“Unfortunately, no.”
“I suppose this place might not suit you. You like traveling then, do you?”
The young physician nodded. It was a deep, hearty nod. His dark eyes sparkled. “Yes. I’ve met all kinds of people. You might say I became a doctor because I like to travel. The Frontier’s not completely hopeless. No matter what they’ve been dealt there, everybody’s giving life all they’ve got. I bet the same is true for the remaining Nobility. And I just want to help folks do that.”
Saying nothing, D continued walking. But in his eyes was something that looked incredibly like a bit of warmth. The young physician failed to notice how his words had brought about a minor miracle.
“You’re a dhampir, correct? Been traveling long?”
“A bit longer than you,” D replied
“I’ll be like you before too long,” the physician said in a fervent tone. “I suppose I’ll get as experienced as you are. Along the way, I’ll learn how to ride and how to use a sword.”
Though the young doctor’s words sounded almost like a challenge, D remained silent.
Presently, the pair arrived at the hospital. The nurse walked just ahead of them, escorting them to the sickroom. Over the course of the ten feet or so they had to go, the nurse nearly crashed into a table, almost put her hand through a window pane, and had to be caught by the physician after tripping over the threshold . . . All because she could do nothing but look at D.
Some pink discoloration remained on Lori’s skin. That was the extent of her injuries. Apparently the plasters for drawing the radioisotopes from her body were no longer necessary, as all her bandages had been removed. Now the girl was wearing blue pajamas and sitting up in bed.
After a bit, Dr. Tsurugi took the memo pad in hand and wrote, How are you feeling? He handed it to her. He did so because D hadn’t bothered to say anything at all.
Scanning the note, Lori nodded. Fidgeting, she adjusted the collar of her pajamas and tugged down the sleeves. She seemed embarrassed to have anyone see the marks her radiation poisoning had left.
Mr. D came to see you, the physician scribbled on the memo pad. He wants you to get well soon.
D picked up the pen. On seeing what he wrote on the memo, Dr. Tsurugi’s eyes bulged out: Why did your parents leave town?
“Wait just one minute,” the physician snarled. “This young lady’s still a patient undergoing treatment. I didn’t bring you here for this. I wanted you to help bring a little life back into her. Most patients need cheering up more than anything. Especially a girl her age.”
“And I came here because I have questions,” D replied.
“I can’t believe your nerve. I never should’ve brought you here.”
“You can cheer her up any time. But my work won’t wait.”
The physician held his tongue.
D continued, “One of the Nobility has been created through means that are still unclear. If that number is allowed to swell to a hundred, we’ll be powerless to stop them. It’s my job to get rid of him. But if I had to take out every person in town, that’d be a bit too much of a workload.”
“This is insane,” the physician said with a mournful sigh.
D turned to face Lori. Silently, he awaited her reply.
Memories flickered in Lori’s mind. This was the same question the shadowy figure had put to her the night before. No one cared about her at all. Her parents’ experiments were the only thing on anyone’s mind. Choking the rage that’d risen to her throat back down again, Lori raised her face. The Hunter’s visage greeted her. Cold and veiled in an unearthly aura, his dashing countenance seemed sad nonetheless. The anger vanished from Lori’s heart. Putting her left hand over her right so the scars on the back of it couldn’t be seen, Lori slowly scratched away with the pen.
I don’t know. On our last night in town, as I was walking past the lab, I heard my father tell my mother, “This is going to change the world.” Right after that, the two of them headed out somewhere, and while I was sleeping the law came and hauled us off to jail.
“Change it how, I wonder?” Dr. Tsurugi mused. Not saying a word, D looked over his shoulder. Over to the next room. The operating room. The room that had a corpse strapped to the table. The physician’s complexion turned the color of clay. “You couldn’t possibly mean—”
“I don’t know,” D said. “But you’d best leave.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“You’re better off not knowing.”
“You must be joking, after all I’ve gone through.” Dr. Tsurugi added petulantly, “Need I remind you that I was the one who destroyed the vampire last night?”
