Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part Three (3 page)

“I get you. You're perfectly right.”

“Damn straight he is!”

Turning full speed in the direction of this heavy voice, Sergei let out a joyous cry of, “Gordo!”

“Hey, you came to?” Juke said, following Sergei's lead and running over to his compatriot.

“Yeah. As you can see, I'm right as rain!”

Now sitting up, the bearded man smiled grandly as he flexed his muscles.

“Hey, Sergei!” he called out to his colleague.

“What is it?” Sergei replied, but no sooner had he brought his face closer than a sudden punch landed noisily against his jaw.

Though he dropped to his knees, he somehow managed to keep his torso upright, nursing his chin as he shouted, “What the hell was that for?”

“Regret what you said now, you big idiot? Any courier who's more worried about his own safety than the goods he's carrying is a waste of skin. And that's the kind of talk you were spilling a second ago. You ever try to turn tail again, and you'd better be ready for the consequences!”

“Okay! I get it! I get it already!” Sergei shouted with a pained smile. “Well, if the two of you aren't just brimming with a sense of duty! You'll never live to a ripe old age.”

“Neither will you, dummy,” the other two sneered back.

“How about giving some thought to how to retrieve it?” D said, his words bringing them all back to their senses.

And then, behind the roaring falls, a visage so handsome it seemed to be from another world and three relatively average faces alternately spoke in hushed seriousness or collided in heated debate, finally coming to a consensus when the light outside was fading in hue.

—

“I wonder if he's coming?”

“No, he won't come.”

“Oh, yes, he will.”

These three opinions mixed in the air, melting together as two travelers and an old woman stared intently at each other's faces.

Although they were disguised as middle-aged travelers, there could be no containing the intensity of their eyes or the inhuman stateliness that spilled from every inch of them. It was Grand Duke Mehmet and Roland, the Duke of Xenon. An hour earlier they'd left the village, which was in chaos following the incident with the space eater, and climbed to the top of a hill to the north. The silhouettes of birds skimmed across a sky deep blue with the approaching dusk. Their conversation focused on the fate of D and the transporters, and now the trio was of differing opinions.

“Why would they come back to the village where they nearly lost their lives just for their wagon and its cargo?” Grand Duke Mehmet said. Not only his lips but his whole face as well twisted from time to time due to the pain that shot through his arms and back—apparently the pain of the gigantic marionette losing its limbs had been transmitted to his own body.

“He'll come,” the Duke of Xenon asserted. “I hear that for those who live on the Frontier, death is preferable to the shame of not fulfilling your professional obligations. The way I see it, they'll definitely return to get their wagon and their goods.”

“You seem well informed as to the human way of life,” said the old woman—Mayor Camus, who was in fact Dr. Gretchen—as she glanced briefly at the Duke of Xenon's face. It was a sarcastic look, and an equally sarcastic tone. “But this time it serves you well. I also believe the humans will come back. I have no idea why D is traveling with them, and he may be another matter entirely, but the three men will return.”

“If they do, then good,” Grand Duke Mehmet said, looking up. “The Duke of Xenon and I waited outside the village since early this morning. And we swore to ourselves that if D or anyone working on his behalf were to come,
this
time we would deliver him unto death. But who would've thought—I mean, who could've imagined he'd do it in such a manner?”

The grand duke removed the patch from his right eye.

In the direction of his gaze a number of birds circled and soared. Suddenly, one of them stopped beating its wings and went into a steep dive, as if enamored of the ground. Less than a second later it was joined by a second—and a third. Once the poor birds had disappeared somewhere in the distant woods, Grand Duke Mehmet finally let out a breath and put the eye patch back on.

The power of a look alone—the murderous intent that radiated from his eyes—knocked birds in flight from the sky. This was a perfectly natural occurrence for a member of the Nobility, as was evinced by the fact that the expressions of his two fellow Nobles didn't change in the slightest.

