Demon Deathchase

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “I always wanted to meet you. One way or another.”

  “Well, now you have,” the Hunter replied. “I’m right here.”

  “Will you not let us go? I’ve done nothing to the humans.”

  “Tell that to the father you made like yourself before you carried off his daughter.”

  Distress filled Mayerling’s countenance.

  The tension abruptly drained from D’s body.

  With a shout of “Hyah!” from Mayerling, the horses pummeled the earth. Speeding by D’s side, they started to gallop up the earthen slope.

  D raced like the wind.

  The carriage was every bit a match for D’s speed.

  At the summit of the hill, D came alongside the carriage. His right hand reached for the door handle. And then the golden handle just started pulling away. As he watched, the carriage dwindled in size, and D turned himself around and headed over to a stand of trees. That was where Leila lay.

  “Heard a strange voice, didn’t you?” the usual strange voice said. “Kinda makes you think being hard of hearing might not be so bad. We might be wrapping up this job right about now otherwise.”

  D squatted down and put a hand to Leila’s brow. She was as hot as fire. Her sweat-drenched face was twisted with pain. Both fever and pain were due to her infection. Relentless chills would soon follow.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, D stripped off Leila’s clothes. When her beautiful naked body was stretched out on the green grass, a surprised “Wow!” came from his left hand. “By the looks of it, I’d say this little girl’s had a pretty hard life.”

  From her round, firm breasts down to her thighs, and across her whole back, Leila’s skin was covered with the scars of numerous gashes and the stitches that had closed them. This was a girl who lived in the carnage that was the Frontier.

  Without seeming to be harboring any strong emotion, D covered Leila with himself.

  Crying out a little, Leila clung to his powerful chest. Her fever-swollen lips trembled, letting a mumbled word escape over and over again. A single word, but it was what had stayed D’s hand at the carriage door.

  —

  When Kyle Marcus’s mount crested the hill an hour later, there was no sign of anyone or anything in the vicinity, aside from his sister, who was wrapped in a blanket and resting peacefully in her seat in the battle car.

  Another thirty minutes after that, the bus driven by Borgoff appeared, along with Nolt, who was riding point.

  Kyle carried Leila into the vehicle in a great hurry. They must’ve been very close, because his expression had changed markedly. “She—she’s gonna be okay, won’t she, bro?” he stammered. “Give her something, I don’t care what.”

  As Borgoff watched him struggle on the brink of tears, he wore a rancorous expression, but he took Leila’s pulse nonetheless, checked her fever, and before long gave a satisfied nod. “She’s all right. I’ll check out her internal organs and circulation with a CAT scan anyway, but there’s no need to worry.” Staring down at Kyle where he’d slumped to the floor in apparent relief, he added, “This kinda shit is what happens when you go behind my back and send Leila out alone.”

  “I know. You can take the strap to me later for all I care. But which one of them you figure roughed Leila up so bad?”

  Kyle’s face had reclaimed its original viciousness. Eyes staring firmly into space, he was so angry he didn’t notice the froth running from the corners of his mouth. His body shook.

  “Well, probably not the one who treated her. Which means maybe it was neither of them. You wouldn’t think anyone as soft as all that could survive this long out here on the Frontier.”

  “It don’t matter,” Kyle said, almost ranting deliriously. “It don’t matter which of ’em did it. I’ll find ’em both and cut ’em to pieces. Take their arms and legs off and put ’em back on where they don’t belong. Stuff their mouths with their own steaming guts.”

  “Knock yourself out,” his older brother said. “Anyway, you’re sure there wasn’t anyone around Leila? From the look of her wounds, she got them three, maybe four hours ago.”

  The door opened and Nolt stuck his head in. “We’ve got some tracks from a carriage passing this way. Still fresh. Maybe from an hour before we got here, tops. There’s something else, too—some prints from horseshoes.”

