly contorted into a look of mild outrage. Then both color and expression were gone, as though someone else had skipped in and out of Chris's body. The boy himself seemed to be far away, oblivious to the falling bits of burning plaster.

 

 

“ 'Tsk. That's what happens when a vampire doesn't drink blood,'” said Jack. Their healing rate was extraordinarily faster than that of any human, but it was a snail's pace compared to what Chris should be capable of. “ 'What a lot of trouble you are.'”

 

He took Chris back to the hospital before the police and firemen arrived. Chris was dumped in bed and covered with a sheet before Jack went foraging through the hospital. He hadn't a clue as to where they kept extra hospital clothes, so this could be a long search. Thankfully the lack of busy hallways and a bare staff made it easy for him to explore. It was a rare, quiet night in that hospital.

 

 

It was here in this place that Jack detested his powerful sense of smell. There was blood, yes, plenty of it, but half of it was frozen or stale, still lingering in the walls and floor despite high-grade cleaners. Then there was the stench of decay and foul body odors as biological functions failed. Nose-cringing smells of metal were heavy thanks to the machines that kept the dying alive for moments longer. It ruined Jack's appetite more than anything else.

 

 

He found an extra hospital gown and the freezer where they kept stores of blood, but this hospital was strict about its security. An alarm would go off if the lock and doors were tampered with. Jack shrugged it off since Chris didn't necessarily need blood, it was just more convenient. Instead of breaking into their blood bank, Jack made a stop by the hospital cafeteria and went through their supplies.

 

 

...What's this? On his way back, Jack detected a strange smell in different parts of the hospital. It was both chemical and biological in nature, as though a patient was being soaked in medicines to keep them alive. It would be hard to say where the source was. The scent was fresh in some places and dull in others, sometimes in the same place at once. Jack supposed he could find the source still if he tried, but he wasn't interested.

 

Close to Chris's room, Jack was stopped by a weak thump in another. He backed up a step and looked through a narrow opening in one door. It looked like an older teenage boy had somehow fallen out of bed, failing to wake the other patient sleeping on the other side of a curtain. The boy was making a rather valiant effort to rise, but he was all skin and bones that weighed him down. Even his head was like a stone that hung close to the ground, forcing his shoulders to rise like the skeleton of wings trying to emerge. At any moment the boy's skin and hospital outfit was going to tear apart so the wings could piece through and stretch wide.

 

 

It was a failure. The boy's shoulders slumped and he sprawled flat on the floor. His head lolled about in tired despair, and suddenly the sight of Jack outside the door swung into his range of vision. Kang-dae drew in a sharp breath to see the huge, sinister figure staring at him from the hallway. He recognized the dark eye that had stared at him through the door's window.

 

 

Jack smiled and raised a finger to his lips. It was a silent gesture for Kang-dae to keep quiet, but Jack didn't care if he did or not. He performed the gesture for the sake of a whim. The boy whose name he had yet to know had a strange but familiar smell coming from him. Kang-dae wasn't growing worse because of a disease or in fact any kind of imaginable sickness. Someone had deliberately used various means to wreck his health to the point where it could only crumble on its own from now on. It hadn't needed any help to decline for a while.

 

 

The sudden urge to play vanished when Jack sensed someone approaching. He swept quickly into the closest room and left the door slightly ajar. He ignored Kang-dae's scrabble to get away from him, then peer at the menacing figure over the surface of the bed.

Jack heard a man greet a nurse, who addressed him as 'Dr. Yoo'.

 

“ 'Him again,'” Jack said softly. By now he was aware that Dr. Yoo In-su was a surgeon, and his duties with Chris should have long since been done. The boy no longer needed surgery and he was no longer recovering from it. There was absolutely no reason that a surgeon should be visiting his room almost twice daily.

 

 

Jack could smell traces of Chris's blood on Dr. Yoo. That man had been in the presence of that blood for prolonged periods of time since Chris entered the hospital, and the scent was heaviest at the pockets of Dr. Yoo's clothes. Had he been stealing samples using Chris's health as an excuse? That would be simple enough. In less than perfect condition, and after years of a ordinary, uneventful life, the boy had no sense of danger. Like most people he would instantly trust anyone, especially a doctor, to some degree.

 

 

It stood to reason that Jack should do something, but like the matter with the bloodbank there was no need. If Dr. Yoo knew the existence of vampires, and mind you the real ones and not the false Draculas that claimed to be kings of the night, then he should know. It was dangerous to try and fool around with the next step of human evolution, the greatest of all natural predators. Chris would develop very different instincts towards danger soon enough.