Demon Deathchase

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Other Vampire Hunter D books published by

  DH Press and Digital Manga Publishing

  vol. 1 Vampire Hunter D

  vol. 2: Raiser of Gales

  VAMPIRE HUNTER D 3: demon deathchase

  © Hideyuki Kikuchi, 1985. Originally published in Japan in 1985 by ASAHI SONORAMA Co. English translation copyright © 2006 by DH Press and Digital Manga Publishing.

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  No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. DH Press™ is a trademark of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Dark Horse Comics® and the Dark Horse logo are trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc., registered in various categories and countries. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Yoshitaka Amano.

  English translation by Kevin Leahy

  Book Design by Heidi Fainza

  Published by

  DH Press

  a division of Dark Horse Comics

  10956 SE Main Street

  Milwaukie, OR 97222

  dhpressbooks.com

  —

  Digital Manga Publishing

  1487 West 178th Street, Suite 300

  Gardena, CA 90248

  digitalmanga.com

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

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  ISBN: 1-59582-031-0

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-62115-489-1

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  First DH Press Edition: January 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  VILLAGE OF THE DEAD

  CHAPTER 1

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  I

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  The tiny village obstinately refused the blessings the sunlight poured down so generously upon it.

  Though a Frontier village like this might see its share of years, as a rule the size of the community didn’t fluctuate greatly. The village’s eighty or so homes wavered in the warming light. Every last bit of the lingering snow had been consumed by the black soil. Spring was near.

  And yet, the village was dead.

  Doors of reinforced plastic and treated lumber hung open, swinging with the feeble breeze. In the communal cookery, which should have been roiling with the lively voices of wives and children as evening approached, now dust danced alone.

  Something was missing. People.

  The majority of the homes remained in perfect order, with no signs of any struggle by the occupants, but in one or two there were overturned chairs in the living room. In one house, the bed covers were disheveled, as if someone just settling down to sleep had gotten out of bed to attend to some trifling matter.

  Had gotten out—and had never come back.

  Small black stains could be found on the floors of that house. A number of spots no bigger than the tip of your little finger, they might be mistaken for a bit of fur off a pet dog or cat. The spots wouldn’t catch anyone’s eye. Even if they would, there were no people around with eyes to be caught.

  Evening grew near, the white sunlight took on a dim bluish tint, the wind blowing down the deserted streets grew more insistent, and an eerie atmosphere pervaded the village at dusk—like ebon silhouettes were coalescing in the shadows and training their bloodshot gaze on any travelers that might pass through the wide-open gates.

  More time passed. Just when the dim shadows were beginning to linger in the streets, the sound of iron-shod hooves pounding the earth, and the crunch of tires in well-worn ruts, came drifting in through the entrance to the village.

  A bus and three people on horseback came to a halt in front of one of the watch towers just inside the gates.

  The atomic-powered bus was the sort used for communications across the Frontier, but its body had been modified, so that now iron bars were set into the windows and a trenchant plow was affixed to the front of the vehicle. Not exactly the sort of vehicle upstanding folks had much call for.

  Every inch of the vehicle was jet black—a perfect complement to the foreboding air of the trio looming before it.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” asked the man on the right. He wore a black shirt and black leather pants. Conspicuous for his fierce expression and frightfully long torso, this man would stand out anywhere.

  “Don’t look like our client’s here to meet us,” said the man on the far left. Though his face wore a wry smile, his thread-thin eyes brimmed with a terrible light as they scoured his surroundings. A hexagonal staff strapped to his well-defined back made his shadow appear impaled.

  As if on cue, the two turned their heads toward the even more muscular giant standing between them. From neck to wrist, his body was covered by a protector of thin metal on leather, but the mountain of muscles beneath it was still sharply defined. His face was like a chunk of granite that had sprouted whiskers, and he brimmed with an intensity that would make a bear backpedal if it ran across him in the dark. Twining around him, the wind seemed to carry the stench of a beast as it blew off again.

  “Looks like they’ve had it,” he muttered in a stony tone. “The whole damn village gone in one night—looks like we lost the goose that laid the golden egg. Just to be sure, let’s check out a few houses. Carefully.”

  “I ain’t too crazy about that idea,” the man in black said. “How ‘bout we send Grove? For him it’d—” His voice died out halfway through the sentence. The giant had shot a glance at him. It was like being scrutinized by a stone. “I . . . er . . . I was just kidding, bro.”

  It wasn’t merely the difference in their builds that made the man in black grow pale—it appeared that the man truly feared the giant. Quickly dismounting—the man with the hexagonal staff did likewise—they then entered the village with a gliding gait.

  There was the sound of the bus door opening. The face of a girl with blonde hair peered out at the giant from the driver’s seat. “Borgoff, what’s up?” she asked. At twenty-two or -three years old, her visage was as lovely as a blossom, but there was something about how overly alluring it was that called to mind a carnivorous insect—beautiful but deadly.