  “If that’s the case, then the two of them must’ve gone at it here, too. And it looks like it didn’t get settled yet . . . ”

  Nodding gravely at his own words, Borgoff ordered Nolt to take care of Leila and Groveck. He went to his room in the back, returning to the driver’s seat clutching a cloth-wrapped package of apparent significance.

  “If I’ve seen D’s face, I can spot him,” he muttered, pulling from the cloth a silver disk about a foot and a half in diameter. Setting it up on a little stand almost in the center of the dashboard, Borgoff turned his heavily whiskered face to gaze out the window and up at the moon rising in the heavens. The moon was round and nearly full, but, thanks to the clouds obscuring part of it, it looked like it’d been nibbled here and there by bugs.

  When he set his huge form down, the driver’s seat creaked and groaned. Then Borgoff crossed his hands in front of his chest, and began to stare fixedly at the propped-up silver platter with eyes that looked like they could bore right through it. A minute passed, then two.

  Kyle wouldn’t leave Leila’s side as she lay in bed. As Nolt peered in through the door next to the driver’s seat sweat beaded his face just as profusely as Borgoff’s.

  And then, as the silvery surface of the platter grew smoky, almost like clouds covered it, the figure of a young man in black astride a horse suddenly formed on its surface.

  It was D. Turning their way and saying something, he pulled on the reins in his hands and disappeared into a thicket.

  It was a replay of D from the previous night, talking with them after the battle with the vampiric villagers. If people or things looked a little different, it was probably because these images were taken from Borgoff’s memories. Here was a man who could project his own memories onto a silver platter. Yet, despite this admirable display of what some would call sorcery, Borgoff glared mercilessly at the moon in the sky with bloodshot eyes. No, not at the moon, but at a big mass of clouds under it. The moonlight shining on the clouds edged them in blue.

  There was no change in either the moon or the cloud mass, or so it appeared for an instant. Then, even though the moon remained unchanged, the heart of the cloud mass seemed to begin to glow ever so faintly. In the space of a breath, a figure shaped like a man started wriggling there, and, with a second breath, it became a clear picture. Someone was riding a horse down a pitch-black road.

  Based on his past memory of D, Borgoff was using the silver platter and moon as projectors to make the present D appear in the cloud mass.

  The receding figure that seemed to be looking down on them from the distant heavens was a remarkable likeness of D as he raced down the road a few score miles ahead.

  —

  II

  —

  They’d run full tilt for a good two hours after leaving D in their dust, and, when Mayerling saw that the road continued on in a straight line for the next dozen or so miles, he left the coachman’s perch of the racing carriage and skillfully slipped inside.

  When he’d closed the door, not a hint of sound from the outside world intruded into the carriage. The girl sat there in a leather-bound chair like a night-blossoming moonbeam flower.

  Carpet spread across the floor, and an exceedingly fine silk padding covered the walls and ceiling. In days of old, bottles of the best and rarest potables had sat on the collapsible golden table that seemed to grow from the wall, and this dozen miles of starlit road had run to great masquerades by the Nobility. However, the carpet was now somewhat dingy, there were tears in the silk, and there wasn’t a single silver glass on the table. Even the table drooped for lack of a screw.

  This model of carriage was sa
id to be the last equipped with magnetic stabilizing circuits, which would hold the passengers safely in position even if the vehicle were to flip over.

  Mayerling’s right hand moved, and the interior was filled with light. “Why don’t you turn on the lights?” he asked. “By rights this dilapidated old buggy should have been scrapped long ago, but that much at least is still operational.”

  Encouraged by a smile that bared teeth of limitless white, the girl showed Mayerling a smile in return. Yet her smile was thin, like a mirage.

  He tried to recall the last time he’d seen this girl’s brightly smiling face, but had little luck. Perhaps he’d only dreamt it, and was dreaming this as well.

  “I don’t mind,” she replied. “If you live in the darkness, then I want to, too.”

  “I’m sure the sunlight suits you wonderfully. Though I have yet to see you in it,” he added, heading over to the chair across from her to sit down.

  “Do you think we’ll make it all the way?” the girl asked hesitantly.

