Ch.188The Fifth Entanglement – Vampire Waltz (8)

To make the other person lose interest in you, you need to make them believe you already know something. That approach worked perfectly with the rookie dwarf.

It wasn’t just luck. Generally, those with little experience but plenty of ambition tend to grab suspicious opportunities with both hands. If they succeed, they achieve their ambitions, but if they fail, this is the result.

I decided to wash the suit stained with dwarf blood myself. There was no reason to risk suspicious glances by taking it to a dry cleaner. All that remained was dealing with the taxi driver at Bar Enoch.

“The key is how to handle that old vampire…”

Silver bullets blessed in the name of the God-President would be perfect for vampires and werewolves, but such items were kept under such strict security that even Yehoel couldn’t smuggle them out.

Regular operators have to make do with what they have. The blessing matters more than the silver itself, and melting down silver brooches to coat bullet tips hardly makes any difference.

If such methods were effective, police would only need to search jewelry stores near where vampires or werewolves died to find 80% of perpetrators. The detective packed slug rounds instead.

They were meant for werewolf hunting, but generally, anything that could hunt the wolves of the night could catch others too. A bullet capable of taking down a wolf 1.5 times larger than a normal person would certainly work on a human.

In the Argonne Invincibles, there had been a comrade who could miraculously hit incoming grenades with these slug rounds. That earned him the nickname “Slug.” He constantly complained about how uncool his nickname was.

After Slug died, the name of these bullets became taboo among comrades. He was the first. We all saw it. Never forgot it. Couldn’t forget it.

We were already breaking every taboo anyway, so it seemed ridiculous to even acknowledge this self-imposed taboo while still using the rounds. The detective couldn’t remember why. He pulled the pump. The slug round was loaded.

A shotgun alone would suffice for what he might encounter at Bar Enoch, as it would be indoors. Bar Enoch had only one entrance. Drinking alcohol was illegal, and drinking blood wasn’t a pleasant sight.

Magic wasn’t something the detective needed to worry about. The Argonne Invincibles had used rituals to withstand the barrage of magic bullets, so his resistance to magic was absolute.

However, that taxi driver was clearly older than the detective thought. He might predate the systematization of magic, which meant he wouldn’t use magic. If anything, he’d use rituals.

The Connection Ritual blocked rituals, but there were better rituals for countering other rituals. The detective had read several books on rituals and had even purchased a ritual dagger for research and experimentation, so he could draw the necessary symbols on his arm if asked.

But being able to do something and wanting to do it were different things. The gap was as unbridgeable as that between the God-President and the detective himself.

He had already sold his soul for power. Afterward, his comrades lived like war spirits wishing for the machine guns mounted on their heads to rust. The detective was slightly better off, but not by much.

So his preparation consisted solely of five slug rounds pushed into the tube. He could hide the gun by pushing it through the bathroom ventilation duct of Bar Enoch.

He’d be banned from Bar Enoch. That was his only concern. But that hardly mattered as long as he could keep the truth about the past close to his chest.

The detective dressed himself again. He put on a cool-toned suit like he usually wore when going to Enoch for a night of vampire hunting. He wore a not-too-bright blue to match vampire tastes.

After wrapping the shotgun like a gift in a brown paper bag tied with string, he headed to the reporter’s house. It didn’t take long. It was much closer than that mansion-like place where she had lived before.

The detective knocked on the door. Though their argument had ended, the frozen atmosphere between the two showed no signs of thawing, and they couldn’t continue their conversation. Inside the house, the clock seemed to have the loudest voice.

The detective’s knock ended that silence. The two people, who had been wearing expressions of suffocation, both relaxed a little at the sound breaking the stillness. The reporter came out and opened the door.

“Since you’re here, I assume the informant issue was resolved?”

The detective sneered. The reporter already knew what had happened. She even knew that the gun was inside the long, rectangular package in the detective’s hand.

“It’s silly to even ask. Didn’t we agree you’d stop pretending to be a Clichy family lady with nothing but flowers in her head?”

It was a caustic remark, but the reporter actually found this level of acidity comfortable. She preferred dealing with honest malice and mockery rather than contemptible lies. She smiled back.

