However, part of his description was still lacking. Watch. When the monstrous creatures blanketing the ground come within three feet of the traveler, they rub their paws and pincers and begin to twitch uncontrollably, as if checked by some unseen barrier. They know. They understand. Though the traveler sleeps, something emanates from his body—a ghastly aura declaring that any who challenge him will die. The creatures of the wild know what the young man actually is, and the part of his description that is absolutely indispensable: He is not of this world.
The young man in black went right on sleeping, almost as if the poisonous mists of the sleeper grass smelled to him like the sweetest perfume, as if the indignant snarls of the ungodly creatures sounded to his ears like the most soothing melody.
Consciousness suddenly spread through his body. His left hand took hold of his hat, and, as he sat up, he placed it back on his long black hair. And anything that looked upon him realized that unearthly beauty did indeed exist.
People called him D. Though his eyes had been closed in sleep up until this very moment, there wasn’t even a tiny hint of torpor in them. His black, bottomless pupils reflected another figure in black standing about ten feet ahead of him. Well over six and a half feet tall, the massive form was like a block of granite.
A certain power buffeted D’s face, an aura emanating from that colossal figure. An ordinary human would’ve been so psychically damaged by it that they’d spend the better part of a lifetime trying to recover.
In his left hand, the man held a bow, while his right hand clutched a number of arrows. When bow and arrow met in front of that massive chest, D’s right hand went for the handle of his longsword. The elegant movement befitted the young man.
An arrow whined through the air. D stayed just where he was, but a flash of silver rushed from his sheath and limned a gorgeous arc. When the smooth cut of his blade met the missile’s beautiful flight in a shower of sparks, D knew his foe’s arrows were forged entirely from steel.
The fierce light that resided in his opponent’s eyes looked like a silent shout. The instant their respective weapons had met, his arrow was split down the middle, and the halves sank deep into the ground.
D stood up. A flash of black ran through his left shoulder. The black giant had unleashed this arrow at the same time as his second shot. Perfectly timed and fired on an equally precise course, the arrow had deceived D until it pierced his shoulder.
However, the black shadow seemed shaken, and it fell back without a sound. He alone understood how incredibly agile D had been, using his shoulder to stop an arrow that should’ve gone right through his heart.
As his foe backed away, D readied himself. Making no attempt to remove the arrow, he gazed at the giant’s face with eyes that were suspiciously tranquil. D was reflected in his opponent’s eyes as well.
“Don’t intend to tell me your name, do you?” D’s first words also held the first hint of emotion he’d shown. An instant later, the hem of his coat spread in midair. The blade he brought down like a silvery serpent’s fang rent nothing but cloth as the black figure leapt back another fifteen feet. As his foe hovered in midair, the twang of a bowstring rang out. With as mellifluous a sound as was ever heard, the long, thin silhouette of the Hunter’s blade sprang up, and D kicked off the ground with all of his might.
His foe was already partially obscured by a grove a hundred yards ahead. The few hundredths of a second it’d taken him to draw back for his third shot had proved critical.
Still not bothering with the arrow in his left shoulder, D sprinted into action. Inheriting much of the Nobility’s powerful musculature in their legs, dhampirs could dash a hundred yards in less than six seconds. With his speed, D covered the distance in under five seconds, and he showed no signs of slowing. However, the shadow had been lost in the darkness. Did D sense that the presence had abruptly vanished?
He kept on running, and, when he halted, it was in precisely the same spot where his foe had disappeared. D had noticed that the deep footprints that’d led him that far ended in the soft grass.
His opponent had vanished into the heavens or sunk into the earth—neither of which was especially uncommon in this world.
D stood still. Black steel jutting from his left shoulder and fresh blood dripping from the wound, D hadn’t let his expression change one bit throughout the battle. But the reason he didn’t extract the arrow wasn’t because he didn’t feel the pain of it, but rather because he simply wasn’t going to give his foe an opportunity to catch him off guard.
Frozen like a veritable statue, he broke his pose suddenly. Around him, everything was still and dark. The air of their deadly conflict must’ve stunned the supernatural creatures, because not a single peculiar growl or cry could be heard.
D’s face turned, and his body began moving. There hadn’t been any road there from the very start, just a bizarre progression of overlapping trees and bushes. Like an exquisite shadow, he moved ahead without hesitation, finding openings wherever he needed them. There was no telling if it would be a short hike or a long, hard trek. Night on the Frontier was a whole different world.
The wind bore a sound that was not its own whispers. Perhaps D had heard it even at the scene of the battle. Beyond the excited buzz of people and a light melody played by instruments of silver and gold, he could make out a faint glow.
The stately outline that towered protectively over the proceedings looked to be that of a chateau. As the Hunter walked closer, the outline gave way to rows of bright lights. Presently, D’s way was barred by a gate in the huge iron fence before him. Not giving his surroundings a glance, D continued forward. Before his hands even touched it, the gate creaked open. Without a moment’s delay, D stepped onto the property. Judging by the scale of the gate, this wasn’t the main entrance.
