D said nothing as he urged his horse on.
Once he’d crossed the bridge, he entered a large courtyard. Behind him came the sounds of the drawbridge being raised again, but he advanced down the cobblestone way toward the palace without a backward glance.
The orderly rows of trees, the marble sculptures glittering in the sunlight, stairways and corridors leading to places that couldn’t be guessed—all gave the feeling of scrupulous upkeep by machines. Though no one could say how many millennia ago they’d been planted or sculpted, they looked as fresh and new as if they’d been placed there only yesterday. But there were no signs that life went on here. The machines alone lived, and their mechanical eyes and fiery arrows were trained on D.
When his horse halted before the palace gates, D quickly slipped out of the saddle. The thick doors dotted with countless hobnails were already open wide.
“Enter, please.” The same synthesized voice reverberated from the dark corridor.
A hazy darkness bound the interior. Not that the windowpanes were dampening the sunlight—this effect was a result of the artificial lighting. In fact, the windows in the vampire’s palace were no more than ornamentation, impervious to the slightest ray of light.
As he walked down the corridors guided by the voice, D noticed that each and every window was set in a niche in the wall. It would take two or three steps up the scaffolding to climb to the window from the hallway: one couldn’t walk over to the window, but would rather pop up in front of it. The design had been copied from German castles in the middle ages.
The predominant element of vampire civilization was their love of medieval styles. Even in their superiorly advanced, tech-filled Capital, the designs of many of the buildings closely resembled those of medieval Europe. Perhaps something in their DNA cried out for a return to the golden age that lived on in their genetic memory, a time when superstition and legend and all manner of weird creatures prevailed. Maybe that explained why so many detestable monsters and spirits had been resurrected by their super-science.
The voice led D to a splendid door of massive proportions. At the bottom of the door there was an opening large enough for a cat to come and go as it pleased. This door opened without a sound as well, and D set foot into a world of even deeper darkness. His haggard air was gone in an instant. His nerves, his muscles, his circulation—every part of him told him the time he had known had suddenly changed. The instant he smelled the thick perfume wafting throughout the room—which appeared to be a hall—D knew the cause. Time-Bewitching Incense. I’ve heard rumors about this stuff. When he sighted the pair of silhouettes hazily sketched by wispy flames at the far end of the vast hall, his suspicion became conviction.
The silhouettes gave off a ghastly aura that made even D’s peerless features stiffen with tension. Beside a slender form—which he knew at a glance to be female—stood a figure of remarkable grandeur dressed in black. “We’ve been waiting for you. You are the first human to ever make it this far in one piece.” From the corners of the vermilion lips that loosed this solemn voice poked a pair of white fangs. “As our guest, you deserve an introduction. I am the lord of this castle and administrator of the Tenth Frontier Sector, Count Magnus Lee.”
.
Time-Bewitching Incense could be called the ultimate chemical compound born of the vampires’ physiological needs.
For the most part, the information and rumors people passed along about the physiology of these fiends—the various stories told since time immemorial—were essentially true. Outlandish tales about transforming into bats, turning themselves into fog and billowing away, and so on—stories that there were vampires who could do such things and others who couldn’t were taken as fact. Just as in human society ability varied according to an individual’s disposition, so too among the vampires there were some demons who freely controlled the weather, while other fiends had mastery over lower animals.
Many aspects of the vampire’s fantastic physiology, however, remained shrouded in mystery.
For example, the reason why they slept by day but awoke at night remained unclear. Even enveloped by darkness in a secret chamber that blocked out all possible light, a vampire’s body grew rigid with the coming of that unseen dawn, their heart alone continuing to beat as they fell into death’s breathless slumber. Despite a concerted effort at explanation spanning thousands of years and investing the essence of every possible field of science—ecology, biology, cerebral physiology, psychology, and even super-psychology—the damned couldn’t shed a bit of light on the true cause of their sleep. As if to say, those who dwelt in the darkness were denied even the rays of hope.
Born of the vampires’ desperate research, Time-Bewitching Incense was one means of overcoming their limitations.
Wherever its scent hung, the time would become night. Or rather, appear to be night. In a manner of speaking, normal temporal effects were so altered by this chemical compound, the incense made time itself seem hypnotized. In the glistening sunlight of early afternoon, the night-blooming moonlight grass would open its gorgeous white flowers, people would doze off and remain asleep indefinitely, and the eyes of vampires would shine with a piercing light. Due to the extreme difficulty of finding and combining the components, the incense was very hard to come by, but rumors spread to every corner of the Frontier about Hunters who forced their way into a vampire resting place when the sun was high only to be brutally ambushed by Nobles who just happened to have some on hand.
There, in the false night, D faced the dark liege lord.
“Did you come here expecting to find us asleep, foolish one? As you managed to stop my daughter, I believed you to be a more stalwart opponent than the usual insects, and I allowed you this meeting. But, where you sauntered into the blackest hell without even suspecting the danger awaiting you, I may have erred gravely in my assessment.”
“No,” said a voice he’d heard before. The figure at the Count’s side was Larmica. “This man doesn’t exhibit the least trace of fear. He’s a thoroughly exasperating and deliciously impudent fellow. Judging by the skill he demonstrated this past evening when dealing Garou a grievous wound, he could be nothing save a dhampir.”
