Given how much strength the vampires had in their favor, why hadn’t they set about exterminating the human race? That is the eternal question. It couldn’t be that they were simply afraid of destroying their source of the blood, since they had mastered a method of perfectly synthesizing human blood in the first stage of their civilization. As far as manual labor went, they had more than enough robots to bear the load by the time the revolution broke out. In fact, the reason why they allowed humans to continue to exist in the first place, even in their role as subordinates, is a mystery. Most likely it was due to some sort of superiority complex, or out of pity.
Vampires were rarely seen by humans any more, but the fear remained. On very rare occasions, they appeared from the depths of the darkness and left their vile bite on the pale throats of their victims; sometimes a person would seek them out with wooden stake in hand like a man possessed, while at other times the humans would drive the victim out from their midst, earnestly praying they wouldn’t receive another visit from the vampires.
The Hunters were a product of the people’s fear.
Being nearly indestructible themselves, the vampires weren’t so eager to exterminate the mutant creatures humanity feared so much in the years just after the war. Quite the contrary, the vampires loved the vicious beasts, nurtured them, and even created others like them with their own hands.
Thanks to their unparalleled knowledge of biology and genetic engineering, the vampires unleashed one legendary monster after another into the world of man: werewolves, were-tigers, serpent men, golems, fairies, mer-creatures, goblins, raksas, ghouls, zombies, banshees, fire dragons, salamanders resistant to flames, griffins, krakens, and more. Though their creators neared extinction, the creatures still ran rampant on the plains and in the mountains.
Working the land with the scant machinery the Nobility allowed them, defending themselves with replicas of old-fashioned gunpowder weapons or homemade swords and spears, the humans studied the nature of these artificial monstrosities for generations, learning their powers and their weaknesses. In time, some people came to work exclusively on weapons and ways to kill these things.
Of those people, some specialized in producing more effective weaponry, while those of surpassing strength and agility trained themselves to use those weapons. These exceptional warriors were the first Hunters.
As time went by, Hunters became more narrowly focused, and specialists like the Were-tiger Hunter and Fairy Hunter were born. Of them all, Vampire Hunters were universally recognized as possessing strength and intellect beyond the rest, as well as an ironclad will impervious to the fear their former rulers inspired in others.
.
The next morning, Doris was awakened by the shrill whinny of a horse. White light speared in through her window, telling her it was a fresh day. She was lying on the bed dressed just as she was when D knocked her out. Actually, D had carried her to the bed when his first skirmish was over. Her nerves had been frayed with worry after her vampire attack, and she was incredibly tense from her search for a Hunter, but when the power of D’s left hand put her to sleep she was totally at peace and had slept soundly till morning.
Instinctively reaching for her throat, Doris recalled what had happened the night before.
What happened while I was asleep? He said we had company, and that had to be him. I wonder how D made out? As she sprung out of bed in a panic, her expression suddenly grew brighter. She was still a little lethargic, but physically nothing else seemed out of the norm. D had kept her safe. Remembering that she hadn’t even shown him where his room was, she pawed at her sleep-disheveled locks and hurried out of her bedroom.
The heavy shades in the living room were fully drawn; at one end of the murky room sat a sofa with a pair of boots hanging off the end.
“D, you really did it, didn’t you? I knew hiring you was the right thing to do!”
From beneath the traveler’s hat that covered his face came the usual low voice.
“Just doing my job. Sorry, it seems I forgot to put the barrier back up.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Doris said animatedly, checking the clock on the mantle. “It’s only five past seven in the morning. Get some more sleep. I’ll have your breakfast ready in no time. And I’ll make it the best I can.”
Outside a horse whinnied loudly again. Doris was reminded she had a visitor.
“Who the hell would be making such a racket at this hour?”
She went over to the window and was about to raise the shade when a sharp “Don’t!” stayed her hand.