Ahead of him was a stone verandah that gave off a shimmering light. The glow was not due to the light of the moon, but rather it radiated from the stones themselves. In the windows behind the verandah were countless human figures. Some laughed gaily. Some danced with elegance. The sharp swallowtails of men’s formal attire flicked back and forth, and the hems of evening gowns swayed. The banquet at the mansion seemed to be at its height.
D’s gaze fell to the steel jutting from his shoulder, and he took hold of it with his left hand. There was the sound of tearing flesh as he yanked the steel out, vermilion scraps of meat still clinging to it. As fresh blood gushed from the wound, D covered it with his left hand. It sounded like someone was drinking a glass of water. All the while D kept walking, climbing the stone steps of the verandah and then reaching for the doorknob. The bleeding from his shoulder hadn’t stopped.
The doorknob was a blue jewel set in the middle of golden petals, and it turned readily in his well-formed hand.
D stood in a hall filled with blue light. One had to wonder if the young man realized that hue was not the white radiance he’d seen spilling from the windows. Perhaps the mansion was mocking D, because now only two figures danced in the room. The girl must’ve been around seventeen or eighteen. The fine shape of her limbs was every bit as glamorous as her dress, which seemed to be woven from obsidian thread, and each and every strand of the black hair that hung down to her waist glittered like a spun jewel. The light melody remained. Her partner in tails was also reflected in D’s eyes. Still turned the other way, his face couldn’t be seen.
D stepped further into the hall. It was clear the mansion had been meant to draw him there. If it had only two residents, one or both of them must’ve arranged this.
The girl stopped moving. The music ceased as well. As she stared at D, her eyes were filled with a mysterious gleam. “You’re . . . ?” Her composed voice made the light flicker.
“I seem to have been invited here,” D said as he looked at the back of the man who was still facing away from him. “By you? What’s your business? Or where is he?”
“He?” The girl knit her thread-thin eyebrows.
“If you don�
�t know who I’m referring to, perhaps that man does. Well?”
The man didn’t move. Perhaps her partner was fashioned from bronze, and made solely to dance?
Asking nothing more, D plowed through the blue light to stand just behind the man. His left hand reached for the man’s shoulder—and touched it. Slowly, the man turned around. Every detail of the girl’s expression—which couldn’t be neatly classified as either horror or delight—was etched into the corner of D’s eye.
D opened his eyes. Blue light graced his surroundings. It was the pale glow of dawn, just before sunrise.
Slowly, D rose from his grassy resting place. Had it all been a dream? There was no wound to his left shoulder. Where he was now was the same spot where he’d gone to sleep. The cyborg horse that’d been absent from his dream stood by the tree trunk to which its reins were tied.
As the Hunter took the longsword and sheath in his left hand and slung it across his back, a hoarse and strangely earnest voice said, “No, sirree. That was too damn real for a plain old dream. Hell, it hurt me.” The voice must’ve been referring to the steel arrow that’d penetrated the Hunter’s left shoulder. “That mansion was calling you, sure enough. And if they called you, they must have business with you. Bet we’ll be seeing them again real soon.”
“You think so?” D said, speaking in the real world for the first time. “I saw him.”
“Indeed,” the voice agreed. But it sounded perplexed.
Setting the saddle he’d used for a pillow on his horse’s back, D easily mounted his steed. The horse began walking in the blue light.
“How about that—it’s the same!”
What the voice meant was this locale they’d never seen before bore a striking resemblance to the place in the dream, suggesting . . . that the source of the voice had the very same dream as D.
In a few minutes, the horse and rider arrived at an empty lot surrounded by a grove of sizable trees. This was where the mansion had been. A banquet in endless warm, blue light, light that spilled from the windows as men and women danced in formal wear, never seeing the dawn. Now, everything was hidden by the green leaves of vulgar spruces and the boughs of poison firs. Giving the landscape a disinterested glance, D wheeled his mount around. Beyond the forest, there should be a real village settled almost two hundred years ago.
Without looking back, the rider in black vanished into the depths of a grove riddled by the light of dawn, as if to say he’d already forgotten his dream.
-
II
-
Dcame to a halt in front of the gate to the village. Like any other village, it was surrounded by triple walls to keep out the Nobility and other foul creatures. The sight of verdigris-covered javelin-launchers and flamethrower nozzles poking out of those stockade fences was one to which most travelers would be accustomed. The same could be said for the trio of sturdy, well-armed men who appeared from the lookout hut next to the gate. The men signaled to D to stop. But one thing was different here—the expression these men wore. The looks of suspicion and distrust they usually trained on travelers had been replaced with a strange mix of confusion and fear . . . and a tinge of amity.
As one of them gazed somewhat embarrassedly at D on his horse, he asked, “You’re a Hunter, ain’t you? And not just any Hunter. You’re a top-class Vampire Hunter. Isn’t that right?”
“How did you know?” The soft sound of the man on horseback’s voice cut through the three of them like a gust of wintry wind.
“Never mind,” the man in the middle said, shaking his head and donning an ambiguous little smile as he turned back to the gate. Facing a hidden security camera, he raised his right hand. With the tortured squeal of gears and chains, the gate with its plank and iron covering swung inward.
“Get going. You’re going in, right?” the first man asked.
