Scenes from an Unholy War (15 page)

“First of all—D.”

His right hand flashed into action. Reflecting the light of the moon, the gleaming disk sailed away, returning several seconds later. Catching it with ease, he returned it to his hip, saying, “Next, the sheriff.”

His left hand flashed out.

“And finally, the mayor.”

Two gleams of light vanished, then returned.

“Understood.”

Miriam’s reply was dwarfed by a louder sound. Far off in the distance—in the forest more than a thousand yards away—a colossal bole had toppled.

“I’ve had to wait a long time, but it was worth it. And I even found you again, my little protégé.”

Codo Graham was the last of the Black Death’s sleeper agents.

chapter 8

I

—

D
aybreak came, the enemy didn’t, and Lyra remained sleeping.
The guards in the watchtower kept silent.

“Looks like we have you to thank for this.”

D shook his head at Rust’s remark, saying, “It could be they’ve become something that can’t strike by day.”

“You can’t be serious,” Rust replied, allowing his eyes to go wide. He didn’t want to know what D meant.

“Not that I know for sure. It’s just a hunch.”

“And how accurate is that?”

“Never been wrong,” said the hoarse voice.

“Oh,” Rust said, shrugging his shoulders. “But humans bitten by pseudo vampires only turn into pseudo vampires. They shouldn’t have any trouble attacking in broad daylight.”

“I’ll go find out.”

“I couldn’t have that. What would we do if they struck while you were gone?”

“You’ll think of something.”

“Hey!”

“Lyra will be up soon. You two make a good team.”

Rust capitulated. “I don’t suppose there’s much sense in thanking you. Get right back here when you’re done.”

—

Shortly after D’s departure, Lyra woke up, just as the Hunter had predicted. Rust told her what D had said. Closing her eyes, the warrior woman said, “Just as I was about to black out, he touched his left hand to my chest. Suddenly, it wasn’t so bad.”

“There might be something to that left hand of his, don’t you think?”

Lyra didn’t answer, asking instead, “So, what about that girl?”

“She got better,” Rust replied. He’d heard from the physician attending Sheryl that the second the huntress’s bullet pulverized Gil’s head, the girl had awakened from the Noble’s sleep. “The wounds on her neck have vanished, and the smell of garlic doesn’t bother her. We really caught a break.”

“Maybe I should’ve waited until after she turned into a fake made by a fake before slaying Gil, eh?”

“Hey!” Rust said reproachfully.

Though he couldn’t recall ever telling Lyra how he felt about Sheryl, the warrior woman had long since guessed. Her behavior wasn’t terribly conspicuous, but anyone who gave it a little thought would realize why the mayor’s daughter personally delivered flowers and food to Rust. Even when she claimed that her father had told her to do it.

“Enough about that,” Rust continued. “Last night, I heard the damnedest thing from D and Old Man Roskingpan. Seems we’ve got a murderer right here in the village.”

Surprisingly enough, Lyra wasn’t surprised at all. “Yeah, I thought so,” she said with resignation.

“You knew about it?”

“When we first came to town, you only checked the case reports for the last two years, but I read them all from the last decade. I also heard villagers talking about disappearances. Now, every village has folks who get fed up with the hardship and take off, but around here a disproportionate number of missing people were merchants and travelers who were just passing through. Kill someone from the village, and they’ll do a thorough investigation, but they don’t do the same in the case of outsiders. Really, no village does.”

“But there have been disappearances every year for a decade!”

“It probably goes back even further than that. There just aren’t files for it. Besides, missing persons aren’t murder cases.”

Folding his arms, Rust nodded. Sometimes it helped getting a second opinion. “But if there is a murderer, we can’t just sit back. If he lays low while we’re fighting the Black Death, that’ll be fine, but if he uses the confusion to go on a real killing spree, we’re screwed.”

“Then we’d better pray that doesn’t happen.” Climbing out of bed, Lyra started getting her things together.

“Where are you going? Get a little more rest.”

“I can’t leave you with all the work. Besides, there’s something you’re forgetting. It’s my job to finish you off. I’m not about to leave that to anyone else.”

“Hell, I know that.”

The warrior woman’s stern look was met with a look of equally cold resolve by the sheriff. Apparently it wasn’t friendship and trust that bound these two, but death.