“Human or dhampir, he remains a traitor. A bastard spawned by one of our kind and a mere human. Tell me, bastard, are you a man or a vampire?”
To this scornful query, D gave a different answer. “I’m a Vampire Hunter. I came here because the walls opened up for me. Are you the fiend that attacked the girl from the farm? If so, I’ll slay you here and now.”
For a moment, the Count was left speechless by the gleaming eyes that bored through the darkness at him, but an instant later he seemed indignant. He laughed loudly. “Slay me? You forget your place. Do you not realize the sole reason I allowed you to come this far is because my daughter said it would be a shame to kill a man such as yourself, that we should persuade you to join us in the castle and make you one of our kind? I have no idea which of your parents was of our kind, but judging by the speech and conduct of their son, it was obviously a buffoon without an inkling of their own low station. This is a waste of time. Dhampir, shame of our race, prepare to meet your maker.” Having roared these words, the Count raised his right hand to strike, but was stopped by Larmica’s voice.
“Please wait, Father. Allow me to speak to him.”
Fluttering the train of a deep blue dress quite unlike the one she wore the previous night, Larmica stepped between the Count and D.
“You spring from the same noble blood as our family. Regardless of what Father said, no son of a humble-born vampire could ever possess such skill. When I caught the missile you hurled at me, I thought my blood would freeze.”
D said nothing.
“What say you? Will you not apologize to Father for your boastful speech and join us here in the castle? What reasons have you to dog us? Is being a Hunter a job worth wandering the untamed plains in such shabby apparel? And what of the human wretches you’ve protected—what manner
of treatment have you received from the humans who should be grateful to you? Have they accepted you as their fellow man?”
In the unknowably deep twilight of the hall, the voice of the beautiful young woman flowed without hesitation. Her haughty and domineering mien was unchanged from the night before, but one had to wonder if D noticed the faint shadows of entreaty and desire that clung to her.
Dhampir—a child born of the union between a vampire and a human. There could be no existence more lonely or hateful than that. Normally, dhampirs were no different from humans, relatively free to work by the light of day. When angered, however, they lashed out with the unholy power of a vampire, killing and maiming at will. Most detestable of all were the vampire urges they inherited from one of their parents.
Based on their innate and intimate knowledge of vampires’ strengths and weaknesses, many chose to become Vampire Hunters in order to make a living in human society. The fact was, they demonstrated a level of ability head and shoulders above merely human Hunters, but outside of hunting, they were nearly completely ostracized by humanity and kept their distance. Occasionally, their vampire nature would awaken so powerfully they themselves couldn’t suppress it, causing them to crave the blood of the very people that depended on them.
As soon as a dhampir finished a job, the people who barely tolerated him while he went about his mission would chase him off with stones, their gaze full of malice and contempt. With both the cruelly aristocratic blood of the Nobility and the brutally vulgar blood of the humans, dhampirs were tormented by the dual destinies of darkness and light; one side called them traitors while the other labeled them devils. Truly, the dhampirs—like the Flying Dutchman cursed to wander the seven seas for all eternity—led an abominable existence.
And yet, Larmica was saying all she could to get him to join them. Still she spoke.
“You can’t possibly have a single pleasant reminiscence from your life as a Hunter. Of late, the insects in the village have been rather boisterous. At some point they will no doubt send in an assassin like yourself. If Father and I were to have a stalwart individual like you acting as a sort of guard when they do, we would feel most secure. What say you? If you are so inclined, we may even make you truly one of us.”
The Count was ready to explode with rage at the words his daughter—gazing with sleepy, painfully lustful eyes at motionless D—had said. But before he could, he heard a low voice.
“What do you plan to do with the girl?”
Larmica laughed charmingly. “Do not overreach your bounds. The woman shall soon belong to Father, soul and all.” And then, staring fixedly at her father with a cutting and highly ironic gaze, she said, “I believe Father wishes to make her one of his concubines, but I cannot allow it. I shall drain her of her very last drop of blood, then leave her for the human worms to rip apart and put to the torch.”
Her words suddenly stopped. The Count’s eyes gave off blood light. The fearsome night-stalking father and daughter surmised through their supernaturally attuned senses that the trivial opponent before them—the youth who was trapped like the proverbial rat—was rapidly transforming. That he was becoming the same thing they were!
“Still you fail to comprehend this,” Larmica scolded. “What can come of this obligation you have toward the human worms? Those menials spared no pains in exterminating each and every living creature on the face of the earth besides themselves, and managed to nearly wipe themselves out through their own carelessness. They only continued living through the charity of our kind, yet the first time our power waned, the insurgents were all too happy to fly the flags of revolt. They, not we, are the creatures that should be expunged from this planet and from all of space.”
At that moment, the Count thought he’d heard a certain phrase, and his brow knit. The muttered words had clearly come from the young man before him, but he promptly dredged the same phrase from the depths of distant, half-forgotten memories. Reason denied the possibility of such a thing.
Impossible, he thought. Those are the very words I heard from his highness. From the great one, the Sacred Ancestor of our species. That filthy whelp couldn’t possibly know such things.
