Chapter 9: C’est la vie.
Sons of the CullMan is what he eats. Case #1: the transitioning vampire Donghyuk has eaten 524 rats and 1 witch to date; his grape-sized brain’s struggling to acquiesce survival instincts and evil villain wit. Case #2: the serial fairy eater Junhoe has frequent run-ins with witches attempting to amplify Nature’s natural magical disposition. Then there’s little ol’ Bobby.
“You cower like a human.” Taehyun flips flowing locks, brandishing his trusty battle axe. “Let me guess: you remember every meal,” he jeers. Stretched wings block out the moonlight. Flexed arms prepare to swing. Chanwoo yanks the handle loose.
“Bad birdy!” he exclaims. “Die birdy!” Yunhyeong eagerly suggests, possessing the axe to take a swing of their own. The pointy end cleaves Taehyun’s right wing in two, and he lets out an unearthly shriek. Any attempt to fly away is stalled by the twin ghost’s continuous strikes. “Die! Die! Die!”
Living to perish at the whims of the demented dead: C’est la vie.
Donghyuk pummels an incoming valkyrie, crashing into a pile of fangs and feathers. Seunghoon’s barbed spear tears at molting calves. Slices down to the achilles tendon. Skin pulls tight, and the spearhead lodges itself into regenerating bone marrow. Grasping at folded flesh, the valkyrie’s fingers struggle to stall Donghyuk’s rage-induced hunger.
Junhoe’s busy dodging arrows shot by high-soaring cherubs. Two pierce his ribcage, and he all but giggles. Blood oozes like congealed vomit. He rips out the dart nearest his heart, muscle squelching. “Third time’s the charm,” he says, hurling it to strike the farthest archer—and Jinwoo’s out of there.
“I haven’t a taste for combat,” I tell the bird of prey storming towards me. “Too late to settle this like gentlemen?”
“She was my mother!” Mino yells to garner sympathy, but I never had a mother.
“ to .” I shrug with an immortal’s mock disregard for humanity.
Leaving a trail of plumage in his wake, the infamous gentleman Hanbin chastises, “Sarcasm. Dangerous circumstances. History never lies, Bobby.” Mino wears a grave expression—ready for his casket. “Isn’t that right, Son of the Cull?”
The winged calvary arrives to bolster their prince. It takes a horde of 33 or more crows of walnut-sized intellect to bring Donghyuk to his shredded knees. Swords slice through his abdomen, and a half-digested arm flops out for a handshake. Claws yank at Junhoe’s bared teeth, his nonchalant stance obstructing them from Jinhwan the Witch’s abode. Fire runes continue to decimate their front lines.
Hanbin tangos with Mino’s vengeful sickle. Looking confident as always. My partner. Prince. I grind at the false tooth, wasting it for petty sentiment. Are we really so surprised; what’s the point of an afterlife if it’s spent alone?
“I did it!” Nothing changes, so I give another crack at an ex-genie’s last wish-granting pearl. “I wish I did it!” 280 years of swallowing humans whole flash before my eyes; history rewrites itself. Man is what he eats—luckily, I’m a vampire.
Comments