Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (17 page)

As Mia looked up instinctively, the image of D leaping from the front edge of the collapsing walkway was burned into her retinas.

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II

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D cleared the thirty-foot gap in a single bound. When he landed, the walkway turned to silvery dust and fell away. As he launched himself into another leap, a flying strand of hair pierced the left side of his chest. Falling head over heels to hit the walkway, his body was enveloped in a death shroud of glittering fragments that drifted down wildly until they, too, were swallowed by the darkness.

It was about five minutes after that that the darkness at the far end of the walkway took human form. As for who the assassin astride the black mount was, it went without saying. Although the fake D had crossed the walkway fragile as a piece of spun glass in a normal stride with two people on his back, this rider had the added weight of his steed. Yet what kind of skill did he have that the path beneath the animal's hooves didn't let out so much as a single squeak?

Halting at the edge of the walkway, he peered down into the pitch black pit that had swallowed the two Ds and said in a doleful tone, “All who learn of Muma must die.”

“Is that a fact?” replied a voice that most decidedly wasn't his.

Though it seemed like the voice of some malevolent deity echoing up from hell, Yuma merely backed his horse up a few steps and launched three more strands of hair at the point where the voice had originated. Fired off with ungodly skill in less than half a second's time, they met nothing before being swallowed by the darkness.

“You missed.”

When that mocking remark reached him, he wheeled his steed around. Naturally, he hadn't been scared off. He simply realized that on this narrow, fragile walkway, he'd be at a disadvantage battling an unseen foe. It would be a complete reversal, putting him on the defensive.

However, just as the assassin was about to gallop into action, his horse got cold feet. It had caught sight of the figure of unearthly beauty standing on the walkway some sixty feet ahead. The way he stood there completely at ease, not even reaching for the longsword on his back, sent a gale of unspeakable horror tearing through Yuma's soul.

And then, to his rear, a voice called out, “There's no turning back.”

Now he was surprised, turning to find the fake D standing there with one hand raised. The two young people who'd been on his back were nowhere to be seen.

“How did you survive?” Yuma asked from the back of his horse. He no longer seemed at all disturbed. With fearsome opponents blocking him on both sides, he was quite composed.

“It's a secret,” the fake D said with a smirk. His eyes had begun to give off an intense light. “In my stead, those two kids fell. They were a heavy load, but they didn't deserve to go out like that. I'm not about to let you get out of here now.”

“That wasn't my intent,” Yuma laughed from horseback. He had the air of a king sneering down at his lackeys on the ground. “Since you didn't die, I'll simply have to kill you. I wasn't the one cornered here.”

And saying that, he gave a kick to his horse's flanks. Just as the hooves struck the walkway it was reduced to powder, and the fake D went sailing through the air. In an instant, the assailant on horseback underwent a bizarre change. From the waist up he rotated 180 degrees as if he were some sort of automaton, and then he launched a wave of hair at the heart of the leaping fake D. That aerial assault was countered by the bird in flight. The way the fake D swung his blade around fresh from the draw and parried all the hair was nothing less than incredible, but his skill in deflecting one of those strands so it struck the galloping steed in its right flank was truly ungodly.

As the horse and rider seemed to collapse under their own weight, D charged at them. But an enormous form rose before him—the horse and Yuma. And as the steed rose, from its sides a gigantic pair of wings popped out noisily. His horse was a Pegasus.

D was a second too late getting out a wooden needle, and by the time he'd whirled around to throw it, the man and his flying horse had vanished into the depths of the darkness without any further response.

“You let him get away, you dolt,” the fake D sneered as he landed behind D. “And to make matters worse, you let him nail you right through the chest. Where's that hair?”

“Right here,” a hoarse voice said.

Turning his gaze toward its source—D's left hand—the fake D bugged his eyes. About half the hair was sticking out of the Hunter's palm. And under his watchful eye, that hair was neatly extracted from D's palm, and then dropped to the floor, where it curled up.

“So, it eats hair too? That's a strange palm you've got there.”

When it'd looked like D had been pierced through the heart by the hair, he'd actually stopped it with his left hand.

“I leave the rest to you,” D said.

“Hey!” the fake D shouted, but by that time, the Hunter was already dashing toward the far end of the corridor. His black raiment soon became one with the darkness.

After seeing this, the fake cursed, “Damn it all. He gets all the sweet jobs.”