“I’ll see you later.”
“But, I—” The physician was about to say something, but he bit his lip. Indignant, he left Lori’s sickroom.
D’s right hand went into action. Aside from your family, who went into the lab the most?
After pausing for a moment, Lori wrote, Mayor Ming.
-
SHINING SERPENT PASS
CHAPTER 4
-
I
-
The following incident took place shortly before D visited the hospital. Taking advantage of her employer’s departure for a town meeting, the mayor’s maid Nell snuck into the garden. Checking to see that no one else was around, she called out, “Ben!” Her muscular paramour from the cleaners didn’t answer. Knitting her brow dubiously, Nell headed over to the base of the massive peach tree that always served as the site of their trysts.
“Boo!” Ben shouted, suddenly poking his head out from behind the tree.
“Oh, Ben, don’t scare me like that!” Though relief spread through her heart, an odd sense of incongruity started to gnaw at Nell. Ben didn’t quite seem like himself. Sure, his face and his build were the same as ever, but there was something strange about him. Was that an annoying little smirk on his lips?
“What’s wrong, Nell? Do I have something stuck on my face or something?” he asked. He sounded just like Ben, too.
Nell shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, really? Then how about a kiss?”
And with that he took Nell in his arms before she could resist and his lips met hers. For a few seconds the two of them stood fused together like a lone pillar by their firm embrace, but soon the strength fled Ben’s body. Limp as a wet noodle, he quickly collapsed among the roots of the tree.
Sparing not a glance to the lover who’d so suddenly lost consciousness, Nell scanned her surroundings. Her countenance remained as sensuous as ever, but there was something inexplicably strange about her expression.
“When I saw the young buck here slipping into the mayor’s backyard, I had a hunch about what he was up to—and it paid off,” Nell said, adding, “I should give this little lady a piece of my mind for screwing around while she’s on the clock. Of course, it made my job that much easier, so I’ll let it go this time. Lover boy’s gonna be out for a while—I’m gonna have to borrow your body, missy.”
And then, after dragging her boyfriend’s limp form into the cover of the bushes, Nell reclaimed her prim demeanor and returned to the house with a light gait.
On entering the house, Nell quickly locked each and every door. She stood in the middle of the living room with a pensive expression that suggested she was lost in deep thought or grim recollection. But soon she opened her eyes and gave a satisfied nod. “Oh, I see now—there’s still another vamp around. And where they’re covering this up and making like the girl’s not better yet . . . That’d be a D plan, I bet,” she laughed.
While the voice was Nell’s, the manner was unmistakably that of Pluto VIII. But the real question was, what did he hope to accomplish by inhabiting her boyfriend, then leaping from him to her and rifling through her memories?
“Nothing at all out of the ordinary around the house, she thinks. Hold everything—she’s been told not to go into the cellar without asking permission. Bingo! Then I say we go have us
a permission-free peek.”
Walking softly so Laura wouldn’t hear her from the bedroom where she remained in hiding, Nell headed for the cellar door with a shameless grin. It wasn’t locked. Pushing the door open, she found a wooden staircase that sank down into the darkness.
Muttering, “Eww, creepy,” with unabashed interest, Nell gathered up the hem of her long skirt and slowly stepped into the dark.
Power lines and hot water pipes coming all the way from the industrial sector ran the length and breadth of the ceiling. From the center of the cellar, with its walls lined with wooden crates and jugs of fuel, Nell surveyed her surroundings with a deeply suspicious gaze.
“Well, nothing out of the ordinary here,” said the maid. “Now, then, what was the focus of Miss Nell’s suspicions . . . ” Her eyes, now charged with an eerie gleam, crept along the walls, floor, and ceiling in rapid succession. Before long, they stopped again at her own feet. Coarsely muttering, “Damn, I just don’t get it,” Nell folded her arms in deliberation. “Any way you slice it, it’s just a plain old cellar.”
