Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (27 page)

The last footsteps and creaking wagon wheels went off in a certain direction, and then the room was silent.

“So, I wonder when we get our calling,” the left hand said.

And that's when it happened. The air stirred to D's right. A cavern had formed.

“Is this it?” the fake D said excitedly as he brought his steed around. Then he threw a quick look over at D, but it was unclear whether or not D noticed the mysterious shadows that came and went in the fake's eyes.

“Hyah!” they cried, the two riders kicking their cyborg horses' flanks in unison as they began to gallop off into the depths of the darkness.

-

Perhaps it was only a few seconds. Or maybe it was for hours that they rode.

The two of them were in a blue room. When and where they'd dismounted they couldn't say. There was a blue light shining down, the source of which was unknown. Even the shadows of the pair were tinged blue.

“Seems to me we're being told to do whatever we like from here on out,” the fake D muttered to himself as he surveyed their surroundings. “I think I'll be heading out now. See you.”

Once his back had melded with the blue light, a hoarse voice remarked with relief, “He's finally gone, has he?”

“Were you worried about him?” D asked.

“Yeah, I had a bad feeling. You and him—even if the two of you have to have it out at some point, it's better to put some space between you for the time being.”

“We have to have it out at some point, you say?”

D's tone made the tiny eyes in the palm of his left hand bug out as they looked up at him.

“Both of us are me. And both of us came to Muma.” Breaking off there, D said, “What am I?”

It wasn't really a question. However, his steely tone carried an extreme sadness as thin as a piece of silk, and it would've taken Mia's breath away if the girl had been there.

“At any rate, let him go. If he's going that way, we should take this way.”

Before the left hand had even made the suggestion, D had started off on foot. Up ahead, something shaped like a black box began to come into view. No one of Noble blood could mistake the sight of it. It was a coffin. Bending down, he reached for the lid and opened it. The desiccated corpse had vivid remnants of anguish left on its face.

Placing his left hand on it, D asked, “About how old is this?”

“Roughly five thousand years,” the left hand replied. “The cause of death was rampant DNA damage brought about by abnormal hormonal secretions. See how almost all the skin has been mummified, but a spot on the right hand and the lungs alone are still normal? Look! The lungs are still functioning five thousand years later. In other words, just those two parts turned into Nobility.”

“So, this is one outcome?”

“Sure enough—this is what he'd like to call a failure. Loan me your left hand.”

The fingers of D's left hand tugged on the wooden stake that protruded from the corpse's chest.

“And that's why it was disposed of. Oh, my, there are rows and rows of 'em!”

D's eyes had beheld the same thing.

There wasn't just one coffin. Behind it was another, and another beyond that, wooden boxes beyond numbering laid in a crazy confusion like some sort of modern sculpture. Further and further still they stretched on, endless as the images in an infinite series of mirrors . . .

There was no need to open the lid of the next coffin. The hinges had rotted off, and from the gap that was left, a right hand that was also mummified could be seen. Surely the frilly white shirt cuff was that of a woman. A tiny glint of gold spilled from between her fingers. In the palm of her hand she clutched a small pendant. Had she intended to hand it to someone? Someone outside the coffin? The one who'd sealed her in it?

D opened the lid of the tiny shell-like locket. There was a little photograph inside. Though its hues had faded to sepia, the split second burned into it still captured a pleasant memory that'd resisted the flow of time. Backed by snow-capped mountains and rich fields of barley, a young man and woman smiled as if enchanted by a spell that would last for all time.

But the girl had been chosen and brought here.

Closing the locket, D wound its chain around the girl's wrist. There was nothing else to do.

“All of these were failures, then?” he muttered in a coffin-filled section of what could safely be called a cemetery.

That's right, someone replied. You are my only success.

-

Instinctively, the fake D looked all around.

There was a presence. He got the feeling it was at the ceiling, and beneath his feet, and right next to him as well. Endless rows of coffins spread all around him. He knew that each of them contained a corpse with a stake through its heart. When he'd muttered, “So, they were all failures?” that voice had heard him.

