Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (23 page)

D held his sword at the ready, poised for a thrust. Somewhere a cry of pain could be heard.

The clouds eddied. An almost imperceptible light played across their surface as they churned. It was unmistakably an energy current.

“What's this?” the left hand shouted. He'd just felt D's body absorbing the energy. “You really are something. Now you've finally learned how to control the very life of this world and make it do your bidding. Hell, it's not even control, it's just simple concentration. With that alone you—”

Eyes shut and not moving a muscle, D looked to be a beautiful sculpture. And the silently raging energy cloud was being drawn into his body.

“Stop it—or you'll be killed!” the left hand cried excitedly.

-

The horse and the wagon stopped simultaneously. Before them, a black chain of mountains stood in their way. The top ridge had fused with the darkness.

“That's the North Lake Mountain Range, isn't it?” Mia said.

“Yeah. Orogenetic activity formed them about two hundred million years ago. So, Muma lies somewhere in them, then?”

“Probably. Don't you know?”

“I haven't a clue,” the fake replied, being perfectly clear on that point. “What I do know is—”

Looking once more at D in the wagon, the fake stiffened. Mia did, too.

“Come here. You'd do well to keep your distance.”

The fake D's breath was frozen and white. This was no atmospheric abnormality. His lungs, or actually all his organs, were freezing up.

Mia had started to get up and was frozen with one hand extended. White breath discharged from her mouth, and then stopped.

“Oh, this isn't good. Get over here.”

Moving the frozen Mia back behind his saddle, he said, “This time, he plans on opening that gate, I'd say.”

And having said this, the fake D scanned the wagon's surroundings. “Oh, looks like we've got some odd participants gathering to celebrate the opening.”

Mia strained her ears, but she heard nothing. As the daughter of a fortuneteller, she'd received special training to sharpen all five of her senses. Even in a good-sized throng she'd be able to pick out any sound within six hundred feet, and in a quiet setting she could even hear footsteps a quarter mile away.

She was just about to ask where on earth they could be coming from when she was startled to see the fake D dismount. Stroking the back of his steed, which was the ordinary sort of cyborg horse they sold in every village, he was the picture of kindness as he gave his beloved mount some condensed nutritional supplements. As the horse's muscles unknotted and its eyes watered, he turned his gaze to Mia and said, “They're here.”

Mia had also noticed that, in the direction from which they came, a semicircular ball of spirit fire seemed to be bearing down on them. Standing out in the darkness like glowing wraiths were definite human forms on horseback. However, both the horses and the people were all bone. Bones pale as will-o'-the-wisps came into view in the darkness, swaying closer and closer in the kind of spectacle witnessed rarely even on the Frontier.

Coming to a halt some ten to fifteen feet from the pair, a skull attached to a particularly impressive skeletal frame asked them, “Are you the ones who hurt Barga?”

His tone was dark.

“Who's that?” said the fake D.

“The monk back in the last village. He got in touch with us and asked us to go out and avenge him. Said we'd be looking for two guys with the same face and a girl, don't you know.”

“So, what's that depraved monk to you, a relative?”

“A colleague, by some stretch of the word. After travelers staying at his temple have left, he secretly sends us word of their destination. His cut is a bit high, but I guess that can't really be helped.”

“You're highwaymen?” the fake D said. “Even at that, those outfits are too much. In these getups, you must be going after women and children, eh?”

Glancing at the ten-strong riders, he continued, “I don't owe it to anyone to take you guys out. Just make tracks. There's going to be some trouble here soon.”

Needless to say, the trouble he was talking about involved D. His tone was derisive.

A malevolent air rose from the group of wraiths.

“We'll take your severed heads and hang them at the entrance to our village. And that monk can handle your funeral. Not that you'll be getting into heaven, mind you.”

A bony hoof scratched at the soil. That was the signal for a charge.

“Hold up just a second,” the fake D said, one hand raised. “What did you boys do to those travelers?”

Base laughter scuttled through the skeletal mob.

“What do you think, we apologized and sent them on their merry way? They're all planted in the ground around here. Including the women and children you mentioned.”

“You don't say.”

It may well have been that his foes only heard his voice.