  “You think we won’t?”

  “No.” The girl shook her head. It was the first vehement action he’d seen from her since he’d taken her out of the village. “I’ll be fine anywhere. So long as I’m with you, I could make my home in a cave in the craggy mountains or in some subterranean world where I’d never see the light of day again.”

  “No matter where we might be, the Hunters would come,” he said, allowing resignation to drift into his jewel-like beauty. “Your fellow humans won’t be happy until they’ve destroyed everything. You’re nothing like them, of course.”

  She said nothing.

  “There’s nowhere on earth we can relax now. A long trip out into the depths of space . . . ” He caught himself. “Perhaps it has become too much for you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s all right. Perhaps you weren’t cut out for this from the very beginning. A graceful hothouse flower can’t endure the ravages of the wild. You were kind enough to indulge my willfulness. We shall take a different course if you so desire.”

  The girl’s white hand pressed down on his pale hand, and her slender face shook gently from left to right. “I want to try and see if we make it. To go to the stars.”

  Oh, who could have known the journey these two had undertaken was not a fiendish abduction, but rather a flight by a couple madly in love? A young vampire Nobleman and a human lass—linked not by fear and contempt, but by a bond of mutual love all the stronger for its hopelessness. Were that not the case, there was no chance this girl taken from a village where everyone had been turned into vampires would still be untainted, her skin still unbroken.

  For the Nobility, drawing a human into their company was part of how they fed, colored as it was by their aesthetic appreciation of sucking the life from someone beautiful. But at the same time, the act was also filled with the pleasure of violating the unwilling, as well as the twisted sense of superiority that came from raising one of the lowly commoners to their own level.

  Mayerling had done nothing of the sort. He did no more than lead the girl from her home, taking her by the hand as he let her into his carriage and nothing more. He had not used freedom-stealing sorceries, nor veiled threats of violence against her family to force her compliance. The girl had quietly slipped out of the house of her own accord.

  From time to time, such things did happen. Bonds formed between the worlds of the humans and of the supernatural. However, they didn’t necessarily become a lasting bridge between the two worlds, and typically the couple concerned would be chased by a stone-wielding mob. As was the case with these two.

  The Nobility flickered in the light of extinction, and the girl had lost any world she might return to, so where could the two of them go? Out among the stars.

  Mayerling raised his face.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he replied. “It seems the dawn will be early today. If we’re to gain a little more ground, I shall have to see to the horses.” Kissing the girl on the cheek, he returned to the coachman’s perch like a shadow.

  Whip in hand, it was not to the fore that he first turned his gaze, but rather to the darkness behind them. In a place cut off from all the rest of the outside world, he heard the clomp of iron-shod hoofs approaching from far off. “So soon,” he muttered to himself. “That would be D, wouldn’t it?”

  A crack sounded at the horses’ hind as his whip fell. The scenery on either side flew by as bits and pieces. However, the ear of the Noble caught the certain fact that the hoofbeats were gradually growing closer.

  “Just a little further to the river,” Mayerling muttered. “Hear me, O road that lies between him and me. Just give me another ten minutes, I beseech thee.”

  —

  Oh. He’s finally catching up,” Nolt said. In the cloud that held his gaze, a small luminous point began winking ahead of D. Light spilling from the windows of the carriage, no doubt. “Give him another five minutes. No matter which one buys it, it’s all sweet for us. So, what kind of vision you gonna show us next, bro?”

  He didn’t get to ask Borgoff anything, as his words died down to muttering when he saw how the oldest of the clan was completely focused on the mirror, to the exclusion of all else.

  Perhaps it was due to this unprecedented sorcery, a magic that could choose one scene at will from the moon’s gaze—which was privy to all things on earth—and then use cloudbanks as a screen for projecting that scene, but, for whatever reason, every scrap of flesh on Borgoff’s colossal frame seemed to have been chiseled off. He looked half-shriveled, almost like a mummy.

