“And that ain’t the half of it,” another added. “After all of us have had a turn with you, you’ll be feeling so damn good you’ll lose your tongue for ratting us out.”
Haig licked his lips. These young men were known to be rough customers—that was precisely the reason they were perfect for protecting the village from brutal groups of roving bandits or vicious beasts. But now, their exhaustion and the fear of the work to come churned together into a slimy mess that suffocated what little sense they’d been born with.
Lina made no attempt to escape. Haig grabbed her by the arms and pulled her close. His greasy lips savagely latched onto her fine mouth. Pulling her coat up with one hand, he groped at her thighs, while his tongue tried to force its way between her perfect teeth.
Suddenly, there was a dull smack and his massive frame doubled over at the waist. With lightning speed, Lina had slammed her knee into Haig’s privates, leaving him speechless and on his knees. She didn’t even spare him a backward glance as she disappeared into an entrance of the ruins.
“You little bitch!” shouted one of the three men who went after her.
Because it was still daytime, only anger and lust managed to beat back the thugs’ fear of entering the ruins.
Weird machinery and furniture seemed to float in the chill darkness, but they ignored these objects as they ran. Twisting and turning down one sculpture- and painting-adorned corridor after another, they eventually caught up to Lina in a vast room, a hall of some sort.
Stripping off her coat when they caught her by the shoulder, she stumbled and fell face first, but the three of them tackled her and rolled her onto her back.
Lina cried, “Quit it!”
“Stop your squirming. We’re gonna do you real good. All three of us at once!”
Just as the men were pinning her pallid and desperately thrashing hands and closing on her sweet lips . . .
They were struck by the creepiest sensation. Even Lina forgot her struggles and donned a hue of terror. From that strange knot of humanity, four pairs of eyes focused on the same spot in the darkness simultaneously.
Out of the unplumbed depths of the blackness, a single shadowy figure emerged. A figure that seemed to them darker by far than the blackness shrouding this whole universe.
“One civilization met its end here,” said a soft voice flecked with rust, the words drifting through the darkness. “While it’s impossible to halt the progress of time, you would do well to show some respect for what’s been lost.”
Lina scrambled up and took cover behind the figure, but the men didn’t so much as twitch. They couldn’t even speak. Animal instincts honed by more than two decades of doing battle with the forces of nature told them just what this person was. It was something far surpassing what they’d expected to find here.
Footsteps rang out at the entrance to the hall, but soon halted. Haig and the rest of the men had burst into the room with enraged expressions, but then froze in their tracks.
“Wha— what the hell are you?”
Not surprisingly, it was the leader of the suicide squad who finally managed to speak, but just barely. His tremulous voice and the chattering of his teeth told volumes about how he, too, had been laid low by this ghastly aura beyond human ken. At that moment, the only thoughts running through the minds of Haig’s men concerned getting down off the hill as fast as humanly possible.
“Leave. This is no place for you.”
At the stranger’s bidding, the men got to their feet and started to back away. The reason they remained facing forward was not so much due to the old adage about never letting your foe see your back as it was due to their terror at not knowing what might happen to them if they turned around. Some things are worse than dying, the men all muttered in their heart of hearts.
Once they’d fallen back to the hall’s entrance, the men regained some of their spirit. The roof of the windowless corridor was laced with cracks that let the sunlight pour in.
Haig pulled out a Molotov cocktail and another man produced some matches. Striking the match on his pants, he put the flame to the rags. Haig heaved the firebomb with such an exaggerated throw he seemed to be trying to blast his own fears away. No consideration at all was given to Lina’s safety.
The blazing bottle limned a smooth arc across the room and landed at the pair’s feet. But no two-thousand-degree lake of flames spread from it. The bottle simply stood upright on the intricately mosaicked floor. There was a tinkling clink as the neck of the bottle and the flaming rag it contained dropped to the floor.
The men probably hadn’t even seen the silvery flash that had split the air.
Panic ensued.
Loosing an audacious chorus of screams, the men scrambled over each other in an effort to flee down the hallway. And they didn’t look back. The fear of the supernatural world bubbled from a gaping wound where their reason had just been severed, and that fear threatened now to take shape. The men drove their legs with all their desperate might to avoid having to see what shape it took.
Once she was sure their footsteps had died away, Lina finally stepped away from the stranger’s back. Sticking out her cute little tongue, she turned to the exit and made the rudest gesture she knew. She must’ve been amazingly sedate by nature, because she no longer seemed in the least bit troubled as her eyes gazed first at the truncated bottle and the guttering flame, then up at the muscular stranger with admiration.
“You’re really incredible, you . . .” she began to say, but her voice gave out on her.
Now her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and they’d taken in the face of her savior. An exquisite face, like a silent winter night preserved for all time.
“What is it?”
Shaken back to her senses by the sound of his voice, Lina said the first thing that popped into her mind. She was a rather straightforward girl.
“You sure are handsome. Took my breath away, you did.”
“You’d best go home. This is no place for you,” the owner of that gorgeous countenance said once more, his words not so much cold as emotionless.