“I did leave the greenhouse, but it seems my head has become a flower garden again after discovering winter flowers exist, Mr. New York.”

The detective was a killer. Mircalla could tell just from that conversation. He was someone who could kill a person and then show up dressed in a suit, having such casual conversations.

If that was the case, what was wrong with entrusting murder to a murderer? Mircalla tried to justify it somehow. But even if the detective was a killer, Mircalla was not.

Laura would want that too. No, the dead don’t speak. Mircalla knew that the “wishes of the dead” were nothing more than lies we tell ourselves.

And… she wanted to go home when this was over. She didn’t want this to be her entry point into something darker; she wanted to return home a little lighter, to embrace her lover’s photograph. That was all.

The police had already completed their investigation, so it couldn’t be handled legally. She almost wished, as the reporter suggested, that she had missed something.

Such decisions were usually made by her lover, not Mircalla herself. Her lover had promised to protect her even if it meant picking up a gun, knowing how indecisive and fearful Mircalla was.

Mircalla mumbled. She wanted to speak but couldn’t raise her voice. First she just moved her lips, then she mumbled, and finally she managed to speak properly, albeit in almost a whisper.

“I’d like to change the request a bit, Michael. That’s a gun, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. You don’t need to worry; I can hide it in the bathroom ventilation duct and retrieve it secretly once inside.”

He didn’t even try to hide it. Mircalla thought she might have hired someone she couldn’t handle.

From what Mircalla had learned, Husband Detective Agency was just a small operation in a corner of New York, a detective agency created by simply hanging curtains in an apartment. Though often absent, they generally handled ordinary cases.

It wasn’t just common—it was below average. She couldn’t understand why such a person would be sitting in such a place. Feeling goosebumps rise on the back of her neck, she spoke.

“Let me have one last chance to check. I was… a bit blind. How could I look rationally at someone who killed my lover? Right? So just once more…”

The detective looked at Mircalla. He didn’t blame her. If he felt contempt, it was for himself—for being so focused on reading thoughts about himself that he hadn’t paid attention to his client.

If someone who had been so blind now wanted to reconsider… The detective looked at the reporter. She was smiling with a self-assured expression, as if seeking praise.

At least she seemed capable of giving back what she had received. Since they were working, he didn’t offer words of praise. He only uttered one sentence.

“If that’s what you want.”

After the reporter finished preparing, the three headed to Bar Enoch. They all shared a kind of certainty that the father of vampires would be waiting for them there. Only the reporter didn’t know why.

Mircalla’s perfume had faded considerably. Now if she used magic and emitted an ozone smell, it would be noticeable. But that didn’t matter. She no longer intended to use magic.

The detective went to the back of Bar Enoch and, wearing gloves, removed the ventilation duct cover and pushed the packaged gun inside. He closed it properly, preparing for when they might need to follow the original plan.

Mircalla showed her invitation, and the reporter entered with the detective’s invitation. The bouncer made a harmless joke about how he often saw the detective leaving with women but never entering with them. While the reporter’s long ear tips turned red, the detective responded with a joke as if he hadn’t come to kill someone.

Upon entering Bar Enoch, they saw the bartender the detective frequently visited, who was biting her nails with her white gloves off and stomping her feet. She approached the group as if she had been expecting the detective.

No, she wasn’t waiting for the detective. She was looking at Mircalla. That taxi driver must have used his foresight again. The detective merely smirked.

“Mircalla, your father is waiting. Table 17… and he said to bring your companions too. Hey, Michael, what’s going on that makes Father call for you too?”

“He probably wants to collect all the tips I haven’t given him. Last time I promised to buy him a drink for a medical accident at Bar Enoch.”

Vampire, father… and a guest who promised to buy a drink. The reporter recalled the taxi driver she had ridden with before. He had been something of a benefactor.

Thanks to his taxi arriving late, she had avoided encountering the Clichy family servants. She had escaped being trapped again in that creepy family bond.

The reporter decided not to use the phrase “it can’t be” in front of the detective. Most “maybes” became certainties when she was with him. Except for that one doubt she had before.

The group followed the wooden frame numbers to table 17. It was a table large enough for six people. Without needing to knock on the curtain, it opened from inside.