But the ferocity of the grand duke's rage and the reason for his mood were painfully clear. They'd been bested using space eaters only the grand duke could control. Moreover, he could only imagine that the bugs in question were the same ones D had cut in two. If so, the responsibility for this tremendous setback all lay with him—Grand Duke Mehmet. That was the source of the rage that caused him to knock birds dead from the sky.

“Though I understand your anger, there is no need for the two of you to engage him once again,” Mayor Camus/Dr. Gretchen said, gazing at the two men.

The indignant looks she drew from them were a response to the undercurrent of derision in her words.

“What do you mean by that?” Roland, the Duke of Xenon, inquired softly.

“What I mean is that I've already taken measures. Measures only
I
might take.”

The men exchanged glances. Though each was an incomparable warrior, they needed no demonstration of this murderess's skill with poisons. The clouds of discomfort that welled up in their hearts began to take shape, telling them that this woman, of all people, might be able to do it alone.

“What kind of measures?” the duke was prompted to ask, which in itself revealed his state of mind.

“It's a secret,” Dr. Gretchen replied, true to form, and then she looked up at the rolling blue sky and stretched. “If D should fail to return, then there is someone already under my spell—and that spell is eating its way into them. Ah, the sunlight we cursed for so long feels so good today! There's something to be said for the daytime, isn't there?”

One might even say there was an innocent joy in her eyes, but then those same eyes abruptly narrowed as she said, “Oh, there goes a flock of birds. Winged psychopomps, I believe. They're flying twice as high as the ones the grand duke struck down with his glance just now. Can you do the same to
them
, Grand Duke Mehmet?”

The man with the look that killed turned away in a snit. Not surprisingly, it was beyond his ability.

“And you, Duke of Xenon?”

As she asked him this, the traveler in red hauled back with his right arm as if to hurl a javelin. At some point, grotesque armor had come to sheathe him from the elbow down to the tips of his fingers. He swung his empty right hand. But the sound that ripped through the air wasn't that of a hand.

It rose higher. And higher. And higher still.

“You scored a hit,” Dr. Gretchen said with squinted eyes.

About twenty seconds later, it became abundantly clear that a number of the avian shapes were falling. They dropped. Ignoring the rotation of the earth, they landed right in the center of a circle formed by the trio. Roughly a dozen winged psychopomps had been pierced through the breast and out the back by an unseen spear high above the earth.

“Remarkable,” Dr. Gretchen said with a smile. And remaining in Mayor Camus's form, she said, “But that was only fifteen of them. From six miles away, the Duke of Xenon's spear could do no better than fifteen birds out of a hundred.”

She punctuated this with a haughty laugh.

“You seriously intend to say you could do better, Dr. Gretchen?” the Duke of Xenon asked, flames of outrage covering him from head to foot like a suit.

“But of course, my good duke—allow me to demonstrate.”

The old woman raised her left hand. A golden ring set with a purple stone glittered on her ring finger. When she flicked the stone up, a mistlike strand rose from the setting and climbed into the air.

Ten seconds passed. Twenty.

Grand Duke Mehmet and Roland, the Duke of Xenon, exchanged despicable grins that hardly suited the vaunted Nobility. They knew what Dr. Gretchen was trying to do. However, there was no way any poison on earth could reach thirty thousand feet into the atmosphere without dispersing. Especially not when what had risen from her ring had been a gas.

The smiles of the pair vanished. For Dr. Gretchen had looked up at the heavens. And laughed.

As she laughed, she made an easy leap, and then a second—and had bounded thirty feet away.

“Stand back!” she told them.

Grand Duke Mehmet made a leap that carried him thirty feet as well.

And a second later, all over and around the Duke of Xenon—who'd been left behind—there was the successive thudding of impacts like the crashing of angry waves, and the Nobleman was shrouded in a crimson fog. The Duke of Xenon had been enveloped by his exoskeleton, but suddenly his shoulders and head were struck and countless chunks went flying everywhere. Beaks. Heads. Eyes. Talons. Wings. Feathers. They were birds. Having plummeted thirty thousand feet, the birds noisily thudded against the duke and the ground. The fog was blood.

