Chapter 74

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Like a rich wine, the night undoubtedly held something that intoxicated people.

The darkness, the deserted streets, the strange sense that something was amiss, the gentle moonlight—all these quietly drew up the filthy desires buried deep within the human heart.

And so, many became addicted to the night itself. Like nocturnal creatures, they came alive only after dark.

The people heading to the theater called the Rose Garden were of that sort. Their clothes were formal and their manners courteous, but their unsettling smiles betrayed impure desires.

And, strangely enough, every one of them was young and handsome or beautiful. Even the oldest looked no older than their early twenties.

Ricard and Ice could easily have blended in among them, yet for some reason they felt out of place.

Perhaps it was like belonging to a different species despite looking alike. They felt as though the others might discover that difference at any moment.

Bright light greeted them as they entered the building. For a moment, they almost forgot it was night.

An usher as neatly dressed as the audience was checking invitations. His skin was pale and his eyes blood-red, as though he were openly announcing that he was a vampire.

But the patrons paid it no mind, perhaps assuming it was makeup or part of the theme.

When Ricard handed over his invitation, the usher grinned, baring his fangs.

"Welcome, traveler. Enjoy the performance."

Dressed in a black cloak and top hat, Ricard lifted his hat slightly in greeting and acknowledgment.

Beyond the usher hung a curtain. They pushed it aside and entered, and this time thick darkness seemed to swallow them whole.

Only a thin sliver of light through the curtain behind them faintly illuminated the interior, revealing an enormous theater. Yet there were fewer seats than they had expected.

The seating kept everyone well apart except for those who had arrived together. A curtain concealed the stage, where preparations for the performance seemed to be underway.

Ricard and Ice found suitable seats and looked around. Wet smacking sounds reached them from the darkness.

Wondering whether someone was eating, Ricard looked over, only to find men and women making out all around them. He was beyond bewildered; he was profoundly shocked, his eyes widening. What was this? Were they animals?

Perhaps because he came from the conservative inland regions, the coastal city's uninhibited sexual culture left Ricard speechless. He even felt a degree of hostility.

What shocked him still more was that men were doing it with men, and women with women.

"I think we've come to the wrong place."

Ice spoke. Commission or not, he too seemed to feel that they did not belong here. Vampires did not frighten him, yet this alien culture was more than he could handle.

In an age without advanced transport or communications, encountering another culture was scarcely different from encountering aliens.

Even people from different towns within the north felt that way about one another. Those from far away could hardly seem anything but stranger still.

The smacking sounds all around them grew louder and more frequent, until simply sitting there became an ordeal.

Just as Ricard was seriously considering leaving, the curtain concealing the stage thankfully opened.

Then came the beautiful sound of a harp.

The gentle caress of its strings captured his ears at once. Special lanterns illuminated the stage from below.

A man in a skin-tight costume and a crown of flowers soon bounded out as lightly as a butterfly.

He struck a series of graceful poses, as though flaunting his perfect physique, then addressed the audience.

"When God created the world, in the beginning there was paradise. Behold the man and woman walking there."

Then he bounded lightly off the stage again.

Wooden scenery painted with bushes and trees appeared onstage, and a male and female actor emerged and began to perform. Incidentally, both these actors and the man who had appeared first were vampires.

They recited their lines with grand exclamations of "O!" and such. Anyone could tell that the play depicted scripture. But how could vampires dare perform it?

That aside, this was Ricard's first time seeing acting, and it was astonishingly new and striking.

The scenery was crude and the dialogue stiffly formal, yet he felt as though he had traveled back in time to witness the beginning of the world.

For the vampires were quite literally pouring their hearts and souls into their performance.

As the play continued, a tremendous sound effect erupted, like someone striking a great metal platter. It was like hearing thunder crash right in front of them.

KRA-KABOOM!

"Ah!"

"Eek!"

The audience gasped in surprise. Ricard, utterly absorbed in the play, flinched too.

Then came the scene in which the first man and woman learned of good and evil and were expelled from paradise.

Afterward, an acrobatic performance began out of nowhere, as though to relieve the audience's tension.

A female vampire on a trapeze suspended from the high ceiling swept back and forth above their heads. Then she sprang across to the performer swinging toward her from the other side.