The fake D leapt, coming down in front of the skeleton he'd been talking to and its horse, but no one even noticed him until he'd taken the heads off both the rider and the steed. His speed was incredible.

The booming shock wave when horse and rider fell roused the rest of the skeletons. Tightening their grips on glowing reins and kicking the flanks of horses with only bones visible, they made a mad rush at the fake D.

In the voids that had been the horses' eye sockets, fireballs glowed. They shot out at the fake D in rapid succession, and where his blade parried them, a dazzling sphere of fire quickly swelled. One fiery sphere became two, then three, engulfing the fake D in light and turning that whole area into glowing ground. Everything dissolved into the white light, and before long that grew fainter, but no sign remained of either the cyborg horse or the fake D.

“D?” Mia cried out from the driver's seat in spite of herself.

“One of our guys knows how to control the Nobility's nuclear power. He showed us how to use that weapon you just saw there. Hardly puts out any radiation at all, so you can relax.”

“How kind of you,” Mia replied with all the sarcasm she could muster.

“Now that I've had a good look at you, I can see that even if you're a bit boyish, you've got a sexy mug on you. Instead of getting rid of you out here, we might be better off selling you to a traveling slave factory.”

“No chance in hell,” the girl snorted, turning her face away with distaste until bony white fingers sank into her shoulder.

“Get down from there,” a skeleton with a dirk ordered her, but Mia vanished right before him, appearing without warning five or ten feet away at the nose of a different horse. The startled mount whinnied and reared up. This was repeated with all the horses, plunging the group into chaos.

There were those who somehow managed to control the animals rising on their hind legs, those who fell from the saddle, and those who were trampled by the horses after falling. Screams and whinnies shook the night air.

Suddenly a ghostly light formed in one spot, swelling into a little fireball about three feet in diameter. Though it didn't emit the radiation associated with nuclear fission or fusion, its core temperature still reached ten thousand degrees. When the fireball began to contract, the paralyzed Mia appeared right next to it. At the same time the glowing sphere of fire faded, she toppled forward. The left half of her body, which had been exposed to the light, was smoking.

“That did the trick. Half her face is burned, but what the hell, we'll still get good money for her,” the one who'd unleashed the fireball guffawed from the back of his steed.

But then a voice whispered in his ear, “Go to hell.”

“Wha—”

A peaceful sort of surprise was the last feeling the skeleton ever experienced.

Kicking the skeleton whose head had been so neatly severed right off his horse, the fake D gave an angelic smile from his place in the saddle to the badly shaken bandit group. The bony white steed beneath him seemed to suit him better than it did the skeleton rabble.

 

-

I

-

"
W
hat the hell?” the skeletons exclaimed, fearful cries spilling from their mouths along with the flames. The fake D already knew that the skeletal horses and riders were just spooky costumes covered in luminescent paint. There was one off to his right—and the fake leapt at him from the back of his horse. Although the guy went for the stake gun holstered on his hip, he didn't even manage to draw it before being run through the heart.

In midair, the fake D muttered, “Huh?” That wasn't the way he'd intended to slay the man. And the reason he was the tiniest bit off balance when he landed was because he hadn't come down in the pose he expected.

A rider shot a white-hot bolt at him, but it only grazed his left shoulder as he dashed forward and to the right—toward three men who'd been thrown from their horses. Unbelievably powerful to begin with, his legs kept any attacks from landing. The leftmost skeleton had an insect gun leveled.

He was braced to slash his opponent from one shoulder to the opposite armpit—but even though his arms shifted position without any thought on his part, he still pierced his foe with a remarkable thrust through the neck.

What the hell's going on? This thought flashed through his mind just for an instant while he executed a half turn and delivered a thrust to the middle skeleton that killed him instantly, leaving only the third.

Making a great leap, the fake had his sword in the high position as he came straight down at a guy armed with a double-barreled shotgun who'd grabbed onto a horse to get back on his feet—but for some reason, both his arms and his blade took up different positions. And that slowed him down.

The double-barreled shotgun belched fire.

-

“Hyaaaah!”

-

D heard his own voice, the shout sounding a million miles away. He was aware of the exquisite balance of tension in the muscles of his legs and abdomen, his back and chest. They were supporting his two arms and his sword.