“That's all of them aside from your fifteen,” Dr. Gretchen said off in the distance. “I've also arranged to use this virulent poison against D—it'd been dispersed by the wind, dissolved into the air, and diluted to but a millionth of its normal strength when it reached those unfortunate birds.”

The doctor spun around.

“Run if you like. Hide under a rock somewhere. First I shall cover the ground for three miles with the corpses of anything that flies.”

And just as the old woman had said, for the next few seconds birds, insects, and reptiles—anything that flew—dropped by the tens of thousands to blanket the ground around them with their corpses.

—

I

—

Midnight. Shadowy figures approached the fence around the village—one at the main gate and two on the west side. The footsteps of the one at the gate rang out, while those of the pair to the west made not a sound.

On noticing those footfalls, the villager in the watchtower at the gate turned his searchlight in their direction. A special lens magnified the modest light of a candle a million times, throwing a beam that picked out the form of this nocturnal intruder starkly.

“D!” was all the villager said before he froze.

Painted with that white light, the young man in black swayed like a mirage, glowing, his gorgeous features like something that couldn't possibly be of this world. Seeing how D advanced without saying a word, the villager in the watchtower finally threw the switch on the siren.

The wail that split the stillness of the night reached the ears of the mayor and the two travelers at her house.

“He's here!”

“I knew he'd come.”

After three short blasts, the sound died out.

“It's D. Apparently he's come alone,” Mayor Camus said, rising from her chair with a grace hardly expected from someone of her age.

Tobacco smoke swayed in the air. It came from Grand Duke Mehmet's cigar.

“Well—shall we go, then?” the Duke of Xenon said, rising as well. “As per our draw, I'll face him first. Which is fortunate, since it'll give me a chance to make him tell me where my daughter is before I finish him off.”

“I'm next, then?” Grand Duke Mehmet said, using a china ashtray to crush out the cigar he held. “Then I shall go conceal myself where no one will find me. If you'll excuse me.”

He relied on an enormous, immortal puppet to do battle. His body was hidden while he controlled it. Because an attack against his true self would be a serious matter, it was quite natural that he kept his location a secret even from his own colleagues—particularly from colleagues he couldn't trust.

As the two Noblemen headed for the door, white smoke crept around their feet and enveloped them.

“Too bad, Dr. Gretchen,” Grand Duke Mehmet said with a despicable laugh. “We realized that you would never wait to go third, and that you would try to make us inhale poison to stop us. So before coming here, we had General Gaskell's physician put something in our blood to counteract poisons. There's nothing you can do to us any longer.”

The grand duke's body staggered forward, as if pulled on a line.

“This . . . this can't be . . .”

First Grand Duke Mehmet fell, and then the Duke of Xenon dropped right on top of him.

Looking down at the pair with her old woman's mask, the mistress of toxins laughed like a bell.

“The general's physician, you say? You think someone who isn't even a specialist could know everything about my beloved poisons? What you just inhaled is newly concocted. No antidote will work on it.” Baring her pale throat with a laugh, she continued, “Now, then—I, the poisoning fiend Dr. Gretchen, am going off to dispose of D, the Hunter of Nobility, in accordance with the wishes of our Sacred Ancestor.”

And then the infamous poisoner who wore the guise of an old woman stepped lightly through the door and out into the world of night. Into the kingdom of the Nobility, where battle and life and death all waited.

—

Juke and Sergei were the pair of figures who were climbing over the west side of the fence while the siren was going off.

“I wonder if D will be okay.”

“Get your own job done before you start worrying about anyone else. Where are the wagon and our cargo?”

Pondering Juke's question for a second, Sergei said, “Where they store all their goods.”

In unison they said, “The western warehouse!” These men had visited this village several times before.

While they ran from shadow to shadow, as if stitching the darkness together, Sergei said, “That little princess—we left her behind, but she's got me worried.”

“Hey, Gordo's keeping an eye on her.”

“That's what worries me—what Gordo might do.”

—

Gordo didn't know how many times he'd already pressed the muzzle of his gun to Lady Ann's brow or the back of her head. It wasn't just because this fearsome little girl had left him completely incapacitated until a short time earlier; it was also because she was obviously a member of the Nobility.