Not saying a word, D put the heels of his boots to his horse’s belly. As if blown out of the way by an unearthly wind gusting from the rider and his mount, the three men slipped off to either side, and D went into the village.
The wide main street ran straight from the gate into the village. To either side of it were rows of shops and homes. Again, this was a typical layout for a Frontier town. The kind of looks that’d greeted D outside the gate moments earlier met him again. People on the street stopped and focused stares of fear or confusion or affection on him, but it was the women whose gazes quickly turned to ones of rapture.
Ordinarily, women on the Frontier never let down their gruff and wary facade, even when the most handsome of men passed within inches of them. They were well aware that a pretty face didn’t reflect the mind behind it. For all they knew, they might be the only one who saw him that way. What guarantee did they have that he wasn’t, in fact, a poisonous crimson spider—a creature that not only had the power to hypnotize, but who could also give substance to hallucinations? Who could say for certain he hadn’t been sent by bandits planning to burn the village to the ground and make off with all their money and their women? To crack the Frontier woman’s hard-bitten demeanor took a beauty that was not of this world.
When he’d ridden halfway down the street—passing through odd looks and ecstatic gazes—a young woman’s voice called out to his black-clad back, “Um, excuse me!” Her voice suited the morning.
D stopped. And he didn’t move a muscle after that.
There was the sound of someone’s short, quick steps on the raised wooden sidewalk off to D’s left, a head of black hair slipped right by his side, and then the girl turned in front of him. A smile graced her face, which was fresh and rosy and bursting with youthfulness.
“You’re a Vampire Hunter, aren’t you?” The words were formed by lips painted a faint shade appropriate to her age. She was sixteen or seventeen—at the stage where she wanted people to look at her. Without waiting for an answer from D, she continued. “Well, if you are, please go out to the hospital on the edge of town. Sybille is in room seven.”
D’s expression shifted. Apparently, he’d recognized the girl, in her snowy white blouse and blue skirt with wine-red stripes, as someone worth talking to. “Have we met before?” he asked.
The girl’s form tensed. D’s tone was no different from what he’d used with the men out at the gate. It wouldn’t be the least bit strange for it to leave a timid girl quaking. But this young lady just bobbed her head vigorously. “Yes. Only it—oh, just hurry!”
“Where did we meet?”
The girl smiled wryly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It’s better you hear it from someone upstanding, like a grown man, instead of from me. Hurry up and get to the hospital. The director will be so happy to see you.”
It was a bizarre discussion. Although somewhat lacking in explanation, it was clear from the tone of the girl’s voice that this was an urgent matter. What sort of conclusions were being drawn in the heart beneath that black raiment?
Asking nothing further, D resumed his advance. Once he was off the main street, the Frontier land rapidly grew more desolate. Almost all of the arable land had been bequeathed by the Nobility, given with the knowledge that fields which scarcely provided enough to survive were good insurance against insurrections. Of course, after the decline of the Nobility, there were some villages where crops and soil had been repeatedly improved, and, as a result of centuries of persistent toil, the townspeople had managed to make bountiful harvests a reality. But such successes never went any farther than the village level—they never spread across whole sectors. This desolate earth bore mute testimony to the fact there were only a dozen places on the entire Frontier that tasted such bounty, while elsewhere the battle against misery and poverty continued as it had for centuries.
But this community was actually one of those rare exceptions. As D’s eyes ran along the edge of the village, he saw vast expanses of fragrant green forests and farmland, all of which seemed to be nestled between hills covered with neat orchards of verdant fruit trees. This village of five hundred harvest
ed enough to feed nearly twenty times that number. Four times a year, when the entire village was done packing up their bounty, fifty massive transport vehicles hauled the town’s excess food roughly sixty miles south to the freight station, where it was then shipped out to more impoverished villages on the Frontier or to the distant Capital. The reason homes and infrastructure in this village showed comparatively little wear was due to the income generated by their food surplus.
Following an asphalt-paved road for another five minutes, the Hunter saw a chalk-white structure atop a respectable-sized hill. The rather wide road forked off in several different directions before continuing up the slope. The flag that flew from the three-story building at the top of the hill had a five-pointed star on it—the mark of a hospital.
This must’ve been the place the girl had told him to go. But he’d never had any intention of doing what she asked . . .
The complete antithesis of the refreshing blue sky and greenery of morning, the black rider and horse reached the base of the hill at their own leisurely pace. Although the young rider didn’t appear to pull back on the reins, his horse came to an immediate stop. Soon the beast changed direction, as if looking up at the hill, and they began to slowly ascend.
Twining the reins around a fence by the entrance, D went through the front door. The doors were all glass and were fully automated. As there probably wasn’t a power station nearby, the doors must’ve run on the material fluid power that’d recently gained popularity. But the village would have to be incredibly well-off if they could afford to use that recent innovation on something so trivial.
D went over to the information desk beside the door. The nurse behind the desk had a mindless gaze and a vacant expression on her face. Of course, the same went for the female patients and other nurses dotting the vast lobby. This was beyond the level of just feverish stargazes—they seemed like their very souls had been sucked out.
Tale of the Dead Town Page 17
