Mulan's affection for his older brother Leo was almost instinctive. After the relatively harmonious time they had spent together lately, worry and agitation rose unbidden when he heard the news.
There was no rain in Valentine that night, but the approaching storm seemed to have brought winter's bitter cold ahead of time. Between day and night alone, the temperature felt as though it had dropped by more than ten degrees.
No carriage waited outside. The three of them struggled through the wind on foot, while the officer told Mulan and Buck what he knew.
The Police Station had recently received orders from above to investigate several disappearances. Leo was one of the detectives assigned to the cases, which was why he had been so busy lately. That evening, they had organized an operation based on a lead, only to suffer a major setback. Several officers had been wounded, and Leo had sustained a serious knife wound.
In such dreadful weather, it took them over half an hour to reach Valentine Hospital. Though called a hospital, it was really just a larger clinic with more medical staff, with no fundamental difference between the two.
Two officers from the Police Station had stayed at the hospital, and the families of two seriously wounded men had been summoned. The family who had arrived first was already in the ward, and naturally, Mulan and the others headed straight there when they arrived.
All five wounded officers were in one fairly large room, with five beds arranged in a row. The smell of blood hung in the air. Some men moaned softly, while others spoke with their families. Leo lay alone in the innermost bed.
This era had almost no effective anesthesia, something Mulan had experienced firsthand. When surgery or treatment for serious injuries was necessary, patients were often simply given some liquor and made to endure the pain. Combined with poor hygiene, this greatly increased the mortality rate for severe wounds.
Leo lay pale-faced in his hospital bed, but he was still conscious. When he saw Mulan and Old Buck approach, he managed a smile.
"I told them not to notify you..."
"Young Master Leo, how are you?" "You bastard, you nearly scared me to death!"
Old Buck rushed to the bedside. Mulan looked at Leo, then at the officer who had accompanied them, and felt a little relief. At least Leo did not seem to be in mortal danger, though the blood all over his sheets and clothes was certainly frightening.
A doctor was brought over to explain Leo's injuries to Mulan and the others. A knife had slashed his chest. Although the wound looked alarming, it was not fatal and had already been stitched up. He had simply lost rather a lot of blood.
Once he understood Leo's condition, Mulan asked him a question in mild surprise, deliberately exaggerating his reaction a little.
"I heard there was only one of them?"
Leo, who often playfully bullied his younger brother and boasted about his accomplishments at work, now felt he had lost face in front of Mulan. Despite the intense pain from his wound, he forced himself to explain through a strained grin.
"Hiss... That maggot of a bastard was hiding in a dark corner, doing disgusting things. If I see him again, I'll blow his head open!"
"Sure, sure. You're amazing."
Mulan's reply was blatantly perfunctory. Then his gaze settled on Leo's wound, making his bedridden brother feel a little embarrassed. But as Leo recalled what he had seen before nightfall, his fists slowly clenched again.
"Once I recover, I'll execute that beast myself. I swear I will!"
As Leo spoke through gritted teeth, Mulan glanced at the other beds. Several of the officers wore expressions that mingled anger with lingering fear.
"Leo, what exactly happened?"
"Telling you would only scare you. Better not..."
Leo stopped halfway through. He remembered that his younger brother had once been an army officer-a veteran who had experienced the brutality of real war and carried horrific scars on his body. Mulan had grown up.
"He was a madman. No, a demon..."
They had been investigating disappearances, but when an eyewitness lead brought them to the house, they found several dismembered bodies in its basement, their hearts and entrails gouged out. All were children who had disappeared recently, including two more than the Police Station had known about. The killer was about to attack another child.
The Valentine officers had been overwhelmed by shock, revulsion, fear, and anger. They had moved to arrest the killer immediately, but he was extraordinarily agile and terrifyingly skilled with a knife. Had Leo and the officers behind him not decisively opened fire, some of them would certainly have died.
Of the dozen or so Valentine policemen, five had ended up in hospital. The killer had escaped, and they did not even know whether any bullets had hit him.
Though Leo spoke defiantly of blowing the criminal's head apart, the memory of his ghostlike movements and the gruesome scene in that basement still sent chills rushing through him.
Mulan certainly grieved for the missing children and could imagine something of what had happened. The officers must have been thrown into confusion, but even if their accuracy had suffered greatly, escaping unscathed from a dozen armed Valentine policemen was still extraordinary.
Another question occurred to Mulan, and he could not help asking it aloud.
"What exactly was he doing in the basement?"
"What?"
"That murderous demon. What was he doing in the basement?"
"Who the hell knows what that disgusting bastard was doing? He's a pervert!"
"Maybe there's something wrong with his mind." "He must have been mad all along!"
The answers from the officers in the ward were not what Mulan wanted to hear. He thought of what had happened aboard the Princess Niseriel and remembered Evan's words. That vile criminal might well be a cultist.
"Oh no! I left in such a hurry that I forgot to put out the stove!"
Old Buck always kept everything in perfect order. Today, he had been in such a rush that only now did he realize he had made a basic mistake.
The kitchen stove was kept burning both to make tea whenever needed and to provide warmth. Although modern stoves had some safety features, leaving one unattended still carried a risk of fire. That remained true even in the twenty-first century.
"Don't worry, Grandpa Buck. I'll go back and put it out. Stay here with Leo."
After a few words of reassurance, Mulan nodded to Leo, rose, and left. With the weather so cold and the wind so strong, he could hardly make Old Buck run all the way home.
Leaving the stove burning was not an option either. Everything the impoverished Jonester family owned was in that house. Better safe than sorry; a fire would be disastrous.
Mulan walked quickly and steadily. Though he was less anxious than on the way there, he no longer had to look after Old Buck, so he moved even faster.
Amid the howling gale, Valentine was both noisy and eerily quiet. Some of the gas streetlights had stopped working. Mulan held his coat collar tight with one hand and kept the other in his pocket. As he passed through a dim stretch of road, something flickered at the edge of his vision.
The vigilance and instinctive response to danger he had honed on the battlefield kicked in instantly.
Mulan's body moved almost faster than thought. He pitched forward into a dive, sensed a faint whistle pass behind his back, then rolled once and sprang to his feet.
Before Mulan could turn, a faint gleam was already upon him-the blade of a knife catching the weak light of a distant streetlamp.
Every hair on Mulan's body stood on end, and his spine burned. In the nick of time, he fell backward, braced both hands against the ground behind him, and kicked one foot sharply upward, only to hit empty air.
Mulan immediately flipped backward to gain some distance, but the knife followed like a venomous snake pressing its attack.
Swish, swish, swish...
The knife was incredibly fast-or rather, its wielder was. Before his body had fully emerged from the darkness, his blade had already launched a lethal assault. In just a few breaths, he had nearly driven Mulan, a battle-hardened veteran, into a hopeless position.
There was no time to draw the Ring of Light, let alone aim and fire!
The instant that thought flashed through his mind, the deadly gleam of the blade struck at him again.
I need something. I need to block his attacks, or I'll die!
The threat of death was so intense that Mulan's mind became both taut with strain and utterly focused. At that desperate moment, when the gleaming blade seemed all but impossible to evade, his right hand seemed to close around something.
Shing!
Mulan drew a streak of silver in one smooth motion and swung it forward.
Clang!
Sparks flew as the silver sword collided with the knife. Yet the cane that concealed that silver sword should have been lying on the table at home!