The taxi driver the detective knew was there. The taxi driver the reporter knew was there. Mircalla’s father, whom she both respected and hated, was there. The detective sat at the outermost seat.

The curtain with noise-dampening magic closed. The taxi driver spoke. As always, his speech was weak and fragile despite being formal.

“First, I must thank both of you. For helping Mircalla, I presume.”

Mircalla was still choosing her words. She looked like she didn’t know what to say, so the detective spoke instead. The reporter held her hand.

The reporter knew well what it felt like to speak to a father one both hated and loved. She had at least had the opportunity to draw a line, but Mircalla probably never had such a chance.

“You talk as if you know everything. Are you using some terminal the God-President uses when pretending to be human?”

It was a blatant comparison between the God-President and the Idealists, but the taxi driver didn’t mind and shook his head.

“I don’t know everything. I just deduced from the fact that Mircalla has no scent… and Michael reeks overwhelmingly of murder.”

“If you can deduce that much, you must also know why your client came here, but you have nothing to say about that?”

He shook his head. But he didn’t get to the point.

“I have much to say. Too much. But it would hurt my daughter.”

At these seemingly considerate words, Mircalla bared her fangs. Emitting a strong ozone smell, she activated her mind-reading magic and looked at her father.

Once again, she saw her own mind rather than her father’s. Once again, it appeared seven times clearer than usual. She saw her lover leaving with a gun that day.

She also recalled what she had thought when the police said they had released her father despite him being the killer. That day, Mircalla had vented to her lover about her father who had opposed their relationship. She remembered thinking that perhaps because of what she said, her lover had gone to confront her father.

She recalled suspecting that perhaps it had been self-defense. She had seen this when she used mind-reading magic on her father last time. The mind-reading magic revealed all ugliness.

“It wasn’t your fault, Mircalla. Nor was it that child’s fault.”

The taxi driver took a pistol bullet from his shirt pocket and placed it on the table. The back of the bullet was scorched, indicating it had been fired, but the hollow point hadn’t even expanded.

After showing this, he naturally brushed back his bangs to reveal his forehead. There was a symbol in a language unknown to everyone present. Though they didn’t know the language, they could understand it.

It was a fragment of the God-President’s words, like those written in Hexenbane. It was the mark of a murderer. A very old one. Much older than any of their guesses.

“The God-President left a mark on me. The mark of a murderer, and a mark warning anyone not to kill me and become another murderer. You know the saying: ‘Whoever harms Cain will suffer sevenfold.’ For her, for that child who shot me in the head… it returned to her sevenfold.”

When Laura shot at him, Cain screamed. Not from fear of death, but from fear of killing someone again.

The bullet touched his head and stopped, and the kinetic energy it carried returned sevenfold to pierce Laura’s head. This couldn’t be done with magic. It was accomplished through divine power.

He felt guilty despite having done nothing. Even the detective couldn’t dodge a bullet fired from such close range, yet he felt guilty.

“It’s because I lived in hiding. I showed it to her at the end, but that action seemed to provoke her anger. ‘How can Mircalla suffer so much because of someone like you?’ she said, and pulled the trigger. If I could have dodged the bullet, I would have gladly done so. If I could have been hit somewhere less fatal, I would have…”

The man, for whom regret and atonement seemed to have become daily life, once again pulled Mircalla’s responsibility into his own embrace. Knowing it was unforgivable, he sought only understanding.

The dance had gone full circle around New York. From Bar Enoch to Littlehold, from Littlehold to the reporter’s house, then back to Littlehold and returning to Bar Enoch.

If the circle was complete, the dance should end. And the moment when the dance ends, the lights come on, and the music stops was so empty.

The mind-reading magic Mircalla had used on her father returned to her with sevenfold clarity. The bullet her lover fired must have been the same.

The angels would have understood the whole story as soon as they saw the mark on his forehead, so they released him. He was a man sentenced to wander forever.

The taxi driver didn’t say this was merely misfortune. He didn’t ask for sympathy for himself, who had come full circle from an intentional murder to an unwanted one. It wasn’t a time for right and wrong, nor was it a time for his story.