Why am I letting her live?
This question, too, had risen in his mind more times than he could count.
Because D said it would keep the Nobles from attacking us.
That was certainly true, and he agreed. However, while reason was satisfied, emotion wasn't. The fear of the Nobility that was branded into human DNA commanded him to blow the angelic face off the innocent little girl who lay at his feet.

You know
, reason told him coldly,
a Noble won't die from a gunpowder weapon. You could blow her head off or shoot her heart out a hundred times, but they'd be back again as long as the dark of night persisted.

He'd have to do something else to take the life out of her once and for all. Drive a wooden stake or steel blade into her heart, or cut her head off. And Gordo had tried that countless times, too. Pulling the machete from his belt, he'd tried to sever the girl's head. He'd tried to stab her through the heart. As he drew his machete, he'd felt the weapon's formidable weight as he raised it over his head. He raised it high. And every time he did, he got the same feeling in his hands. The feeling he'd gotten jabbing a stake into that woman's chest years ago.

Die! Die!
he must've muttered or shouted countless times. He ordered his nerves and muscles to obey as he grew slick with sweat. Perhaps less than twelve inches lay between life and death.

From beneath the overwhelming voice that pressured him to take the girl's life, the tone of reason snaked out, thin but strong as steel.
You stabbed the woman who killed your mother and your brothers and sisters
, it said.
Just ask the palm of your hand. Ask it how it felt the moment you drove a stake into that soft flesh
.

“I can't!”

Gordo had no choice but to lower the machete he'd raised again.

As D and two of the transporter's compatriots were leaving, Lady Ann had asked to accompany them, but D had driven his fist into her solar plexus and knocked her out. She'd since been bound hand and foot with wire, and a blindfold covered her eyes. Her limbs were tied to guard against her monstrous strength. The blindfold was intended to negate the powers of mesmerism the Nobility possessed.

“I just can't do it. Guess I've got no choice but to wait,” Gordo murmured, wiping his sweat off, but due to the roar of the falls, he couldn't even hear himself very well.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. Lady Ann. Before Gordo's wide and horrified eyes, the little vampire lady whom D's blow had rendered unconscious was slowly but smoothly righting herself.

In a lethargic voice she said, “I can't see.”

Her whole body tensed. Power coursed into her arms, still secured behind her back. However, the steely line didn't break.

“I can't move,” she said in a voice that was terribly sweet and unsettling at the same time.

In one corner of his mind, Gordo thought,
Is that how Nobles are?
Even the roar of the falls disappeared when the girl's voice rang out.

“Who's done this to me? Are you there?”

For some reason, he responded. “Yeah.”

“I knew someone was there.”

The girl's words turned Gordo's heart to ice.

“Please, take this blindfold off of me,” the girl entreated him sadly. “I beg of you. I can't see anything.”

“I can't. And don't move.”

“Why won't you heed me? If you toy with me, you should fear the consequences.”

“Shut up.”

“I beg of you,” Lady Ann repeated. A little nasal, her voice was that of a cute little ten-year-old girl. Even without having seen her face, he could've envisioned the watery blue depths of her eyes, the gold of her hair, and her full cheeks and lips, all from that voice. “Please! I beg of you!”

Gordo was completely aware of what he was doing. Wiping his sweat away before rubbing his hands against his pants, he could hear every creak of his joints as he walked toward Lady Ann. Oh, why hadn't D gagged her, too? His hands went into action. He was moving toward the girl, toward the knot in her blindfold. Why was he untying it?

“Thank you,” she said, Gordo's face reflected in the watery blue of her eyes—and rising from their watery depths were malice and a savage hunger.

—

II

—

Even beneath the unchanging sea of clouds, D could see as distinctly as if it were midday the old woman who came out through the gates. It was unclear if the Hunter found anything strange about the absence of the two Nobles who should've accompanied her—Grand Duke Mehmet and Roland, the Duke of Xenon. However, his face, in all its unearthly beauty, was trained on his approaching foe, as still as the air on a harsh winter's night.