"Wow!"

"Ooooh!"

The audience was completely captivated by the play and acrobatics, intent on enjoying every moment. Ricard, however, found the acrobatics rather dull.

"Why don't they just get on with the play? What's the point of this?"

"Riki, don't forget our commission."

Ice's reminder earned a nod from Ricard. He was not as entranced as the rest of the audience, but in all honesty, the play had impressed him.

After the trapeze act, they bound a female vampire's limbs to a large board, and a knife thrower came out and began flinging daggers at her.

The audience watched with bated breath as the daggers landed with exquisite precision beside her face or between her legs. Then the knife thrower addressed them.

"Do we have any volunteers?"

Ricard wondered who would volunteer for that nonsense, but to his surprise, hands went up all over the theater. Most belonged to women.

"Me! Me!"

"Pick me, Adam!"

The vampire came down into the audience himself, selected a volunteer, and led her onto the stage. The audience applauded delightedly as her limbs were bound to the wooden board.

Sharp daggers flew toward the woman. One, two, three, and then—

WHOOSH! THUNK!

A dagger struck her squarely in the heart, driven so deep that only the hilt remained visible. The audience froze. The knife thrower made a playful, clownish face that said, Oops.

Then, with a clunk, the entire board flipped over. The dagger in her heart had vanished without a trace. Only then did the audience applaud in relief.

"They switched the women. Did you notice?"

Ricard spoke to Ice. The woman from a moment ago really was dead. In a split second, another woman had assumed her appearance and taken her place. And this new woman was a vampire.

The vampire escorted her back to her seat, but the man who had come with her did not seem to notice. No—he seemed to know and simply not care.

Ricard understood instinctively. That bastard was a vampire's slave.

Vampire slaves were humans who served vampires as their masters.

The female vampire sitting in the original woman's place turned toward Ricard and Ice and grinned. Her long fangs gleamed.

In the dark theater, it should have been enough to send a chill through him, but Ricard merely chuckled and grinned back. His eyes sent a warning: You could die for this.

As though taken aback, the female vampire lost her smile and tilted her head.

The play resumed, but witnessing that vile deception had dulled Ricard's interest.

The acting was quite good, yet now it all felt false. They should have just stuck to the play.

Expelled from paradise, the first man and woman wandered the desert through all manner of hardships before finally settling down and having children: Cain and Abel.

Then the tragedy that would divide humans from vampires unfolded in earnest.

"And there was the first murder! Committed between brothers! Crush his skull with a stone! A new world shall dawn!"

KRA-KABOOM!

Another tremendous sound effect erupted. A man was dragged out from somewhere, looking utterly terrified.

The actor playing Cain seized him roughly, forced him down, and actually began smashing his head with a stone.

THUD! THWACK! THUD!

This was not acting. It was murder. Yet the audience could not distinguish the fake from the real. No—they seemed to want to believe it was fake, to think that surely it could not be real.

The man died in moments. Vampires in black cloaks swarmed him and tore into the freshly killed flesh to their hearts' content. All of it happened openly onstage. It was a flawless deception.

Then a bang sounded and smoke billowed up behind the stage. A female vampire suddenly appeared.

She wore a most unusual outfit and was extraordinarily alluring.

Her skin was snow-white and her lips bright red. A long slit in the side of her dress revealed her long legs. Her breasts were full, her figure as curvaceous as rolling hills. Her hips swayed widely with every step.

Ricard recognized her at once: Lehmann's younger sister, Lemania.

Wearing black gloves that reached her elbows, she held a bright red apple and gazed at it as she addressed the audience.

"God gave us a wonderful gift: instinct. To repress it is folly. Curb your appetite, shun lust, restrain your anger? No. Eat your fill, ravish your fill, destroy your fill. Nothing is more human, and thus we are all brothers and sisters."

The curtain descended as she spoke. As though they had been waiting for it, the audience erupted in demands for a curtain call, cheering and giving a standing ovation. They did not even know the performers were vampires.

No, in truth, it made no difference whether they were vampires or anything else. The audience had enjoyed the show, had been more than satisfied, and passionately agreed with the call to embrace their instincts.