When Doris turned to D with a gasp, her face was twisted by the same terror that had contorted it the night before when she tried to escape his approach. She remembered what the gorgeous Hunter really was. And yet she reclaimed her smile soon enough; not only was she stouthearted, but she also had a naturally fair disposition. “Sorry about that. I’ll fix you up a room later. At any rate, get some rest.” As soon as she’d said that she went ahead and grabbed a corner of the shade anyway, but the moment she lifted it and took a look outside, her endearing face quickly became a mass of pure hatred. Returning to her bedroom for her prized whip, she stepped outside indignantly.
Astride a bay in front of the porch was a hulking man of twenty-four or twenty-five. The explosive-firing, ten-banger pistol he was so proud of hung from the leather gun-belt that girt his waist. Below a mop of red hair, his sly eyes crept across every inch of Doris’ frame.
“What’s your business, Greco? I thought I told you not to come around here no more.” Her tone just as commanding as it had been in her search for the Hunter, Doris glared at the man.
For a brief instant, anger and confusion surfaced in his cloudy eyes, but a lewd smile soon spread across the man’s face and he said, “Aw, don’t say that. I come out here all worried about you and this is the thanks I get? Seems you been looking for a Hunter now, haven’t you? Couldn’t be you’ve gone and got attacked by our old lord, could it?”
In a heartbeat, vermilion spread across Doris’ face, the result of the anger and embarrassment she felt at Greco hitting it right on the mark. “Grow up! If you and your trashy friends in town go around spreading wild stories about me just because I won’t have nothing to do with you, I’ll teach you a thing or two!”
“Come on, don’t get so worked up,” Greco said, shrugging his shoulders. Then his gaze became probing as he said, “It’s just, the night before last there was this drifter in the saloon blubbering on about how he got himself challenged to a test of skill out at the hill on the edge of town by a right powerful girl, then got his ass handed to him before he could even draw his sword. So I buy him a drink to hear all the details and it turns out looks-wise and build-wise, the girl sounds like the spitting image of you. The frosting on the cake was he said she’s damn handy with a weird kind of whip, and there ain’t no one in these parts that could be besides you, missy.” Greco’s eyes were trained on the whip Doris had in her right hand.
“Sure, I was out looking for someone. Someone good. You should know as well as anyone how much damage mutants have been causing around town lately. Well, things are no different out here. It’s more than I can take care of all by my lonesome.”
On hearing Doris’ reply, Greco smiled faintly. “In that case, all you’d have had to do was go ask Pops Cushing in town, seeing how he’s in charge of scouting new talent. You know, five days back, one of the hands at our place seen you chasing a lesser dragon toward the lord’s castle right around dusk. Now, on top of that, you’ve got this need for hired help you don’t want anyone in town to know about.” Greco’s tone of voice changed entirely. He threateningly suggested, “Let’s see you take that scarf off your neck.”
Doris didn’t move.
“Can’t do it, can you,” he laughed. “I figured as much. I think I’ll go into town and have a few words with … well, I don’t think I have to tell you the rest. So, what do you say? Just be sensible and give me your okay for what I’ve been
asking you to do all along. If we got hitched, you’d be the mayor’s daughter-in-law. Then no one in town could lay a stinkin’ finger on you or—”
Before his vile words were done, a snap rang through the air and the bay reared up with a whinny of pain. Doris’ whip had stung the horse’s flank with lightning speed. In a heartbeat, Greco’s massive frame was thrown out of the saddle and crashed to the ground. Hand pressed to his tail, he groaned in pain. The bay’s hoofbeats echoed loudly as it fled the farm, heartlessly leaving its master behind.
“Serves you right! That’s for all the filthy things you’ve gotten away with by hiding behind your father’s power,” Doris laughed. “I never cared too much for your father or anyone in cahoots with him. And if you got a problem with that, you bring your daddy and your buddies out here any time. I won’t run or hide. Of course, the next time you show that ugly, pockmarked mug of yours around here, you’d better be ready to have me flay the skin right off it!”
