“As you can see, she’s fine,” the princess remarked. “However, she can never return to the life she once led. For she has learned what it feels like to be a Noble.”
“D . . . ,” Elena said when she opened her mouth. “You came for me?”
“I have your medicine,” D said, tapping his breast pocket with the stump at the end of his left arm.
“A-ha! It would appear that as worthless as my retainers were, they still put forth quite an effort. Shall I reattach it for you?” asked the princess.
“Keep your nose out of it!” said a hoarse voice.
Seeing the limb poking from D’s coat pocket, the princess’s eyes went wide.
“What a saucy little hand you are. Just as soon as I’ve slain your master, I’ll give you a good thrashing,” the woman said impishly. But then a silvery flash scorched through the air at her. A horizontal line ran straight across the waist of her white dress—a thread of vermilion that swelled in a matter of seconds, becoming drops of fresh blood that fell like rain.
“Now you’ve done it!” she exclaimed, and her cry was apparently the signal.
Bubbles formed on the surface of the blood that’d stained her dress and dripped to the floor, and then vivid colors that seemed to exist solely to catch the eye floated up into the air. Roses—four hues of roses. They formed a dazzling stream around D—and then flowed faster and faster into a whirling vortex.
Another flash of light slashed through the stream.
The cloud of roses suddenly vanished from view, and as Elena saw D standing there, she pressed her hand to her lips. In his neck, his shoulder, his chest, and his abdomen there bloomed four roses in total—one in each of the four hues.
D reeled. A terrible dizziness assailed him. Heaven and earth switched places, and even when he closed his eyes, the sensation remained.
“Every rose has its thorn. And in the case of my roses, that would be poison,” the princess said with a refined laugh.
Clearly this poison was virulent enough to wreak havoc with the sense of balance of even a dhampir like D. Finally, D was forced to rest his sword against the floor to support himself. It looked as if the very weight of the moonlight on his back was more than he could bear, driving him down on his knees.
“Before I deliver the coup, I suppose I should slake my thirst from you.”
The princess walked over to D without any sign of fear and touched the rose in the nape of his neck. Though initially blue, the blossom suddenly turned crimson. It had sucked up D’s blood. Pulling the rose from him in one smooth motion, the princess then inserted it into her own carotid artery.
“Your blood is flowing into me . . . Oh . . . How sweet . . . How strong . . . I can feel it . . . filling my whole body . . . ,” the lovely princess moaned, her body writhing with delight and rapture.
What a terrible feast this was.
“Oh, how well I shall feed on your blood—once I’ve taken your head off.”
The princess raised her hand casually. A glistening thread from her cuff connected the tips of her pale fingers.
“This is a razor-sharp thread spun from the veins of my roses. In fact, my knights’ armor was crafted from the very same substance. I had hoped to discuss travels in distant lands with you for a while, but ultimately I shall stay here. Farewell, D.”
The thread swung down at the Hunter. But when it swerved off course and tore open a fifteen-foot section of stone floor, bright blood came spilling from the mouth of the princess.
Retching loudly, she cried, “My body’s burning up! This blood is—D, you’re—”
Surely the princess felt the tortures of hell, and her visage become that of a ghastly reaper as her eyes glimpsed the deep red shape that’d fallen at D’s feet. The petals of that withering rose curled as the brown of decay spread through them.
“Apparently, even my blood can be a weapon,” D remarked.
The moonlight shone down on the handsome man, burning his gorgeous silhouette onto the floor. As D approached the princess with blade in hand, there wasn’t an iota of compassion on his face.
But it was just then that there was a clang like dragging chains. The body of the princess rose, and then sank into the floor an instant later. Some sort of mysterious force had destroyed the stone flooring from below, causing her to fall.
“D?!” Elena said as she ran toward him.
“Stay there,” the Hunter bade her as he leapt into the hole that yawned in the ground like a jagged, fang-rimmed maw.
Before D reached the bottom of the subterranean chamber, his coat fluttered out. Having dropped more than a thousand feet straight down, the man landed on the floor without making a sound.
D knew exactly what this place was. The lachrymose, eerie aura that buffeted him from the instant he landed told him it was the White Knight’s chamber—home to the last of the four knights.
D focused on one region in the darkness.
“We meet . . . again . . . And this time . . . it seems we’re to battle,” said the White Knight. “Slayer . . . weeps for joy. You know . . . he keeps saying . . . he wants to kill you.”
Oh, and how you could hear it—the delicate metallic rasp of iron on steel in the depths of the darkness. It was the wriggling of Slayer clamoring for D’s blood.
As the white-armored form emerged from the darkness, he already had his longsword in hand.
“Long . . . has it been . . . my princess,” he said, his groan of a voice creeping across the ground.
He, too, had said it’d been a long time. Those long years during which the manor of the Nobility had prospered, then decayed—the length of time they had supported their enchanting princess.
“At last . . . At long last . . . I fight a true foe . . . For five hundred years . . . I have been down here . . . waiting for this day . . .”
Was the princess actually there? Or was this merely the lament of a lonely soul?
Along with the song of his blade whining from its sheath, the White Knight cried maniacally, “Die, damn you! Die! On the end of my Slayer!”
