Everybody called him “Baron.” No one knew his real name. He didn’t know it himself. And yet the mention of that moniker alone would make many a man blanch and drop to his knees.
There was one who didn’t. That man had his attention now, the giant in the room. His fame equaled his own. Siegfried was the handle he went by. Siegfried was the German name of the legendary Norse god. Legend had it that, drenched in the blood of a dragon, he became immortal.
No one who saw him doubted the truth of the legend. The steel bench warped beneath his massive weight. He was ten feet tall and weighed over five hundred pounds.
There was no telling what other skills he exercised with that massive frame, but it was equally likely that he was nothing more than a big, clumsy oaf wielding a ridiculous amount of power. And indeed, there wasn’t a scar to be seen on the hands or even the head jutting from the neck of the blue, short-sleeved T-shirt.
Using that truck-like body as his chief asset, settling accounts on the field of combat without suffering a few bullet wounds and a laceration or two was hard to imagine.
The reason was simple: he killed his opponents before they could injure him.
That alone was not enough to unsettle the Baron, or the other three men in the room. They all believed in their heart of hearts that when the time came, they could consign to oblivion any foe who came at them.
The white-haired old man, the midget, the man in the suit—they all possessed powers beyond the imaginations of ordinary folk. The Baron knew this better than most.
But that wasn’t what concerned him about Siegfried.
There was something off about him, not like the big men he’d met before. Today was the first time they’d met. They hadn’t spent even three hours cooped up in the same room.
During those three hours, Siegfried had left the room twice. The Baron figured he had to go to the john. The first time about an hour ago. The second time thirty minutes ago. He was gone three minutes the first time, five minutes the second.
The second time Siegfried returned, something was different about him. The Baron couldn’t say what and he couldn’t understand why.
The one thing he did know was that the Siegfried who went to the john and the Siegfried who came back were different people. Though nothing about these two “Siegfrieds” appeared the slightest bit different.
His forehead jutting out from the few strands of hair like a hard-boiled egg. The slits of his eyes. And for such a large man, the thin lips. The ropey sinews and boulder-like muscles covering his immense frame.
And yet—something was different. Everybody there knew it too. Everybody kept mum. Some soul-stealing monster had taken a seat among them and nobody rang the alarm.
The Baron got to his feet and stood in front of Siegfried. “The two of us need to talk.”
He spoke in the voice of the dead, a whiff of air from a rotted sepulcher. And the smell as well.
Nobody looked at him either.
Siegfried’s narrow eyes peered down at him. Even sitting down, he was taller than the six-foot Baron. Perhaps he was a remnant of those giants spoken of in the Book of Genesis.
“This way.”
The Baron left through the locker room door. Siegfried followed after him, like a gust of wind sweeping through the room. A short ways down the corridor was the door to a workout room.
The door was locked.
The Baron slipped his forefinger between the door and the jamb. A similarly long and slender claw was attached to the unusually pale and slender digit. He slid it up the jamb to the lock. The door opened easily. The two went inside.
The room was a dojo—kenpo karate—approximately thirty feet by thirty feet with a hardwood floor. Punching bags and weight machines in the back.
The two stopped and faced each other in the middle of the room, like an adult encountering a child. Or a big man encountering a dwarf. Facing this great wall of muscle and bone, the Baron didn’t twitch an eyebrow.
“There’s something way fucked up about you,” he said.
A slight smile colored Siegfried’s otherwise rugged and expressionless face, as ineffably merry as it was ineffably evil.
“You figured it out, eh?” a cheerful, youthful voice said. “There’s no pulling the wool over your eyes.”
“Of course—” The Baron’s eyes flashed red. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”
“Just a sec.”
Siegfried rolled up his shirt to his neck and plunged his hands into his abdomen. Even as his hands sank down to his wrists, the Baron evinced not the slightest reaction.
Not even when the front of his body unzipped in a line from his belly button to his Adam’s apple—but unaccompanied by the sound of tearing flesh. It had been severed from the start.
The giant ripped open his own belly with his own hands. And from the wound appeared—
A man clad in black, stained with blood and fat, casting off a bad odor and bearing Gento Roran’s countenance, his comeliness not dimmed in the least. Far from it. An orchid in all its sublime brilliance had just emerged from a fetid swamp.
If it was true that the gods made man, then this young man, secreting himself inside the giant and controlling his every move, should be a god.
“So, how did you see through the facade?” he asked, raking back the bangs clinging to his forehead.
“Well, if I had to pin it on any one thing, the bench bent a bit more than before. You weigh more than his guts.”
“I’m impressed. But such insights may cost you your life.”
Gento flashed an eerie smile. It possessed the kind of demonic air that would have made any other man as tense as a tightly coiled spring. But the Baron only grew more intrigued.
“When did you take him out?” he asked, as if asking about a curious turn in the weather.
“In the bathroom. It was simpler than I imagined. Left the viscera in the garbage with a generous seasoning of disinfectant. It should take another two or three days to get ripe enough to notice.”
“Those are some impressive skills you have,” the Baron said, fixing his gaze on Gento.
Gento swayed back. “Nice trick you got there, too. You some sort of vampire?”
“There are those who call me that. I have been wanting to quench my thirst ever since I saw that laceration on your cheek. Come into my arms—”
The Baron’s cat-like eyes doubled as hypnotic weapons. They shone now all the brighter. When Gento’s entranced pupils glowed with the same crimson light, the Baron glided up to him. His clawed right hand rose to the level of Gento’s neck and slashed sideways.
A red line rose up on the skin and grew wider. The Baron fastened his red lips to Gento’s throat.
Gento sank down, a movement so quick and abrupt that the Baron didn’t have time to retreat. His startled face recorded the sharp blow to his abdomen. His unbelieving eyes focused on the object sticking straight through the center of his stomach.
“I hear vampires don’t do so well with wooden stakes,” Gento said with a complacent smile. “Considering how this might turn out, I happened to have the ideal item on hand. I’ll say a prayer for what’s left of your soul afterwards.”
Gento yanked out the stake. The Baron crumpled without a sound and fell to the floor. The one-foot stake—Siegfried’s index finger—was dyed red halfway down the shaft.
He dragged the thin corpse over next to Siegfried and clapped his hands together. “Well, that takes care of that. Except that suspicions are bound to be aroused if he goes missing too.”
Gento tapped his temples, jarring loose a fresh thought. “It is strange. The man I was before would have been imprisoned by those eyes of his. The schooling of my family is bearing fruit.” A fierce new light blossomed in his own eyes. “Could I pull it off? What only the Aki clan was rumored to be capable of?”
Posing these questions aloud, he raised his hands.
✦ ✦ ✦
Minutes later, the door to the locker room again opened. The thin man and the giant returned. The old man and the small man were gone. The suit didn’t spare them a second glance.