“There's something I want to ask you,” he said to the voice. “When you say ‘you,' is that singular or plural? Don't you mean ‘you two'?”

My only success was you alone.

“Great!” the fake D exclaimed, thumping his chest. His eyes held a ghastly tinge that hadn't been seen until now. “So it's just me? In that case, that other me is in the way.”

-

D moved silently through a sea of coffins. Did he have some goal? No. At least, it didn't seem that he did. He was as cold and beautiful as ever but shrouded in a terrific aura that seemed as if it could raise the dead. An aura of anger. Though the young man appeared to be an icy machine right to the marrow of his bones, his body now burned with the one emotion that seemed to suit him the least. Perhaps it was due to compassion for the innocent people who'd been summoned here to meet a horrible end, or maybe he saw something that had a direct bearing on his own fate. He shouldn't have had any set goal, yet his gait called to mind a ferocious tiger stalking its prey.

“I did some rough calculations,” the hoarse voice said. “Based on the number of coffins we've passed and they way they're laid out, the total would be approximately—”

“One hundred and seven or eight thousand.”

“Exactly,” it said in a doleful tone.

So many called here only to have their life snuffed out with one thrust of a stake. For what purpose? For whose sake? Which was the success—D or the fake D?

Suddenly the color of the light changed. Gloom descended. The whole world was altered. The machinery that towered to either side of him seemed to be made of shadows. In order to conduct experiments impossible in this world, the very substance of the machines had been transformed. They lived.

The next thing D knew, he was looking down from a platform set partway up the wall. The walls dropped straight down for several hundred yards, and countless black specks moved around at the bottom. D knew at a glance it was those who'd taken the Highway of the Dead.

Now I shall conduct the first sorting.

Even when the voice rang out, D didn't move.

There was a cacophony of flapping black wings near the ceiling. A cloud of bats. A few seconds later, it became clear they weren't just harmless creatures. The black mammals attached themselves to the necks of the survivors who stood motionless below, driving their fangs into the carotid arteries. The half-dead simply stood there, making no attempt to shoo them away, and one after another the people fell. Every last bit of color had drained from their pale faces. As the last one dropped, the bats rose en masse, flying to the upper reaches one after another and disappearing.

The thousands of human forms that lay at the bottom were reflected in D's cold eyes. It wasn't the sort of look he gave the dead.

These bodies had been drained of every last drop of blood by the bats—vampire bats. Now they were true corpses, but a number of them rose unsteadily to their feet. Half dead or truly dead, they were souls that'd returned from hell.

They aren't dead yet, the voice said. Even with the blood completely drained from their bodies, they live. Even if a person has received the kiss of the Nobility, so long as part of their human nature remains, indestructibility won't come into play in this situation. They should be one hundred percent completely and utterly dead. Since they survive, it means the power I gave them went to work just as they were about to die. In the other examination areas, surely other candidates survived in the same manner. Roughly one percent.

Of the twenty thousand half-dead people who'd entered the castle with D, that would leave approximately two hundred.

The scene changed again. Next for the survivors was an incredible baptism of death. Walking on wobbly legs, they were blasted head on by high-powered laser cannons, machine guns, and ultrasonic projectors. Hearts shot through by crimson beams of light, bodies ripped open by steel slugs flying at the speed of sound, cells hammered by ultrasonic waves, every one of them dropped, and then a number of them got up again.

These physical attacks should also more than suffice to kill them in their present form. And so more wheat is separated from the chaff.

The unwatchable process of “sorting” continued. The elite were torn apart by the claws of ravenous beasts, devoured, or wrapped in powerful tentacles until every bone in their bodies was broken and they'd suffocated. At this point, they finally demonstrated the special Noble abilities they'd acquired. The shredded bodies of the dead mended themselves with unbelievable speed. While that wasn't such an amazing occurrence in this world, the way shattered bones re-formed, flesh that'd been ripped free reattached itself, and ruptured eyeballs grew new retinas and scleras from nothing was still a miraculous paranormal phenomenon.