Her eyes began to creep all over the place again, but this time they were infused with an even more tenacious glint. “If I were hiding a switch in the cellar, I’d put it somewhere no one could find it, I reckon.”
And, saying that, Nell headed to a corner stacked with empty boxes. “No, I wouldn’t—I’d do the exact opposite. The best place a person can hide is in a crowd. And if you had a switch you didn’t want anyone to notice, you’d put it where anyone could see it.”
Swishing the hem of her skirt, Nell headed over to the control box high on the wall. “As our Miss Nell recalls, she heard strange voices and the creak of gears around here. Meaning . . .” Her sharp eyes stared at a row of nearly a dozen levers. “Maybe it’s this one, the least grimy of the lot . . . ” Grabbing one in the middle of the row, Nell gave it a twist to the right. With a harsh creaking, just as the maid recalled, there was the sound of gears meshing.
“Whoa!”
As Nell cried out, her body swung about in a circle. To be more precise, she was turned completely around when the spot she was standing on pivoted away easily and revealed a circular hole. A wooden ladder stretched down into a darkness far deeper than the gloom of the cellar.
“So, this must be what made our Miss Nell so suspicious. Don’t worry, dear. Uncle Pluto will find the answers for you now,” she chortled.
Eyes glittering wildly, Nell went over to the ladder. Checking that no one else was around, she headed down into the new, lower cellar. The ladder was sturdy enough, but the smoothness of the rungs clearly suggested someone had been making frequent use of it for decades now. Fifty rungs down, she reached the bottom.
“Let’s see. A switch, a switch . . .” Groping in the dark, her hand soon struck a wall. Finding a small switch, she flicked it on.
A feeble light swelled in the darkness. There lay an area so vast it almost seemed as if the whole town would fit inside it. In the very center of that chamber rested a lone box of an unmistakable nature. Though its surface was free of ornamentation, it was clearly a coffin.
Anxiously muttering, “It’s still morning,” to herself, Nell started walking toward the coffin. “Hard to believe the mayor of all people would be keeping a monster in his cellar.”
As she reached for the coffin’s lid without hesitating, someone grabbed Nell by the hair. She started to scream, but, before she could finish, her neck was slashed wide open. Bright blood splashed across the floor.
And, at that very instant, there was a most bizarre incident in another part of town. A short while earlier, a carpenter had discovered a squat man sleeping in the woods. Or at least he’d decided the man was sleeping after checking him for a pulse, but, by the time several other townsfolk and the people from the law enforcement bureau had arrived, his opinion had changed. He now believed it to be a corpse. After all, while the man’s heart was still beating, he wasn’t breathing at all. When it became known the body was that of the outsider who’d accompanied the gorgeous Vampire Hunter, the site was surrounded by a squawking throng.
“Why on earth—?”
“Went and killed himself. Must’ve wanted to get even with us for not making him feel welcome in town.”
“And I keep telling you even though I seen him mixing it up with the locals in my saloon, he just didn’t seem the type to do himself in.”
“Heart’s beating but he ain’t breathing none,” one of the onlookers noted. “What good can come of that, I ask you?”
“Good question,” said someone from the law enforcement bureau. “At any rate, we’ll have to put him out of his misery, right?”
“Right you are,” said one of the townsfolk with a nod. “Good riddance, I say. Finish him off!”
“Will do,” one of the lawmen said. Drawing an enormous automatic handgun from his holster, he pointed it at Pluto VIII’s head. The surrounding mob hustled back out of range. And then, just as the public servant was about to pull the trigger, the man leapt up, fresh as a daisy. With a startled cry, the lawman flinched away.
“You damn idiots! I ain’t on display here!” the squat sleeper bellowed. Looking around contemptuously and seeing how the crowd of townsfolk watched him from a safe distance, he spat, “You people are pathetic. You don’t have the faintest clue what kind of crazy shit your trusty leader keeps for a pet, but you’ll stand around and watch someone who collapsed in the street get their brains blown out.”
Needless to say, the foul-tempered man was Pluto VIII, having returned to his own body the instant his host Nell was slain.