“I was wondering if you know who I am?” the mayor asked.

“What happened to the other two?” D inquired. To this young man, the names of those he had to slay had no meaning.

“I put them to sleep. It is I that shall slay you—Dr. Gretchen!” she said, her voice no longer that of an old woman, but rather the honey-dripping tone of a temptress.

“When will they get up?”

“That will depend on their constitutions. Perhaps they already have. Perhaps they never will. They inhaled enough poison to kill a human being ten times over. If you want to take care of all of us in one fell swoop, this is your chance.”

D went into action—he seemed to share that sentiment. As he dashed forward, he drew his blade. The instant Dr. Gretchen's body entered the deadly arc it described, another death would be decorated with fresh blood.

However, when D was about fifteen feet from the villainess, he pitched forward. Sticking his sword into the ground, he tried to use it as a lever to pull himself up again, but his lower half crumbled feebly. Black beads formed on his face, leaving threadlike trails as they began to stream down it. They were blood—lifeblood that gushed from D's pores.

“Did you get your four friends back safely? How accommodating of you,” jeered a figure that his night vision revealed to be a woman of dazzling beauty. “I made them drink my poisons. Without knowing it, all four of them became poison people. It's perfectly natural that not even you knew it. After all, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about any of them. However, you breathed in what they exhaled, and little by little it collected in your body, causing a delicate chemical reaction. Adding one last poison will cause the same reaction as an immortal Noble exposed to sunlight.”

D's forehead split open horizontally, and from it a blinding light shone on the gate. His shoulder split. His upper arm broke open, and then his chest and abdomen ruptured. Light pierced his clothes, shining down at the earth and up into the void, transforming D into an anthropomorphic sun in black raiment.

“When subjected to the Daybreak effect of my poisons, even the greatest of the Greater Nobility screamed in agony and pleaded with me to kill them. How about you?”

Not answering her, D tumbled forward. The hand that still gripped his sword split apart from wrist to elbow, unleashing a new light. The light grew much more intense, swallowing the young man in black. He was literally a sun that had been born to the night.

Perhaps it was unavoidable that the mother of that sun should laugh mockingly, midday in the midst of darkness—but even as this was happening, Dr. Gretchen's laughter ceased. The glow had continued to intensify, cutting through the defensive shield General Gaskell had given her and searing her flesh with the feverish heat of midday.

“How is this possible?” she cried out in amazement, as every place the light touched her grew white hot. She was gripped with the fear of having her immortal flesh charred right down to the marrow of her bones. The light continued to envelop the poisoning murderess.

“Aaaaah! Begone!” she exclaimed, but when she tried to leap away, both her legs shattered at the knee. The joints were shrouded in white flames. Her protective shield had been broken.

“Impossible! This can't be! Help me!”

Dr. Gretchen fought madly to extinguish the flames. However, every time she struck them, white light spread from that spot, and new flames shot from the hand she'd brought down on it.

“How—how can this be? I—I'm burning!” she cried as her whole body was wrapped in light like some sacred sculpture. It was said that, in protest against the actions of their fellow man, human holy men had once set themselves aflame—but rather than a saint, this was a demonic Noble in agony.

Just as the hellish torment was about to drive her out of her mind, a needle of wood whined through the air from the light that had enveloped D and pierced Dr. Gretchen through the heart.

“Gaaaah!”

When she unleashed that death rattle, the skin and flesh had already melted from her body, leaving bare bones. Yet her mouth moved and she formed words, saying, “Why? Why doesn't my Daybreak have any effect? Somebody, please tell me. Ooooh!”

Her last cry was an expression not of surprise but of horror. The source of the light that was incinerating the queen of toxins rapidly lost its color, retreating as if to avoid some counterattack by the darkness, while from it stepped a figure in black. It was a man descended from Nobility who feared nothing save the day, yet who'd been turned into a source of sunlight and had still come back from the dead—D.

“You . . . Are you stronger . . . than even the greatest of the Greater Nobility? You, no more than . . . a dhampir. A filthy half-breed . . .”