Color rose in the big man’s face as words so rough you had to wonder where a beautiful young lady kept them shot at him like flames.
“Bitch, you fucked up real good …” As he spoke, his right hand went for his ten-banger. Once again, a surge of black split the sunlight-soaked air, and the pistol he’d tried to draw was thrown into the bushes behind him. And he could draw in less than half a second.
“Next time I’ll send your nose or one of your ears flying.”
The man knew there was more to her words than empty threats. With no parting quip, Greco scurried off the farm, rubbing his backside and right wrist by turns.
“That scumbag’s nothing without his daddy behind him.” After she spat the words, Doris turned and froze on the spot.
Dan stood in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas and armed with a laser rifle. His big, round eyes were brimming with tears.
“Dan, you … you heard everything then?”
The boy nodded mechanically. Greco had been facing toward the house and he hadn’t said anything about Dan, so the boy must’ve stayed behind the door. “Sis ... were you really bit by a Noble?” The boy lived in the wilds of the Frontier. He was well aware of the fate of those with the devil’s kiss on their throat.
The young beauty who had just sent a brute twice her size packing with a crack of her whip was now rooted to the spot, unable to speak.
“No, it can’t be!” The boy suddenly ran over and threw his arms around her. The sorrow and concern he’d been wrestling with surged out in a tidal wave, soaking Doris’ slacks with a flood of hot tears. “You can’t be, you just can’t! I’d be all alone then ... You can’t be!” Though he didn’t want it to be true, he had no idea what he could do about it, and his sorrow sprung from his helplessness.
“It’s okay,” Doris said, patting her brother’s tiny shoulder as she fought back tears of her own. “No lousy Noble’s put the bite on me. These are bug bites I’ve got on my neck. I only hid them because I didn’t want you getting all worried.”
A ray of light streamed into his tear-streaked face. “Really? Really truly?”
“Yep.”
Surely the boy had a heart that could shift from low gear to high on the fly if that was all it took to calm him down. “But what’ll we do if the folks in town believe all Greco’s fibbing and come busting in here?”
“You know how good I am in a fight. Plus, I’ve got you here—”
“And we’ve got D, too!”
At the boy’s exuberant words, the girl’s face clouded. That was the difference between someone who knew the way Hunters worked and someone who didn’t. In fact, the boy hadn’t been told D was a Hunter.
“I’m gonna go ask him!”
“Dan—”
Before she could stop him, the boy disappeared into the living room. She hurried after him, but was too late.
In a completely trusting tone, Dan addressed the youth on the sofa. “A guy just came out here trying to get my sister to marry him, and he says he gonna spread the worst kind of lies about her. He’ll be back with a bunch of folks from town, I just know it. And then they’ll take my sister away. Please save her, D.”
Imagining his answer, Doris unconsciously closed her eyes. The problem wasn’t the reply itself, but the effect it would have. A cold, adamant rejection would leave a wound on the boy’s fragile heart that might never heal.
But this is how the Vampire Hunter replied: “Leave it to me. I won’t let anyone lay a finger on your sister.”
“Okay!”
The boy’s face shone like a sunny morning.
From behind him, Doris said, “Well, breakfast will be ready soon. Before we eat, go have a look at the thermo-regulators out in the orchards.”
The boy galloped off like the spirit of life itself. Doris turned to the still prone D and said, “Thank you. I know it’s the iron law of Hunters that they won’t lift a finger for anything but dealing with their prey. I’d be in no position to complain no matter how you turned him down. You did it without hurting him ... and he loves you like a big brother.”
“But I do refuse.”
“I know. Aside from your job itself, I won’t ask any more of you—what you said to him just now will do fine. I’ll handle my own problems. And the sooner you get your work finished the better.”
“Fine.”
Not surprisingly, D’s voice was emotionless and bitterly cold.
.