He heard D’s voice. “Is that all you have to say?”
“Fool!”
The screams of both father and daughter resounded through the vast chamber. Negotiations had fallen through. The Count’s lips warped into a cold-blooded and confident grin. He gave a crisp snap of the fingers on his right hand, but a rush of consternation came into his pale visage a few seconds later when he realized the countless electronic weapons mounted throughout the hall weren’t operating.
The pendant on D’s chest emitted a blue light.
“I don’t know what you have up your sleeve, but the weapons of the Nobility don’t work against me.” Leaving only his words there, D kicked off the ground. Lightning fast, there would be no escaping him. Drawing his sword in midair, he pulled it to his right side. Just as he landed, his deadly thrust became a flash of silver that sank into the Count’s chest.
There was the sound of flesh striking flesh.
“Eh?!”
For the first time, a look of surprise surfaced in D’s handsome but normally expressionless countenance. His longsword was stopped dead, caught between the Count’s palms about eight inches from the tip. Moreover, from their respective stances, D was in a far better position to exert more force upon the sword, but though he put all his might behind it, the blade wouldn’t budge an inch, just as if it was wedged in a wall.
The Count bared his fangs and laughed. “What do you make of that, traitor? Unlike your vulgar swordplay, this is a skill worthy of a true Noble. When you get to hell, tell them how surprised you were!” As he said that, the figure in black made a bold move to the right. Perhaps it was some secret trick the Count employed in the timing, or the way he put his strength into the move, but for whatever reason, D was unable to take his hand off the hilt. He was thrown along with the sword into the center of the hall.
However …
The Count quite unexpectedly found his breath taken away. There were no crunching bones to be heard; the youth somersaulted in midair like a cat about to land feetfirst on the floor with the hem of his coat billowing out around him. Or rather, he was ready to land there. With no floor beneath his feet, D kept right on going, falling into the pitch-black maw that opened suddenly beneath him.
As he heard the creaking of trapdoors to either side of the massive thirty by thirty-foot pit swinging back up into place, the Count turned his gaze to the darkness behind him. Larmica appeared from it. “It’s a primitive trap, but it was fortunate for us we had it put there, was it not, Father? When all your vaunted atomic armaments were useless, a pitfall of cogs and springs rid us of that nuisance.”
At her charming laughter, the Count made a sullen face. He had reluctantly allowed this trap to be installed due to Larmica’s entreaties. There’s no way she could have foreseen this day’s events, the Count thought, but this girl, daughter of mine though she may be, seems on occasion to be a creature beyond imagining.
Shaking off his grimace, he said, “At the same instant I hurled him, you pulled the cord on the trapdoor—who but my daughter would be capable of as much? But is this for the best?”
“Is what for the best?”
“Last night, when you returned from the farm and spoke of the stripling we just disposed of, the tone of your voice, the manner of your complaints—even I, your own father, cannot recall ever hearing you so indignant, yet your indignation held a feverish sentiment that was equally new. Could it be you’re smitten with the scoundrel?”
Unanticipated though her father’s words were, Larmica donned a smile that positively defied description. Not only that, she licked her lips as well.
“Do you believe I could let a man I loved drop down there? Father, as its architect you know far better than anyone what a living hell that subterranean region is. Dhampir or not, no one could come out of that beni
ghted pit alive. But …”
“But what?”
Here Larmica once again made a ghastly smile that even caused Count Lee, her own father, to flinch.
“If he can escape from there with naught but a sword and the power of his own limbs, I shall devote myself to him body and soul. By the eternal life and ten thousand bloody years of the history of the Nobility, I swear I love him—I love the Vampire Hunter D.”
Now it was the Count’s turn to smile bitterly. “It is hell for those you despise, and a worse hell for those you desire. Though I don’t believe there is anything in this world that can face the three sisters and live to tell the tale.”
“Of course not, Father.”
“However,” the Count continued, “should he survive and you meet him again, what will you do should he spurn your affections?”
Larmica responded in a heartbeat. Flames of joy rose from her body. Her eyes glittered wildly but were moist with hot tears, her crimson lips parted slightly, and her slick tongue licked along her lips as if it possessed a will of its own. “In that case, I will deal the deathblow to him without fail. I shall rip out his heart and lop off his head. And then he shall truly be mine. And I shall be his. I will taste the sweet blood as it seeps from his wounds, and after I have kissed his pale and withered lips, I shall tear open my own breast and let the hot blood of the Nobility course down his gaping throat.”
When Larmica had taken her leave, following her incredibly gruesome yet fervent declaration of love, the Count’s expression was a mixture of anger and apprehension, and he turned his gaze to the pit. He pressed one hand against the left side of his chest through his cape. The fabric was soaking wet. With blood. Though he seemed to have masterfully caught D’s blade, more than an inch at the tip had sunken into his immortal flesh. Some trick with the sword may have been involved, for, unlike any wound he’d heretofore taken in battle, the gash still hadn’t closed, and the warm blood that was the fount of his life was flowing out. Now there is a man to be feared. He might even have ...
Vampire Hunter D Page 6