And so the blasphemous performance ended. The audience applauded for a long while before drifting out of the theater one or two at a time.

Some, however, did not leave. They went backstage, and Ricard and Ice followed them.

Suddenly, a hand shot out of the darkness, seized Ricard by the collar, and pulled him aside. A face came close to his as though to kiss him without warning.

It was the female vampire who had appeared last onstage. How ironic that he could feel the heavy breath of a vampire whose heart had stopped.

But a dagger, drawn before anyone noticed, was already pressed to her throat. Had she pulled him any closer, he might well have slit it.

Lemania smiled in satisfaction and released him.

"You smell lovely. I've never smelled anyone as fresh as you."

Ice appeared belatedly, having failed to notice Ricard's brief disappearance.

They were in a dressing room. Lemania walked over with clicking footsteps and sat in a chair, crossing her legs. The slit in her dress was so high that it exposed not just her shapely legs, but even the edge of her buttocks.

Ricard did not let himself be distracted. He held the dagger gleaming in the light for a moment, then stowed it beneath his black cloak.

As Ricard and Ice watched, Lemania produced a long pipe and placed it between her lips. Just as she began sending up smoke, a scream sounded from somewhere far away. Yet it was difficult to tell whether it was weeping or laughter.

"What's happening to those people?"

"They're volunteers."

"Volunteers for what?"

"People who wish to taste supreme pleasure, or to become vampires. We don't force anyone. That would be inelegant."

"..."

"How is my old brother? Is he well?"

Lemania seemed to know exactly why Ricard and Ice had come. Quite the uncanny trick. Did High Vampires develop the ability to read minds?

"Well, I liked him better than you."

"What peculiar tastes you have."

"The play was worth watching. The deception, not so much."

"The theater is a reflection of reality. But conversely, if necessary, even reality can become part of the theater."

"Is that so? Well, I wouldn't know about that. Why did you invite us?"

Lemania knew Ricard and Ice's purpose, but Ricard did not know hers. All he knew was the "fact" that she had abducted her own father.

She exhaled smoke at her leisure and answered.

"Your pure blood. I won't devour you. A little will do."

"... Mine? His?"

Seemingly not taking the situation seriously at all, Ricard asked whether she meant him or Ice.

"That one has a pretty face, but he's rotten inside. His smell is revolting. You, though, are different. Your pure scent is what caught my attention. I smelled you the moment you entered the city. Like a delicate floral fragrance spreading through a sewer. I couldn't possibly miss it."

Unlike her brother, Lemania could not see all the way through to Ricard's previous life. Still, she seemed able to sense its traces. By smell.

"Why do you need my blood?"

"If even the scent of blood like yours fails to stir my father, then I've lost. Kill him or spare him, as you please."

On closer inspection, Lemania, too, seemed exhausted to the core by something.

She had probably tried every means of getting her long-starving father to drink blood, whether persuasion or threats, but there seemed to be no way.

There was, however, one blind spot in her proposal.

"And if my blood does stir him?"

"Then I'll need you to die."

"You're honest. I like that."

Had Lemania clumsily tried to plot and scheme, Ricard might simply have fought her. But with everything laid bare, all that remained was his own choice.

"I'll go alone."

Ricard spoke to Ice. As expected, he shook his head.

It did not seem that he would listen even if Ricard tried to dissuade him, so Ricard thought it over in silence.

By the time Lemania had nearly finished her pipe, he spoke again.

"We'll get our weapons and come back in the morning."

"Very well."

Ricard had set his condition, and Lemania accepted it.

For the moment, the two of them left the theater safely.

"She says you stink."

Ricard addressed Ice. The situation was rather pressing and serious, and he seemed to be trying to lighten the mood.

"She reeked of face powder herself. Who is she to talk?"

"Why does she powder her face when her skin's already white?"

"To hide the wrinkles, I suppose. She's an old hag, isn't she?"

"Heh heh heh..."

Talking behind Lemania's back, Ricard and Ice returned to the inn and gathered their equipment. They took Ilya's Holy Oil as well, just in case, and stayed awake all night waiting for morning.

When morning finally came, they left the inn once more.

Outside, brilliant sunlight was sweeping away the filthy desires. No wicked thing could dare survive beneath that fierce gaze.