As the blade glided forward, the thrust was perfect. The tip of the blade formed a right angle to the door as it slid in as smoothly as if he were stabbing a mirage. All of the energy in this world was channeled through D's body and into the blade in a split second.

The gate grew indistinct, losing its shape and allowing the scene beyond it to come into view. A vast wilderness stretching into the twilight. D realized that this was simultaneously the world that he presently occupied and the real world. Fact and fiction were in complete agreement.

D turned and looked.

In the moonlight, the fake D was crouched down, applying a white cloth to Mia's face. It was a radiation-removing stupe—something he'd found in the skeletons' saddle bags. It went without saying who all the corpses lying around him belonged to. There were no survivors. They had made an enemy of the young man who called himself D.

“Was she hurt?” D asked. His voice was like iron, utterly devoid of warmth. There stood the Hunter, as always beautiful and cold as ice.

“Got tagged with a little radiation. Her life's not in any danger, but her face got trashed. There's nothing that can be done for her out here. The Capital's the only place they could fix this.”

“I believe I told you not to come with us,” D asserted icily.

Mia hadn't passed out. She was intently gazing at D—not that she was blaming him for the pain she'd suffered. The look in her eyes was one of joy at D being safe. And this was how he rewarded her?

Not surprisingly, the fake D took exception to that, saying, “Hey, isn't that a little cold?”

“It's fine. Because he's right,” Mia said, stopping him. Brave as her expression was, it was unavoidable that some hint of sadness hadn't left it.

“But I'm glad you made it back safely,” she said, looking up.

D was in the back seat of the wagon.

“Who are these characters?” D asked, climbing down from the vehicle.

The fake D told him they were highwaymen and explained the situation.

“When did you get here?” D inquired as he looked far out across the desolate plain. From where they stood, a lone road stretched in a straight line through the middle of a boulder-strewn expanse.

“But this—”

“It's known as the Highway of the Dead,” the Hunter's left hand said. “Now I remember. Seems my memory was wiped out, too. Till we found this place, that is.”

“Who erased it?”

“Who, indeed.”

“But if there's a road to the far north, we would've gotten there sooner or later. Why'd that woman Menda take such a roundabout way to explain it? All that business with the gate . . .”

“Hey, hold on there. This wasn't here from the start,” the fake D remarked with amazement after exchanging looks with Mia. “In the beginning, there was a chain of mountains. It's called the North Lake Mountain Range, and it's on maps and everything. The highest peak is Mount North Lake at fifteen thousand feet above sea level. There were three more mountains over twelve thousand feet, and another seven in the ten-thousand-foot range. And all of it, just like that—well, I'd say it couldn't have taken two seconds for them to be laid flat.”

“Laid flat?”

“That's right,” Mia said, finally sitting up. One hand pressed the stupe against her left cheek. Her shirt and slacks were also charred on her left side, but fortunately the flesh beneath was unharmed. “It was just like a dream. That huge mountain range shook just like it was an illusion, its lines blurred, and in an instant it turned flat. Then after that, this plain formed.”

What the power of Mother Nature had raised tens of millions of years earlier had now become this smooth expanse of earth and stones. Where had the other billions, nay, trillions of tons of rock and soil gone? Had the gate D stabbed into been the North Lake Mountain Range? The mystery had been transformed into a desolate plain slumbering in the light of the moon.

“The Highway of the Dead, eh?” D muttered.

“That's right,” the fake D said.

The trio stood there, feeling the weight of the moonlight. D didn't ask why it'd been given that name—he knew his left hand wouldn't answer. And there were other matters to attend to.

“Let's go.”

He began to walk toward his cyborg horse. That was all he could do. There could be no retreat for this young man, and the road that called him led to slaughter and strife.

The fake D also settled into the saddle, and Mia returned to the wagon. Two horses and a wagon advanced in the moonlight.

“By the way,” the fake D said to the Hunter as he rode alongside him. Not waiting for D to reply, he continued, “How did you get the gate open?”

“I stabbed it,” D replied succinctly.

It was a few seconds before the fake D accepted this, saying, “I see. I guess that figures.” For he hadn't forgotten how every last attack he'd launched against the skeletons had turned into a thrust.