As expected, “company” came as the three of them were just finishing a somewhat peculiar breakfast. What made it peculiar was that D only ate half as much as young Dan. The menu consisted of ham and eggs on a colossal scale—mutant-chicken eggs a foot across on an inch-thick slab of light, homemade ham—along with preservative-free black bread hot out of the oven, and juice from massive Gargantua grapes cultivated right on their own farm. Of course, the juice was freshly squeezed and the three large glasses were filled from a single grape. And those were just the main dishes; there was a gigantic bowl of salad and fragrant floral tea, too. Only a farm like the Langs’ could offer a rich menu like this, and the freshness of the ingredients alone should have been enough to make a good-sized man take seconds or thirds on the ham and eggs. The refreshing morning sunlight and giant lavender blossoms that adorned the table were in essence part of a sacred ritual to give all those gathered around it the strength to fight the cruel Frontier for another day.
And yet, D quickly set down his fork and knife and withdrew to the room in the back Doris had just given him.
“That’s weird. I wonder if he ain’t feeling too good?”
“Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that.” Though she pretended nothing was wrong, Doris pictured D back in his room now taking his own kind of breakfast, and started to feel ill.
“Not you too, Sis! What’s the matter? I know you like him and all, but don’t get sick just because he does.”
Doris was about to lay into Dan for his teasing remarks when tension suddenly flooded her face.
Outside, a thunder of hoofbeats drew closer. Lots of hoofbeats.
“Damn it, here they come,” Dan shouted, dashing over to where a laser rifle hung on the wall.
He started to call out for D, but Doris’ quick hand silenced him.
“But why not? It’s gotta be Greco and his thugs,” he said with disgust.
“Let’s see if the two of us can’t handle it first. If that doesn’t work, maybe then …” But she was perfectly aware that no matter what was going to happen to the two of them, D wouldn’t do anything.
Armed with a whip and a rifle, the pair stepped out onto the porch. She let her little eight-year-old brother join her because the law of the Frontier was that if you and your family didn’t defend your own lives and property, no one else would. If you always relied on others, you wouldn’t last long against the fire dragons and golems.
In no time, a dozen men on horseback formed up in front of them.
“Dear me, the cream of local society is out in force. A no-account little fa
rm like this don’t deserve such distinguished guests.” As Doris greeted them in a calm tone, her eyes were cautiously trained on the men in the second and third ranks. In the foremost rank were prominent villagers like Sheriff Luke Dalton, Dr. Sam Ferringo, and Mayor Rohman—this last was Greco’s father, whose face was unusually oily for a man nearing sixty. There was no reason to worry about any of those three suddenly trying anything funny, but behind them was a mob of brutal hooligans just itching to make a statement with the Magnum guns and battered heat-rays they wore on their hips should the opportunity arise. They were all hired hands from Mayor Rohman’s ranch. Doris glared at each of them in turn without a trace of fear until she came across a familiar face at the very tail of the mob, and her gaze became one of pure contempt. When it looked like trouble was brewing, it was just like Greco to shut his big mouth, find the safest possible place, and try to look like he didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.
“So, what’s your business?”
Apparently by mutual consent, Mayor Rohman spoke first.
“As if you don’t know. We’re out here on account of the marks you’ve got under that scarf. You show them to Doc Ferringo now, and if they’re nothing then fine. But if they’re ... well then, unfortunately we’ll have to put you in the asylum.”
Doris snorted in derision. “So you believe the nonsense that damn fool son of yours been talking? He’s been out here five time asking me to marry him and I’ve turned him down every time, so he’s stuck with some pretty damn sour grapes. That’s why he’s spreading these stories when they ain’t true. You keep spouting that filth and you won’t like what happens, mayor or not.”
The bluff rolled from her so fluently the mayor couldn’t get a word in edgewise. His bovine countenance flushed with rage.
“That’s right! My sister ain’t been bit by no vampire! So hit the road, you old pervert,” Dan shouted from his sister’s side, pushing the mayor over the edge.
Vampire Hunter D Page 4