Here a number of different groups were pooled, and though there were a dozen or so survivors, most of the dead had obvious madness in their eyes as they began to wander about.

Their minds don't come back, you see. Might it be due to fear or the pain of repeated deaths?

Five remained. Among them D spotted a face he recognized. It was Savena. Because she was in another group, she hadn't shown up here until now.

And now for the final sorting.

With that declaration ringing in his ears, D drew his sword and struck out in front of himself. He knew that before him lay an unseen wall that blocked his way. At first, his blade moved without meeting any resistance. But when D tried to advance, he was checked by the invisible wall.

Those who've received the kiss of the Nobility, while still human, have gained the characteristics of a Noble. However, there are fundamental issues to be resolved. In the end, those people remain our subjects—the master/slave relationship persists. If even a single Noble were to appear in their midst, the shock would probably drive them half mad.

Was the voice—the master of Muma—trying to say he thought it best for humans and Nobility to be treated as equals?

This is not what I sought. I'm looking for something else. D, you must know what that is, the voice said, a crushing weight added to its tone.

 

-

I

-

D
id the quintet that included Savena realize their fate? All that could be discerned was the great contentment that colored their faces. For there stood five men and women who, for all the rapture and uncertainty of being the chosen ones, were melting, body and soul, in flames of love.

A gleam came down on them from above. Mechanical arms with metallic, syringelike cylinders attached. There was one for each of them.

I shall inject you with my DNA, the voice declared.

That was when D swung his sword once more. With eyes shut he carved the air with an imagined sword purely by will—and this time, too, it met nothing, but he felt the unseen wall had been slashed and crumbled away. D moved forward—and right before him, the five elite were assailed by a mad gale. Had it not been D, surely he would've covered his eyes and turned his face away.

All five of them were slammed against the floor as if they'd been struck by an invisible opponent, flying back up to do a crazed dance that crashed them into a wall, and from there they rammed into the opposite wall headfirst before once again falling to the floor. Ferocious death spasms tore through them from head to toe, and their paraffin-pale skin swiftly blackened and wrinkled. They'd begun to turn into mummies.

“D . . .”

As D approached, a black hand reached for his leg. While he might've leapt away, he didn't. It caught hold of his ankle. From the mummy's face, it was no longer possible to tell its gender.

“D . . . Kill me . . .” it groaned between rasping breaths.

And as soon as it said that, a flash of white light sank into the mummy's chest in the blink of an eye.

“So, no one passed the test?” a hoarse voice croaked in the darkness.

The half-dead had been more than ten thousand strong, and every last one of them was gone now—the result of their smoldering love and millennia of waiting for the road to return.

“Come out,” D said, looking up to a position that overlooked the five corpses.

There was no sign of anyone moving around. But there was only one person he could be addressing.

“Wow!” his left hand exclaimed. Perhaps it was trying to be funny. However, never had it sounded so dazed.

Very well, the voice replied.

“Here he comes!” said the left hand.

-

Very well, the voice replied.

The fake D was poised for action.

He lay before him. His presence was growing stronger by the second. It actually had mass.

I can cut him down, the fake D thought.

-

Terrific shock waves struck the faces of both of them from a point in thin air. Neither shut his eyes. And yet, neither of them was able to catch the instant he appeared. The next thing they knew, he was simply standing there. The hem of his black cape swayed with an imperceptible breeze. He was over six and a half feet tall. Even colored by the gloom as he approached, his shoulders and powerful chest were evident. His face couldn't be seen.

-

“It's been quite some time now,” D said quietly. His voice was grimness itself. It wasn't a tone of malice. There was a will to it—a cold, burning will. A will that declared that he must be destroyed. Yet he didn't raise the sword he held in his right hand.