-

The Highway of the Dead—they didn't know the reason it carried this disturbing appellation, but the plain and road that an entire mountain range had been used to conceal stretched out in the moonlight with no end in sight, just one craggy rock after another in a scene that would've transformed even pioneers aglow with hope and dreams of exploration into prisoners of madness and despair.

A great emptiness assailed Mia. If she'd been out in the sunlight, things might've been a little better. However, as dhampirs, the two men chose to travel by night. That couldn't be helped, and she realized she was only getting in the way, but there was no way for her to fight the mental devastation as they continued down the desolate road. Anyone who lived on the Frontier had surely had a similar experience. A road thick with monsters by night, a highway strewn with bones. Three days and three nights it had continued, over an interminable distance. And yet, she didn't understand why these feelings of fear and helplessness were creeping into her.

Without even realizing it, Mia had let go of the reins. No longer driven to hurry, the horse slowed to a stop, and the vehicle's speed dropped at the same rate until it soon halted.

The two Ds, who were riding ahead, quickly raced back to her. It was the fake D that asked her, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Somehow, this seems so—futile. After a little rest, I'm sure I'll be better.”

“Been rough for you, has it?” the fake D said, scratching at one cheek.

“I'm sure that once the sun is up—” she started to say.

“If we waited for that, then we'd be having it rough.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Are you tired, or have you lost the urge to go?”

This frosty query came from the true D.

“Well—” Mia began, hemming and hawing. She couldn't give him an honest answer.

“Do you want to stay here like this? Do you simply not care what happens anymore?” D asked her, his words piercing her breast.

Unable to lie to him, Mia conceded, saying, “Yeah.”

“I see,” the fake D said, looking at D. “So, is this why it's called the Highway of the Dead? Why don't you ask your left hand?”

“Right you are,” a hoarse voice replied, acknowledging the truth of his statement in a dejected tone. “Try going a little further. You'll soon see. Actually, you can do that even from here.”

The trio surveyed their surroundings. A weird miasma blew against the napes of their necks like some unpleasantly warm wind.

“Look at that, would you,” the fake D said, tossing his jaw to the east—the right-hand side of the highway.

Beyond the rocks and dirt stood human forms—an emaciated figure clad in rags, with another beside it, and still another beside that, and behind it . . .

“They're the folks who've followed this road,” said the hoarse voice. “Headed toward Muma. As far as I know, this has gone on for more than five thousand years, and the road has been taken by more than twenty million people.”

“How many people have reached it?”

“To the best of my knowledge—zero.”

“Why would they do this? Is this Muma such a great place?”

“I don't know. But they didn't come here of their own free will.”

“How's that?” said the fake.

“They were summoned. By the one known as ‘the great one.' ”

“All twenty million of them?”

“Seems he was doing some sort of experiment in Muma. And for it, he needed strong human beings—men and women not just physically but also mentally tougher than millions of others. This highway is, so to speak, a test course to evaluate the humans he selects.”

Humans lacking drive—those without sufficient strength of mind—would lose everything out here, unable to advance or turn back until they shriveled into corpses by the roadside.

“They just keep staring at us. It's spooky,” the fake D said in a tone that didn't sound spooked at all.

“They can't do anything,” the hoarse voice replied. “If they could, they'd go on or turn back.”

“Good point. But what'll we do about baby here?”

“Take her with you,” D told the fake.

“Yeah, I suppose that's the only thing we can do. Okay, come here,” the fake D said, slapping the back of his saddle.

Mia sluggishly leaned over and prepared to join him.

“Don't do that!” the left hand shouted, stopping them.

“What's the problem?”

“Here's the scary part about the Highway of the Dead. The strong ones carry those who are worn out. They bring them along. But they quickly see the grave error in their ways. In other words, they find out that apathy is contagious.”

“Sorry,” the fake D said, pulling back. Mia was left in the wagon. “If that's the case, baby here—”

“She'll have to be left behind. No matter what, sooner or later the highway's atmosphere's gonna gnaw its way into you, but at least this will buy you some added time. Especially since you two are special.”

“Yeah, but—”

“After a little while has passed, she won't even want to be bothered with lamenting how she's been left behind. That's what true apathy is like. So relax.”

“Is that right? In that case, I feel better about it,” the fake D said with a nod. “Sorry about this, baby. Looks like this is as far as you go.”