  “Odds are the village’s been wasted. Be ready to move on a moment’s notice.” Saying that in a subdued tone, the world seemed to go topsy-turvy as his voice suddenly became gentle. “How’s Grove?” he inquired.

  “He’s okay for the moment. Not likely to have another seizure for a while.”

  It was unclear whether or not the giant heard the girl’s response, as he didn’t so much as nod but kept gazing at the silent, lonely rows of houses. He flicked his eyes up toward the sky and the dingy, ivory hue that lingered there. The round moon was already showing its pearly white figure.

  “Wish we had a little more cloud cover.”

  Just as he’d muttered those words, two figures came speeding down the street as if riding the very wind.

  “It’s just like we thought. Not a single freaking person,” the man in black said.

  The man with the hexagonal staff turned to the sky and said, “Sun’ll be setting soon. The safest bet would be to blow this place as soon as possible, big guy.” Saying that, he jabbed out his forefinger.

  Apparently, the giant easily pierced the hazy darkness to glimpse the tiny black spot on the tip of that finger.

  “Make for the graveyard,” he said.

  In a flash, a tense hue shot through the faces of the other men, but soon e
nough they, too, grinned, climbed effortlessly back on their horses, and boldly started their mounts down village streets that’d fallen into the stillness of death.

  —

  So what had transpired in the village?

  Having the entire populace of a place disappear in one fell swoop wasn’t such a bizarre occurrence on the Frontier. For example, the carnivorous balloon-like creatures known as flying jellyfish seemed to produce an extremely large specimen at a rate of one every twenty years or so. The beast was often a mile and a quarter in diameter, and it could cover an entire village, selectively dissolving every living creature before sucking them all up into its maw.

  And then there was the basilisk. A magical creature said to inhabit only deep mountain ravines and haunted valleys, it had merely to wait at the entrance to a village and stare fixedly at a given spot within. Its single, gigantic eye would glow a reddish tint before finally releasing a crimson beam, and villagers would come, first one, then another, right into its fearsome waiting jaws. But the sole weakness of the basilisk was that occasionally one of the hypnotized humans would bid farewell to their family, and when they did so it was always in exactly the same words. Hearing those words, the remaining folk would go out and hunt the basilisk en masse.

  However, the most likely cause of every last person vanishing from an entire village was both the most familiar of threats and the most terrifying.

  When news of such an eerie happening was passed along by even a single traveler lucky enough to have slipped through such a community unharmed, people could practically hear the footfalls of their dark lords, supposedly long since extinct, lingering in that area. The masters of the darkness—the vampires.

  —

  Having arrived at the graveyard on the edge of town, the trio of riders and the lone vehicle came to an abrupt halt. In a spot not five hundred yards from the forest, moss-encrusted gravestones formed serpentine rows, and there was an open space where, little by little, the blue-black darkness rose from the ground.

  The fearsome trio strode forward, keeping their eyes on everything, coming to a halt in the depths of a forest that threatened to overrun the tombstones. From that spot alone, an area where something had turned over a large expanse of ground to reveal the red clay and left it looking like a subterranean demon had run amuck, there blew a weird miasma. It was a presence so ghastly it froze the leading pair atop their horses and made the giant swallow so hard his Adam’s apple thumped in his throat.

  What lay concealed by this ravaged earth?

  Moving only their eyes, the men scanned the area in search of the source of the miasma.

  It was then that they heard a dull sound.

  No, it wasn’t a sound, but rather a voice. A long, low groan—tormented and unabashed, like a patient having a seizure—began to snake through the uncanny tableau.

  The men didn’t move.

  Partly it was the ghastly miasma, twisting tight around their bones, that prevented them from moving. But more than anything, they were still because that voice, those moans, seemed to issue from within the bus. When the giant had asked, hadn’t the girl said he wouldn’t have a seizure? It must’ve been the bizarre atmosphere billowing through this place that made a liar of her. Or perhaps his cries were because, no matter what illness afflicted them, there was something humans found horribly unsettling and inescapable about their mortal condition.

  A few seconds later, a figure appeared from behind one of the massive tree trunks, as if to offer some answer to the riddle.

  A veritable ghost, it stepped its way across the red clay in a precarious gait, coming to a standstill at a spot about thirty feet ahead of them.

  The figure that loomed before the glimmering silver moon was that of an older man of fifty or so. With a dignified countenance and silver hair that seemed to give off a whitish glow of its own, anyone would’ve taken him for a village elder. Actually, however, this old man was doing two things that, when witnessed by those who knew about such matters, were as disturbing as anything could possibly be.

  He was using his left hand to pin his jacket, with its upturned collar, to his chest, while his open right hand covered his mouth. As if to conceal his teeth.

  “Thank you for coming,” the old man said. His voice seemed pained, like something he’d just managed to vomit up. “Thank you for coming . . . but you’re too late . . . Every last soul in the village is done for, myself included, but . . . ”

  Surely the fearsome men must’ve noticed that, as he spoke, the old man didn’t turn his eyes on them.