Once his tone had changed the figure in white charged forward, whipping the wind up behind him. And D in turn dashed to meet him.
Black and white crossed.
Advancing a few steps further, D then turned. The blade of the longsword was buried deep in his right side.
Had the White Knight actually let go of Slayer? Had D’s blade proved ineffective?
No, the White Knight dropped roughly to his knees.
“Oh . . . At last . . . the time . . . has come . . . The rest . . . I leave to you . . . Slayer . . . ,” the knight croaked, seeming to wring the very words from his throat before he fell face-down on the ground.
Due to his madness, the murderous swordsman had been locked away in this subterranean world, but his time had also come.
D took hold of Slayer and tried to pull the longsword out of his torso, but the weapon wouldn’t budge an inch.
“What’s this?!” a voice muttered in the Hunter’s coat pocket.
D’s upper body swayed—the blade of the sword had just pressed deeper into his flesh. This sword had a mind of its own, and the enchanted blade squirmed as it attempted to fulfill its tireless craving for slaughter.
“A hell of pigsticker this is . . . ,”said the hoarse voice from his coat pocket. “I can’t reattach myself yet, but I’ll try to manage something. Okay, D?”
There was no reply. At that moment, D had caught sight of the unearthly princess standing in the depths of the darkness. As he started to walk toward her, the ground beneath his feet twisted.
Once more, roses filled his surroundings. Moonlight poured down on the courtyard. No doubt it was the very same light that had shone when every window in the manor had been illuminated and women in white dresses and men in black attire had danced here with light steps.
D gazed at the princess before him.
“I won’t run any more,” the princess said, sounding like a completely different
person as she looked out over the wild profusion of blooms. “But I won’t allow you to leave, either. If I did, it simply wouldn’t be fair to the four of them.”
D didn’t say anything, almost as if he were watching the lovely princess undergo a transformation. “Were you looking for a chance to die?” he asked after a short time.
“Fate had caught up with the Nobility. Even I understood as much, as did my four knights. But, you see, their pride wouldn’t allow them to watch the world fall into human hands. Knowing there was no place left in the world for the Nobility, realizing that their control extended only to the most worthless and remote outposts, they wanted me to live as a Noble and rule over the humans like some great empress of the darkness. What an empty existence it is to live forever, knowing all the while that your life is meaningless—as I’m sure you must understand. You, an honored descendant of our Sacred Ancestor!”
D staggered. Slayer’s blade had just buried itself deeper in his flesh.
“I chose to live here with them. And so I became the princess who did nothing but love her roses, trusting my retainers to do everything necessary to support my Noble lifestyle. That was the only way I could give my four knights a purpose and the will to live. But you see, D, there’s more to living than simply having life.”
The four knights said they were defending the princess. However, wasn’t it more a case of the sage woman protecting them?
“And then you came. I’m certain one look at you was all the four knights needed to realize they’d found an opportunity to die. I ordered them to fight. Paradoxically, you were the whole point of their lives. Whether or not they knew what was in my heart of hearts no longer matters. I will run no more. D, come and get me.”
“If you wanted the four knights to fight me, then why did you use the wraith knights, too?” asked the Hunter.
“Do you think anyone would seriously believe they could’ve slain you? Still, I dispatched them on a mere whim, wishing to see if I could make you and the villagers sweat a bit.”
There the lovely princess broke off. The next time her voice was heard, she was in midair, sailing right for the Hunter.
“It’s been so long, D!”
Their silhouettes overlapped, and the blade of a sword sprouted from her pale back. Her lithe arms trembled as she wrapped them around D.
“I wanted . . . to travel . . . with you . . .”
Looking over the whispering woman’s shoulder, D gazed at Elena as she approached.
“Elena—take Slayer!” the princess cried, but her words became a moan.
When the village maid came over, she’d reached for the enchanted sword in D’s side and easily pulled it free, but then she’d suddenly driven the blade right through the princess’s back. The way the razor-sharp Slayer slid into the Noblewoman was a fearful sight to behold. Not only did the blade impale the princess, it also went all the way through D to jut from his back.
When Elena removed Slayer from D, the Hunter had tried to pull away from the Noblewoman. But his body was immobilized, kept still as a stone by the frail arms the princess had locked around him.
D gazed at Elena.
“I’m sorry,” the simple biker girl apologized in a low voice. Her eyes were invested with a dangerous determination. “The princess showed me the way—how the Nobility live, how they think. I want this manor and its traps and its treasures all for myself. And for the rest of their lives, I wanna terrorize all of those bastards in the village that treated me like shit. I wanna be a Noble.”
“Do you really mean that?” asked D. Bloody foam spilled from the corners of his mouth.
“Yes. See for yourself.”
Taking her hand off the enchanted blade, Elena undid the front of her top. Her breast had no rose emblem on it.
“Right after we got here, the princess took it away. Now I’m the very same Elena you met when you first got here. But you’re in my way, D,” Elena said, almost seeming to shout the words as she took a few steps away.