He recalled an ancient text; a long-forgotten tome left in a corner of a musty library. If not for that thick volume, the library itself would've been without meaning. Were its yellowed pages paper or parchment? There was a good chance it'd existed since before there was anything called “books.” Even if they found it, there was no one who would open its pages. They were afraid. It was too horrible. No one wanted to know the information recorded within. Ancient history not meant to be known, a history penned in the blood of the world of the night that'd since been driven from the world of light, one of cursed technology and of a truth straddling both worlds that invited madness.

D moved forward.

-

The fake D dashed.

-

Each made a leap of fifteen feet and entered the chest of the massive, shadowy form. Like a son being embraced by his father.

Waves of pain went out. Their blades had definitely pierced his heart.

-

D gouged at it.

-

The fake D gouged as well.

-

The voice reached their ears, saying, The two of you could slay me. But the one to succeed me must have my blessing.

-

D gouged more. Air rushed into the wound. The pain of the figure in black was relayed to him through the sword.

“You did it! You actually did it!” his left hand shouted.

Remarkable, I must admit, said the voice carried on those spasms. The two of you could slay me. Why do you not continue?

D felt the spasms suddenly stop. The instant he put additional strength into the hand around the hilt of his sword, the shadowy figure vanished without warning. It didn't fade away. Rather, it leapt back.

Ordinarily, D would've bounded with the same speed. His blade shouldn't have come back out. However, the shadowy figure was stained black by the far reaches of the gloom, and D wasn't poised to give pursuit. The second he kicked off the floor, the figure melted into the gloom.

“He's not there anymore,” the left hand said. “He said something that's got me worried. When he talked about the two of you, he meant you and the other you, but did he mean that if one of you were to pull out, the other one could never slay him?”

“He stabbed into him, too. You sensed that, didn't you?” D said as he sheathed his blade.

“Yeah.”

“Then we should've slain him.”

“Hmm. I can't say I don't know how the other you might feel.”

What the left hand implied was an important point to consider.

“We have to find the sway reactor,” D said, looking all around.

“Aren't you gonna chase him?”

“That's not why I came here. My job concerns the safety of that village.”

There was a brief pause. “Really? Yeah, I suppose it does at that,” his left hand remarked, sounding rather relieved.

“Do you know where the reactor is?”

“Good question. I'll leave that up to you. We're good on water, and earth is out of the question. That leaves what, fire and wind? Seems kinda sacrilegious, but what else can we do?”

Taking out a pair of wooden stakes, D held one in each hand and rubbed them together as fast as he could. Flames rose from them—the heat of the friction had started a fire. From the standpoint of physics it was an all-too-common phenomenon, but only someone with the monstrous strength of Noble blood could do it so easily.

“That ain't enough.”

D swept out with his hands. The flames flowed with them, shooting down into the coffin at his feet and igniting its contents, a five-thousand-year-old, desiccated mummy.

Whoooosh! Flames shot up more than ten feet. Scattering, the flames jumped from one coffin to another, cremating the remains. Tremendous heat struck D's cheeks, and fiery tongues licked at the hem of his coat.

D didn't move. He was cremating those who'd met such a horrible fate, but not in order to see them off—and perhaps he wished to atone for that.

“If you don't hurry up, you'll wind up a fireball!”

It was only when the flames burned the edge of his coat and sparks flew at his hair that D finally raised his left hand. The flames were sucked into the mouth on his palm, the force of the suction creating such a gale that even the flames that singed him were torn asunder.

After even the smoke had been consumed, a hoarse voice said, “Fire and wind we've got. Next up—water.”

Raising his right arm, D pressed his left index finger to his wrist. One scratch and the skin broke open, letting bright blood flow out. And D caught it in the palm of his left hand. It was indeed water. Liquid. However, this was a shocking way to slake the hand's thirst. The dripping lifeblood was sucked into the tiny mouth that'd opened in his palm, and once quick work had been made of it, a blue flame burned in the depths of that tiny mouth. At the same time, vitality returned to D's pale visage.

“So, can you tell? All your senses, not to mention your sixth sense, should be working better than mine.”