-
Shortly after D watched Lori write the mayor’s name, the Hunter left the hospital. Dr. Tsurugi requested that he stay and talk with the girl a while longer, but D replied that business came first. Stepping out the door, D was surrounded by three figures. Sheriff Hutton and two deputies—the very same people he’d gone to see at the law enforcement bureau earlier. All of them were wearing gun belts.
“Figured you’d be here, creep,” the sheriff snarled, rocket launcher in one hand. The other two held shotguns at the ready.
Seeing their weapons leveled at his heart, D asked, “You have some business with me?” His tone was languid. He was standing in full sunlight. For a creature like a dhampir, descending in part from the Nobility, the conditions couldn’t be worse for doing battle.
“You wanna know if we got business? What did you think, we came here to take you out for a drink?” said one of the deputies. “For a freakin’ outsider, you got some nerve. I don’t care if you’re a dhampir or whatever the hell you are—you’re out of line. We’re gonna give you a nice, long lesson in what happens when you threaten the sheriff in this town.”
“I’ve got a full day tomorrow before my time’s up. Can’t this wait until then?”
“Are you nuts?! We let a little bastard like you take care of our trouble here, and me and my boys won’t look like we’re worth our pay no more.” Gouts of flame seemed to shoot from Sheriff Hutton’s eyes. His rocket launcher was set to discharge all its chambers in a single shot. He had only to push the button, and seven pencil missiles would blast the beautiful Hunter into unrecognizable scraps.
Seeing that a fight was unavoidable, D asked softly, “Are we going to do this here?”
“Now, that’s what I like to hear. I’m impressed you ain’t trying to make a run for it. Of course, we’re still gonna make you pay for coming off so damn tough,” the older of the two deputies muttered, swinging the end of his shotgun to indicate an alley that was dark even by daylight.
Meeting the flames of hatred focused on him like a blowtorch with his ever-frosty demeanor, D asked, “Ready to make your move?”
“You first.”
Each standing ten feet away, the two deputies braced their shotguns. They’d taken up positions they calculated to be well beyond the reach of D’s longsword. No matter what move he might try to make, their shotguns should prove faster than his sword. Their gu
ns already had the first shell in the chamber. The tension was rising by the second.
A lone invader ivy bush grew from the ground by D’s feet. Because it had an amazing knack for propagation, exterminating this weed was of the utmost importance, but efforts toward that end never went well. Every time someone thought they had it beat, it would put forth a new shoot within three days, if even part of its fine root structure remained, and it took less than three weeks for it to reach maturity. Though it had no blossoms, it displayed the greatest determination to live and had spread everywhere from the colder regions to the greener belts. D’s right hand reached for one of its branches. It was a graceful movement that kept the tense lawmen from putting any more pressure on their trigger fingers. Effortlessly snapping the plant off at its root, D waved it at the men like a great green wad of cotton candy. “Come on.”
“You got it!” they shouted, squeezing the triggers with the brute strength their delight lent them. With the gravest of roars, each weapon released three dozen pellets—seventy-two balls of shot loosed in a sheath of flame at D’s chest. One can’t help but wonder if the two men saw the flash of green that seemed to sweep the hot lead away a split second before it was due to strike. Tiny lead balls plunked down on the crushed stone road, and the two deputies felt the chill of the blade sinking into their skulls. Surely neither of them would’ve believed he could use the invader ivy leaves and branches to knock the flying buckshot out of the air.
Still brandishing his bloodstained sword, D said to the rocket-launcher-packing giant, “Come on.”
The giant trembled. The murderous implement under his arm had become a mere chunk of iron that offered no security at all. What guarantee did he have that a man who could knock buckshot out of the air with a branch couldn’t turn his own missiles back on him? Imagining himself caught in a burning white flash that would reduce him to bloody chunks sailing through the air, the sheriff grew pale.
“How about it?” the Hunter said. “You’ve already got your weapon out.”
Tale of the Dead Town Page 9