—

When D was five hundred yards from the Black Death’s encampment, the hoarse voice groaned, “Well, it’s just like you said. The whole place is lousy with an air of the supernatural. It’s the aura of real Nobles, too. There are some fakes mixed in there as well. Seems they’re up to something.”

Opening his left hand, D pointed it toward the encampment.

“Whatever it is, I bet it ain’t gonna be pleasant for the village. We could go smash it up, but I’ve gotta wonder where those clowns got the material for it in the first place.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Nope,” the left hand said flatly. “You mean it was
him
?”

D wound the reins around his left hand.

—

Leaving his cyborg horse, the Hunter entered some dense brush. His steed would return with one whistle.

There was no indication of anyone around him. The bright, sunlit ground wasn’t the world of true Nobles. After entering the brush, D proceeded for about a hundred yards before the echo of wood banging against wood reached his ears.

“They’re building something,” the hoarse voice said with relish. The parasite had as much courage as its host. “I don’t know about this, but if they’ve got defenses set up, it’ll be up ahead. Do you remember? It looks kind of like where
he
lived.”

It was unclear how D took these remarks, but his gait never faltered.

Suddenly, a shadow moved across the sun. Or rather, his surroundings were unexpectedly plunged into darkness, like sundown on a winter’s day. Such a sudden, drastic change in the weather was impossible. The density of the darkness, its physical and temporal characteristics were all that of the night itself.

“Oh, here we go!” the left hand laughed with pleasure. “Watch it. Someone else is coming!”

They came out suddenly. About twenty yards ahead of the Hunter, the ground bulged and five figures rose up, covered with clods of dirt. D recognized their faces. They were members of the Black Death gang he’d cut down two nights earlier.

“These clowns have been bitten by the real thing. Good luck.”

D knew that, too. The way they held their swords and spears was different, as was the eerie aura that wafted from them. What stood there wasn’t fearless beasts that’d tear into their prey and chew it up, but rather demons who wanted nothing more than to bite through flesh and bone and drink every last drop of their victims’ blood.

“D?” one of them asked. The other four lined up to either side of him, fanning out in a crescent around the Hunter.

At that instant, D’s battle began. As the figure in black kicked off the ground, his left hand flashed into action. The man on the left tip of the crescent managed to stop a rough wooden needle that was zipping toward his heart, but a second one went through his hand, jabbed into his chest, and protruded from his back.

That was how D started the fight, without even replying to the cries of his opponents. Making not a sound as he dashed forward, he drew his glittering blade, and bright blood gushed out with the first strike. The figure who stood before him was definitely a man he’d dealt death to that night. When D’s blade passed through his neck, the man put both hands on top of his head, pushing it back down against the cut. The vermilion line disappeared.

The man laughed without making a sound. “We’re no longer what we used to be. We’re the chosen ones, given new life by the Great One. And with that life, D, comes power!”

Long spears cut through the air from either side. Hearing only the sound of them whistling through the wind, D lashed out with his flashing steel. The spears he’d supposedly knocked down collided in midair, zipping at D once more from impossible angles. As the Hunter batted both of them down, his side was pierced by an iron arrow that came flying from his right. Now off balance, his body was the target of more spears and arrows, but D deflected them all.

“It’s just as the Great One said. You’re good. But when fighting those who possess the same power, four are stronger than one! Your sword can’t reach us, and it keeps our weapons from doing any good. All that remains is pure power.”

A knowing laugh spilled from the mouth of the man whose throat had been cut. It became a chorus. The men around him were laughing, too. Little by little, their voices changed—becoming something inhuman. Beastly howls rocked the night.

“Die, D! You’re prey for the wolf!”

The men no longer retained human form. They had joined to become an object like an enormous, wriggling mass of clay, colored the same hue as the darkness. Part of the mass opened, and the instant a titanic, beastly head shot from it, it was split in two by an oncoming slash of D’s blade. Sliced down the middle, the face melted together again, closing around D’s head and the left side of his chest. There was a terrible sound. Once more the red maw opened and the beast swallowed the rest of D. Chewing noises could be heard in the darkness. They were followed by an explosion of mocking laughter.

“What an easy battle! So, this is the power of the Great One? Is this the strength of a true Noble? This is wonderful, truly wonderful!”