Slowly, both Slayer and the princess’s body fell over. Behind them stood D. At some point his left hand had been reattached, but Elena couldn’t see how the blood-smeared face that’d surfaced in its palm was exhaling pale blue flames.
“You said you wanted to be a Noble, didn’t you?”
As D approached, Elena backed away from him.
“That was just . . . Spare me, D!”
I fought with you, after all. You saved me. Really, I don’t know what got into me just now.
Elena saw the flash of light from D’s right hand sink into her own chest. For some reason, she didn’t want to look at his face.
Sheathing his sword, D looked around the courtyard.
“So, she wanted to be a Noble?” a hoarse voice said.
Without so much as glancing at the two corpses, D began to walk toward the front gate in a horribly weary way. A tiny object fell at his feet. A withered rosebud.
Now deprived of their mistress, the flowers drooped their heads as if to respectfully mark her passing, their colors fading before they fell to the ground. After D walked away, countless dead blossoms rained down on the body of Elena and the ash that was all that remained of the princess, burying them both.
A few days later, Mama Kipsch’s grandson returned unexpectedly with some news about the young man who’d suddenly vanished one night after destroying the lady of the manor, as well as an explanation of how he’d come to be hired in the first place.
After making an attempt on the princess’s life for killing his unrequited love, her grandson had escaped via his homemade glider until his pursuer sent him plummeting into a mountain stream. As luck would have it, he was rescued by a Vampire Hunter who happened to be passing by.
“Is that a fact? So, that’s how he came to know all about our village and the knights and everything else,” Mama Kipsch said, nodding thoughtfully as she looked out the window at the manor.
Her grandson was more knowledgeable about the castle’s residents and the ruins on the outskirts of the village than anyone else. D hadn’t told her that her grandson survived out of concern for the repercussions that might have, given the vengeance the boy’s actions had brought down on the village. After the villagers were through punishing his grandmother, they probably would’ve tried to discover his whereabouts, too. There was still a chance they’d want to exact revenge even now. He’d probably do well to leave the village before the night was out.
“Whatever became of the young fella?” Mama Kipsch inquired.
“After he told me he’d finished the job, he immediately took off. I’ve never seen anything half as lonesome-looking as the sight of him riding away.”
“No, I don’t suppose you ever would, either.”
“But he was smiling at the very end.”
“Smiling?”
Nodding, her grandson pointed proudly to the base of his thick neck.
“All sign of it’s gone now, but when I was little, I got one of those roses planted in me, remember? And for two or three months after that, I was in a daze until you concocted one of your secret recipes for me, Grams. Well, I can tell you now after all these years that back then, I wanted to suck everyone’s blood so bad I could hardly stand it. As it happens, I told him about that as we were parting company. And then he suddenly got all serious-looking—wait, he always looked serious. At any rate, he asked me, ‘Did you want to be a Noble?’ I told him that was ridiculous, and I’d be damned if I was gonna drink the blood of my family and friends. And I said that even though I was just a kid at the time, I was ready to die first. And then—he actually smiled.”
“You don’t say?” Mama Kipsch remarked, closing her eyes. She knew exactly what sort of smile that must’ve been.
Her grandson continued contentedly, “I can take pride in that for the rest of my life. I was the one that put that smile on his face. I put a smile on the face of a man a thousand times tougher and ten thousand times better-looking than me!”
POSTSCRIPT
—
A lovely princess, valiant knights to guard her, and a sinister and powerful foe bent on taking the life of the lady—I’m sure this setting from many medieval legends and fantasy tales is familiar to most of you. And this theme is just what I wanted to try my hand at this time out. Except here, everything is turned on its head. The lovely princess is a vampire. D is her sinister foe. And as for the secret ingredient—immortality.
In the famous Hammer horror film Brides of Dracula, the vampire Baron Meinster drags the lovely school teacher Marianne out in front of Dr. Van Helsing, whom he’s already bitten, and says, “Beautiful, isn’t she? What a pity such beauty must fade . . . unless we preserve it.” In the masterpiece that is Universal’s Dracula, Bela Lugosi’s Count delivers a line that’s quite sentimental and not at all what one would expect from a fiend: “To die, to be really dead—that must be glorious!” And near the finale of Christopher Lee’s last entry in the Dracula series, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the master vampire plans to destroy the world with bubonic plague bacteria, but Professor Van Helsing makes him wince when he asks, “Is this your own death-wish?” Apparently, the eternal life and youth humanity has always dreamt of isn’t necessarily so cherished by the vampires who possess it.
In his short story “Hail and Farewell,” Ray Bradbury paints a grim picture of the loneliness of a man who, due to his eternally youthful appearance, eventually becomes the object of suspicion and fear for those around him and must move on to a different area. However, that’s only the dark side of immortality as seen by people who will surely die. Unable to escape the absolute enormity of “Death”, people continue to long for life eternal, no matter how sad it may be. Given that, you can probably understand the final actions of this story’s heroine, Elena. In order to escape the fear of death, religions have been born and numerous other comforting concepts created. In the west, there’s Heaven. In the east, reincarnation. And although the existence of either has yet to be proved, they can’t help but make me marvel at the human mind.
The Rose Princess Page 19