He then went back to the edge of the walkway, his right arm swinging out casually. The thousandth-of-a-micron thin, nigh-invisible steel wire from the launcher concealed in his sleeve shot straight off into the darkness. It found something. One flick of his wrist and the motor went into reverse, hauling back whatever the line had snagged. From the depths of the darkness rose Mia, and both her arms were wrapped around Kuentz. Though they looked to be floating in thin air, their bodies were actually supported by a steel wire the fake D had launched at the ceiling as they were plummeting from the walkway. Undoubtedly it had caught on a pipe or something else. After setting them back down on the walkway, the fake D undid the wire and stared into the darkness, saying, “He went on ahead.”

“I figured as much,” Mia replied, nodding. Peering at the fake's face, she then asked, “So, what are you doing then?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you were the same as Mr. D, didn't you? In that case, why aren't you giving chase, too, and trying to help out?”

“Well, I was—”

“We'll be fine now. I'll wait here. Get going already.”

“It's dangerous around here. The place is crawling with monsters who won't obey my commands.”

“But—”

“I don't care if it was decided by rock-paper-scissors, I still have to protect you, you know,” he said, his soft tone underpinned by an immovable will.

For a second, Mia imagined that he was the real D.

-

D had no idea how well Yuma knew the layout of the facility. From what Mia had told him, the assassin seemed quite well informed, knowing more about it than the Hunter at the very least. If so, it would be easy for the assassin to lay a trap.

Suddenly the walls to either side of him vanished. Feeling the space broaden, D halted. He was in an absolutely barren clearing. The circular floor was more than three hundred feet in diameter. Countless doors and windows riddled the surrounding walls, and lying here and there were what looked to be bones. The stains that spread like shadows on the floor were most likely remnants of blood. Before he could even consider what this place had been used for, he was given the answer.

“How good of you to come. You, the seeker of Muma. However, this is as far as you go.” The voice seemed to reverberate from the heavens and the earth and the very walls.

“What is Muma?” D asked. “Is it the name of a place, or a person, or is it—”

“It can be whatever you want it to be. That is Muma.”

“Who told you that, and who ordered you to kill all those who learned of it?”

“It would do no good to tell you that. My mission is one of death alone. And that, too, is Muma.”

“I want to know where the sway reactor teleported off to. I suppose that's Muma, too.”

“Indeed it is,” Yuma said, his tone deepening the darkness. “Do you know what this place is called? Of course you don't. I shall give you its name as a parting gift from this life.”

D surveyed his surroundings in silence. He then said, “It's the Battlefield of Shadows, isn't it?”

Signs of shock traveled through the air from behind the Hunter and to his right.

D didn't turn around, but his right hand shot out. The needle of rough wood that knifed through the gloom drew a low groan off in the distance. Though D turned in that direction, he wasn't able to advance—the doors on all sides of him had unexpectedly vanished, and from the elliptical black gaps they left, tall silhouettes had made an entrance.

One after another, the shadowy figures that'd stepped into the clearing fluttered through the air like mystic birds, their black wings spread as they came down all around the Hunter. On closer inspection, all of these figures were similar in appearance. They wore wide-brimmed hats and long coats, and had elegantly curved longswords draped across their backs. Actually, they were exactly the same—to the point where any ordinary person would undoubtedly question first their eyesight, and then their sanity. They were identical. Every figure there was the exact same person. Their forms and handsome features seemed to shine through the gloom. They were D. Each and every one of them was D.

Those in the front never halted their advance, while those following behind them quickly came to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, making the mob of Ds into an army that advanced on the lone D standing in the center of the place.

Ordinarily, this would be a nightmare. A dozen people dressed like you, with the same face as you but devoid of expression, closing in all around, would make you desperate with terror, driving you over the brink. If there had been any bystanders, it wouldn't have been surprising if they'd fainted away from fear and confusion. A mob made up entirely of people who were the same was simply that disturbing. Only at a time like this did a person realize the truth that one's value comes from being a unique being. However, this time was different. What a beautiful sight, to have one glittering star in the center, and all around it more stars of the same hue and shape! Even the air of nihilism that filled the distance between them and its severity seemed likely to leave the spirit of anyone else in their presence frozen in rapture. This must've been what beauty was. It was death itself.

When they came within ten paces of the true D, the figures that'd formed a ring of Ds around him drew their swords in unison. Streaks of light arced off their backs, some going into the high position, some to the center, still others flowing down to a low position, taking up stances both flawless and utterly still. And then, like gorgeous petals closing on the blossom's center, they stabbed a multitude of gleaming stamens right at D.