Four men stood in the darkness.

“The man they called D was a gnat. Well, that’s all finished. Let’s get some sleep. We’ll leave the work of smashing down those feeble village walls to the slaves.”

The four of them went over to the spot where they’d burst from the ground. Their eardrums then trembled from a laugh. There was something so unsettling about it—it made even the true vampires they’d become freeze right to the core.

“Heh, heh, heh,” it chortled. “You punks think getting a little pity blood from a Noble gives you the right to call a Hunter who’s slain thousands of Nobles a gnat? Playtime’s over, kiddies. Now it’s time for hunting!”

As the men stood rooted in disbelief, one of their heads burst apart like a pomegranate. The arm in black that poked from it was covered with blood and liquefied brains.

Is that D?

Even though the remaining men realized it was, they were powerless to do anything. Another man’s head exploded, and a right hand appeared, gripping a sword. From the head of the third came a traveler’s hat and an inhumanly gorgeous face.

“This is how a vampire fights!” D’s left hand laughed aloud.

With fear on his face, the fourth one spun around. It was the same man who’d pushed his head back together. Behind him, the bodies of the other three tottered, holding each other up. Flesh split, and bones snapped.

The sword flew from the hand that’d appeared. Spinning horizontally, the blade took the fleeing man through the back of the neck. Once again, the man held his head down, and the line of the cut vanished.

Turning, the man shouted, “You’re wasting your time. I’m—”

“—one of the chosen?” the hoarse voice sneered.

The man tripped over his own feet. It wasn’t that the hoarse voice had scared him. The vermilion line around his neck had returned, and bright blood had gushed from it all at once. A bloody mist enveloped his upper body—and no sooner did it, than the man dropped his head. Accompanying it were the arms that held it, taken off at the elbows.

As the sword came spinning back, D caught it with his left hand. His body, which could only be described as exquisite, had already regenerated completely, and the other three men had been reduced to some unknown viscous substance that spread around his feet. By the time he sheathed his sword on his back, the world had a stark glow to it—the night had faded, and day had returned.

“Revenge in the sunlight—is that what you wanted?” the hoarse voice inquired. It sounded mocking and amused.

There was no reply. Seeming to have no feeling about this battlefield that’d spawned five corpses in such a short time, the figure in black started forward once again.

—

II

—

The huntress had just finished putting a hundred rounds of fifty-caliber ammunition into bandoliers and another thousand replacement rounds in a tin box when the sheriff stopped by.

“Oh, to what do I owe this visit?” Miriam inquired somewhat cautiously.

“I came to thank you,” Rust said after taking a sip of the coin tea she’d offered him.

“You sure you should be wasting time like this?” the sharp-tongued Miriam asked. Clearly she found this a nuisance.

“Don’t be like that. I’ll be on my way soon. I just came to say thanks—and to ask a favor of you.”

“I’m not gonna sleep with you.”

Rust laughed. “That hadn’t even crossed my mind. Maybe next time.” Eyeing the rifle that Miriam had leaning close at hand, he ventured, “Would you go up in the watchtower as a sniper for us?”

“Got anyone else for the job?”

“We do, but they’re not in your class. You could probably pick off the opposition’s whole front line while they were still a thousand yards off.”

“I could do it at two miles.”

“So, you’ll do it, then?”

“Sure.”

“I really appreciate it.”

Watching Rust as he bowed to her, she said, “For someone who’s not even from around here, you sure are going all out for this village.”

“It’s my job. That’s what I’m paid for.”

“To defend something that’s not worth defending?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. See you,” she replied curtly, seeming like an entirely different person as she showed him to the door.

Rust seemed slightly wounded as he said, “This might be none of my business, but isn’t it about time you stopped living alone like this?”

The huntress said nothing.

“You know the Schaunepps who live out by the west woods, right? Their boy turns eighteen this year. Seems he’s been sweet on you for some time.”

“Don’t do me any favors!”

“Don’t be like that. Having a man be in love with you is pretty nice. Just think it over.”

Once Rust had left, Codo appeared from the bedroom doorway. “The sheriff sure likes getting mixed up in people’s affairs. That could be a pretty good offer. Why don’t you take them up on it?”

“Even though they’re all going to die?”