D's eyes were shut. Several seconds later he opened them, and as he began walking, he said, “It's underground.”

Not only could his left hand give him an infusion of the incredible power from the elements of earth, water, wind, and fire to bring his body back to life, but it could also sharpen his five normal senses and special sixth sense beyond the limits of any living creature. The answer D gave was nothing more than a feeling.

D ran, leaving the wind whipping in his wake. Through numerous corridors he passed, going down staircases and taking elevators along the way. Presently, he arrived at a spot deep underground where the bizarre reactor was going through its mysterious undulations.

“Now that we've found it, it should be simple to operate,” the hoarse voice said. “Let me see.”

There was no way to describe the deadly energy source except to say it was a colossal silver cylinder, and D took a few steps toward it before a voice called down from up above, “Hey!”

It was D's voice. And he ascertained it came from the top of the reactor.

Looking up, D saw two figures standing on top of the three-hundred-foot-tall reactor. The fake D and Mia.

“Hey, I'm coming down now, but first I want you to throw down your sword.”

The fake's demand was conveyed in a cheerful tone.

Two black spots rose on the palm of D's left hand. Eyes. D raised his hand. The eyes in it stared up intently, and a hoarse voice remarked, “He backed out of helping you destroy him. What do you suppose he got in return?”

“Don't you know?” D asked.

“Nope.”

“Hey, what's the holdup? If you don't lose the sword, the girl dies!”

The fake had Mia right by his side, and drawing the sword from his back, he put its blade against the base of her neck. He didn't seem to be joking. Though his expression and tone were both jovial, they only served to make him seem all the more dangerous.

D drew his longsword.

“Sheath and all! And I want the sword guard secured to the sheath, too.”

The sheath already had a high-polymer line wound about it. This was to intimidate foes who ran around with a sheathed weapon or drawn sword in hand.

Threading the line through a hole in the sword guard, D ran it around to a loop on the scabbard and secured the blade in its sheath before dropping it at his feet.

“Kick it away.”

Once the Hunter had complied, the fake finally said, “All right. I'm coming down now. Hey, stick out your left hand!”

“That son of a bitch,” the left hand muttered in a lower tone than normal, probably guessing what the fake D had in mind.

Saying nothing, D put out his left hand.

“Perfect,” the fake's voice rang out gaily from that great height.

His last remark trailing behind him, he came down headfirst—the fake D had taken a dive off the reactor. And the moment he landed on the floor not three feet from D, a flash of light shot out and D's left arm was taken off at the elbow. Watching with amusement as the limb bounced thirty feet across the floor, the fake D looked at D, who was clutching his dripping wound, and winked.

“Sorry about that. There's been a change of plans. You must know that by now, eh?”

“Did he put you up to this?”

“Bingo! I find it all pretty repulsive myself, but when I heard I was his sole heir, I had to make a move.”

“So, you want to be him?”

“Hell yeah!” the fake D replied, scratching the tip of his nose bashfully. “You know who he is. I mean, he's the king of the whole world! And that's what I'll get to be.”

“His kingdom has all but collapsed.”

“Hell, it can be built back up again. There are still feudal lords doing well out on the Frontier. Band them all together, and I could make a drive for the Capital in short order. The humans' balls will shrivel up as soon as they see what Nobles can really do.”

“Which are you? A Noble or a human?”

The fake D's expression twisted at D's query. “I refer the same question right back to you. Of course, I already know the answer. You were the top of your class.”

D smiled thinly. “If I was the top of my class, you must be too.”

Laughing, the fake replied, “Well, you've got me there. Since it never hurts to ask, wouldn't you like to join forces with me? The two of us could take on the Capital together! And the surviving Nobility would accompany us. Even if some of them resisted or other trouble came up, we'd be fine if there were two of us. We could solve any problem just by glaring at them. After all, we're his—”

The fake D was about to state a certain terrifying fact. However, just then an urgent voice called out, “D!”