  There was nothing before his pupils, stagnant and muddied like those of a dead fish. Only a long line of trees continuing on into the abruptly growing darkness.

  “Hurry, go after him. He—he made off with my daughter. Please, hurry after them and get her back . . . Or if she’s already one of them . . . please make her end a quick one . . . ”

  Appealing, entreating, the old man went on in his reed-thin voice. Not so much as glancing at the men before him, he faced an empty spot between the trees. With the darkness so dear to demons steadily creeping in around them, it was an unsettling sight.

  “He’d been after my daughter for a while. Time after time he tried to take her, and each and every time I fought him off. But last night, he finally showed his fangs . . . Once he got one of us, the rest fell like dominoes . . . I’m begging you, save my daughter from that accursed fate. Last night, he . . . took off to the north. With your speed, there might still be time . . . If you manage to save my daughter, go to the town of Galiusha. My younger sister’s there. If you explain the situation, she’ll give you the ten million dalas I promised . . . I beg of you . . . ”

  At this point in the old man’s speech, the heap of dirt behind him underwent a change.

  A small mound bulged up suddenly, and then a pale hand burst through the dirt. Resembling the dead man’s hand flowers that bloomed only by night, this was in fact a real hand.

  A deep grumbling filled the forest. Sheer malice, or a curse, the grumbling bore a thirst. An unquenchable thirst for blood, lasting for all eternity.

  The figures pushing through the dirt and rising one after another were the villagers, transformed into vampires in the span of a single night.

  Appearing just as they had in life, only now with complexions as sickly pale as paraffin, when the moonlight struck them they glowed with an eerie, pale, blue light.

  There were burly men. There were dainty women. There were girls in dresses. There were boys in short pants. Nearly five hundred strong, their bloodshot eyes gleaming and their mouths set, words like unearthly or ghastly couldn’t capture the way they stared intently at the men. They didn’t even bother to knock off the dirt that clung to their heads and shoulders.

  “Oh, it’s too late now. Kill us somehow and get out of here . . . Once it’s really night . . . I’ll be . . . ” The old man’s left hand dropped. The pair of wounds that remained on the nape of his neck also showed on those of the other villagers.

  It’s hard to say which happened first—the old man lowering his right hand, or the men’s jaws dropping. For between his lips thrown perilously wide, a pair of fangs jutted from the upper gums.

  “Yeah, now it’s getting interesting,” the man in black said in an understandably tense tone, reaching for the crescent blades at his waist.

  Perhaps the eldritch spell that held them had been broken, for the hands of the man with the hexagonal staff were gliding to his weapon.

  The old man zipped effortlessly forward. Along with the mob at his back.

  “Giddyup!” As if this was just what he’d been waiting for, the man in black spurred his horse into action. The man with the hexagonal staff followed after him, but the giant waited behind.

  A number of the villagers had their heads staved in under the hooves, falling backward only to have their sternums and abdomens trampled as well.

  “What are you waiting for, freaks? Come and get it!” As the man in black shouted, th
e heads of nearly half of the fang-baring villagers closing in on him from all sides went sailing into the air, sliced cleanly like so many watermelons.

  An instant later, silver light limned another corona, and the heads flew from the next rank. Even novice vampires like these knew they mustn’t lose their heads or brains, but they dropped to the ground leaking gray matter or spouting bloody geysers as if they were fountainheads.

  What had severed the heads of the vampire victims so cleanly was one of the blades that’d hung at the man’s waist. The blades were about a foot in diameter and shaped like a half-moon. Honed to a razor-fine arc, the weapon was known among the warriors of the Frontier as the crescent blade. A wire or cord was usually affixed to one end, and the wielder could set up a sort of safety zone around himself, keeping his enemies at bay by spinning the blade as widely or tightly as he wished. Due to the intense training necessary to handle it, there were few who could use one effectively.

  But now, the weapons swished from both hands of the man in black to paint gorgeous silver arcs, slashing through villagers like magic—to the right and the left, above him and below, never missing the slightest change in their position. In fact, each and every one of the villagers had clearly been cut from a different angle. His lightning-speed attacks came from phantasmal angles. It didn’t seem possible that anything he set his sights on would be spared.

  Another particularly weird sound, entirely different from the slice of the crescent blade, came from his companion’s favorite weapon—the hexagonal staff that was always on his back. Both ends had sharp protrusions, veritable stakes, but normally this weapon would be spun and used to bludgeon opponents. Its owner was using the hexagonal staff in this manner. However, the way that he swung the staff was unique. Spinning it around his waist like a water wheel set on its side, he smashed in the head of a foe to his right, spun it clear around his back, and took out an opponent to his left. The movement took less than a tenth of a second.

  In a snap, four shadowy figures hung in the air to the left and the right of the man with the hexagonal staff, and before and behind him as well. This leaping assault capitalized on the superhuman strength unique to vampires.