  When Nolt turned his eyes once again to the screen in the mass of clouds, he muttered a cry of surprise. At some point, the scenery rushing by D on either side had become desolate rocky peaks. “Well then, big bro, you thinking of maybe starting a landslide or something to bury the bastards?”

  —

  At last, Mayerling’s darkness-piercing vision caught the black rider. The tail of his coat sliced through the wind, billowing out like ominous wings.

  Could he face and beat this foe on equal terms? While he was fairly self-confident, anxiety was beginning to rear its ugly, black head in Mayerling’s bosom. Though they’d only met for a split second, the force and keenness of the blade that’d assailed him from overhead lingered all too vividly in his left hand even now. The numbness was finally beginning to fade. But more than that, the distinct horror of learning the steely hand-armor that could repel laser beams had been cut halfway through rankled him, and caused him concern.

  Vampire Hunter D could not be underestimated.

  Mayerling’s eyes glowed a brilliant crimson, and the curving black claws creaked as they grew from his right hand, which still clenched the whip.

  Perhaps anticipating the new death match about to be joined, even the wind snarled. Up ahead, a wooden bridge was visible. The sound of running water could be heard. The current sounded rather strong.

  Mayerling’s gaze was drawn up. Quickly bending over, he pulled a pair of black cylinders from a box beside the driver’s seat. They were molecular vibro-bombs, complete with timers. The molecular particles within them were subjected to powerful ultra-high speed vibrations, and they could destroy cohesive energy to reduce any substance to a fine dust.

  Raising a tremendous racket, the carriage started across the bridge. The span was about sixty feet in length. Some thirty feet below, a white sash raced by. Rapids.

  He halted the carriage as soon as it was across, then turned. Grabbing the molecular vibro-bomb’s switch with his teeth, he gave it a twist. They weren’t exactly a weapon befitting the Nobility.

  D was on the bridge roughly five seconds later. He rushed ahead without a moment’s hesitation.

  He didn’t think he was being foolish. This Hunter must’ve had the self-confidence and skill to deal with any situation. There was no choice, then, but for Mayerling to exert every lethal effort in return. “I had hoped to settle this like men, one on one,” h
e muttered as he listened to the thunder of the iron-shod hoofs. “See how you like this, D—”

  But the instant he jerked his arm back to prepare for the throw, lightning flashed before his eyes. It’d flashed down without warning from a black mass of clouds clogging the sky, aiming to strike the top of the bridge—and the road right in front of D.

  Sparks flying without a sound dead ahead, how could the Hunter avoid the gaping ten-foot-wide hole that suddenly yawned before him? The legs of his horse clawed vainly at air, and D, keeping his graceful equestrian pose, plummeted headfirst toward the fierce, earth-shaking rapids below.

  —

  III

  —

  Just as Nolt shouted, “You did it!” Borgoff’s greatly withered frame suddenly slumped forward.

  On hearing the commotion, Kyle sluggishly stuck his head out, too. “What happened?” He looked out the window and up at the sky, but the screen-like properties of the clouds had been lost along with Borgoff’s consciousness. “Oh, man, bro—you went and used it again, didn’t you? And you’re the one who’s always going on about how it takes three years off your life every time you do.”

  Feeling the derisive jibe, the oldest brother said in a halting voice like that of the dead, “He fell into the river. Dhampirs ain’t swimmers . . . Nolt, find him and finish him off.”

  A few minutes later, after he’d watched the second oldest depart in a cloud of dust, Borgoff gave Kyle the order to drive. He headed for the bedroom in the rear to rest his weary bones. There was one set of bunk beds on either side for his siblings. His alone was especially large, and located the furthest in the back.

  As he was making his way down the aisle, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible, his meatless but still sizable arm was grasped by something eerily cold. Borgoff turned around.

  A white hand that could easily be mistaken for that of a genuine mummy stuck out from the bottom right bunk.

  “Hey, I didn’t know you were up. I’m sorry if that idiot Nolt disturbed you with all his hollering.” Where the eldest Marcus normally kept this gentle tone of voice was a complete mystery.