Descending light, light, and more light—and at its center, the figure in black made a graceful flash that snapped off a number of the glittering stamens raised in this flower, while the petals in human form swiftly fell to the ground, stabbed through the neck or shoulder or chest.

They mirrored D not merely in form alone. Their skill with a blade, their strength and speed should all have been the same as his. In truth, a number of the blades bit through the black cloth into his shoulder and belly, and bright blood spouted from him. And yet, this didn't even slow D down, his coat whirling out madly like something from a nightmare, not only blinding his beautiful assailants but also deflecting their vicious attacks, while the glittering weapon in his right hand slew his identical brothers one after another. In the gloomy clearing, which seemed to lie at the border between darkness and light, a bloody mist danced out.

“What's this?”

That cry, tinged not only with anguish but also with amazement, rang out not five seconds after the deadly battle had begun.

“The shadows are fading!” the assassin in blue shouted, showing an interesting choice of words.

Those five seconds of life-or-death battle had changed the Ds who challenged D. The corners of their eyes slid downward, their noses twisted, and their lips swelled sickeningly so that they no longer retained the slightest resemblance to the D who was their prototype. Now it had become a battle between beauty and hideousness, with the dance of beauty's cold steel laying all the hideous ones low. The beautiful and the hideous were no longer equals. Not their faces alone but their very limbs were strangely out of balance, and when the last of the misshapen figures hit the ground, D whipped his sword around and raced toward where he'd heard the voice.

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III

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It had come from three stories above—a door looming in a spot more than thirty feet up.

Bending his knees only a bit, D made a great leap. Like a black and mystic bird he whistled more than twenty feet up in the air, clinging to the wall, a moving shadow whose speed rivaled that of the light as he slipped into an opening.

D expected to find the assassin in blue, Yuma, lying on the floor. But there was no sign of him. Well, actually there was. In a horrible puddle of blood on the floor there lay a single eyeball that'd been skewered by a rough wooden needle. Retrieving it from the middle of that ghastly smelling ring of gore, D said, “The left one, I take it.”

His words were disturbingly comical.

The wall across from him had an exit in it. Spots of blood trailed from the puddle of gore, ending about three feet away. At that point, Yuma had undoubtedly done something to stanch the bleeding. He had to have prodigious presence of mind.

“He can't have gone far yet,” his left hand called out in a hoarse voice. “You could go after him. Your opponent's wounded, and seriously at that.”

D, who was of the same opinion, had begun to walk toward the exit before the voice had finished speaking. But a cry that reached him from far below stopped him. Looking down, he found his other self standing there. The fake D.

Quickly noticing him, he called up to the Hunter, “Let him get away, didn't you? You don't have to say a word. I can tell just by the look on your face. After all, you're me. But don't bother chasing him further. From here on out it's a danger zone even I don't know too well. It's crawling with monsters spawned by the twisted machinery underground here. Better come up with a new plan.”

“That does sound like a good idea,” the hoarse voice said, but before it could finish, D was sailing through the air.

When he landed, the fake D stood before him pensively surveying his surroundings.

“Well, I'm certainly surprised you could kill so many of yourselves,” he remarked in an equally pensive tone. “They were clones. Data on you and me remains here somewhere. But your—I mean our good looks they just couldn't do anything about. It wouldn't do to have that copied so easily.”

With that, he kicked the longsword out of the hands of one of the fallen.

“Still, there's something I don't get. Even when their faces went to hell, their skill shouldn't have changed, so how did you slaughter them so easily? If I had to fight this many of myself, I could wipe them out, but I don't think I'd be able to stand on my own two feet like you. See, I know my own limitations. What are you hiding?”

“What did you do with Mia?” D said, cutting off what was shaping up to be a lengthy discourse by the fake.

“I left her at the entrance to this clearing. Wait a second. Now that you mention it, I don't sense—” Turning, he squinted his eyes. “She's gone.”

-

An overwhelming stench brought Mia back to her senses.

Having ridden the fake's back all the way to the clearing, she noticed what looked to be corpses lying all over the place. Telling her to wait there, the fake D had set her down, and then vanished into the gloom. As she watched him go, her consciousness had rapidly slipped away. When she came to, she was here, in a spacious chamber reminiscent of a warehouse. Filled with a stench powerful enough to wake her back up, it had a low ceiling and narrow, blocked-off corridors. Forty or fifty feet away glowed the light of what was apparently the exit, with a figure she'd never seen before standing in front of it. Though he was about the same height as Mia, the beard on his chin and the way his back was stooped made it clear he was quite advanced in years—a very, very old man.