Lina had already reclaimed enough of her senses to shamelessly eye the man from head to toe.
He couldn’t have been a day over twenty. His wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and the elegant longsword he wore across the back of his black longcoat made it clear he was no tourist. A blue pendant dangled on his chest. The deep, soul-swallowing shade of blue seemed to fit the youth perfectly.
Like hell I’m leaving. I’ll go wherever I damn well please, Lina wanted to say, but the words she hastily uttered were the exact opposite of what she actually felt.
“If you insist, the very least you could do is walk me out.”
At this unexpected request, the youth headed toward the exit without making a sound.
“Hey, wait just a second, you. Aren’t we the hasty one!” Flustered, Lina hurried after him. She thought about latching onto the hem of his coat or maybe his arm, but didn’t actually go through with it. This young man had an intensity about him that completely locked him off from the rest of the world.
Mutely trailing after him, the girl stepped out into the courtyard.
To Lina’s utter amazement, the youth quickly turned around and headed back toward the entrance. She jumped up again.
“For goodness sake, would you just wait a minute? You didn’t even give me a chance to say thank you, you big dolt!”
“Go home before the sun sets. The way down is normal enough.”
The shadowy figure didn’t turn to face her as he spoke, but his words made Lina’s eyes go wide.
“And just how would you know that? Come to think of it, when did you get here, anyway? It couldn’t be you can walk up here like normal, could it?!”
Just shy of the entrance, the young man halted. Without facing her, he said, “So, you can climb the hill normally, too, I take it?”
“That’s right. My circumstances are kind of special,” Lina said, sounding strangely resol
ved for once. “Wanna hear about it? Of course you do. After all, you came all the way up here to see these ruins—the remnants of a Noble’s castle.”
The youth started to walk away again.
“Oh, curse you,” Lina cried, stomping her feet in anger. “At least give me your name. If you don’t, I’m not heading home—come sunset or not. If I get attacked and maimed by monsters, it’ll be on your conscience for the rest of your days. I’m Lina Sween, by the way.”
Apparently her badgering paid off, for a low voice drifted from the silhouette as it melded with the darkness filling the doorway. He said but a single word.
“D.”
-
Later that night, a Vampire Hunter paid a call on the home of the village’s mayor.
“Well I’ll be . . .”
Having pulled a dressing gown over his pajamas and come downstairs, the sleepy-eyed mayor forgot what he was about to say when he saw the beauty of the Hunter standing at the other end of the living room with his back to the wall.
“I see now why our maid’s walking around like something sucked the soul out of her. Well, I can’t very well put you up here in my house. I’ve got a daughter for one thing, and the women’s groups are always coming and going through here.”
“I’ve already put my horse and my gear in the barn,” D said softly. “I’d like to hear your proposition.”
“Before we start, why don’t you set yourself down. You must be coming off a long ride, I’d wager.”
D didn’t move. Nonchalantly drawing back the hand he’d used to indicate a seat, the mayor gave a nod. The valet, who’d just thrown a load of kindling and condensed fuel into the fireplace and was awaiting further instruction, was ordered out.
“Never show the enemy your back, eh? Indeed, I suppose you’ve got no proof I’m on your side.”
“I was under the impression you hired Geslin before me,” D suggested. It almost appeared he hadn’t been listening to a word the mayor had to say.
By the look of him, the mayor was a pushy man, but he didn’t let the slightest hint of displeasure show on his face. In part, this was because he’d heard rumors about the skill of the super Grade A Hunter he was dealing with. But more than that, it was because just having the Hunter standing beside him made the mayor feel in his flesh and bones that the Hunter was a being from a whole other world. Though he had exquisite features far more beautiful than any human, the ghastly aura emanating from the Hunter shook to the fore something mankind usually kept buried in the deepest depths of its psyche—the fear of the unknown darkness.
“Geslin’s dead,” the mayor spat. “He was a top-notch Grade A Hunter, but he couldn’t find us our vampire, and he went and got himself killed by an eight-year-old girl to boot. Got his throat ripped clean open, so we don’t have to worry about him coming back, but we paid him a hundred thousand dalas in advance—what a fiasco!”
“I understand the circumstances were somewhat unusual.”
The mayor pursed his lips in surprise. “You know about that, do you? Well, that’s a dhampir for you! Seems there might be something after all to them rumors that you can hear the winds blowing out of Hell.”
D said nothing.
The mayor gave a brief account of the disaster that had occurred on the bridge roughly two weeks earlier, saying in conclusion, “And all of this happened in broad daylight. By the look of you, I’d wager you’ve seen more than I have in my seventy years on this earth. But I don’t suppose that’d happen to include victims of vampires who can walk in the light of day, now would it?”
D remained silent. That in and of itself was his answer.
It just wasn’t possible. The Nobility and those whose lives they’d claimed were permitted their travesty of life by night alone. The world of daylight had been ceded to humanity.
“I think you have a pretty good notion why I’ve called you here. Think about it. If those damnable Nobles and their retinue were free to move not just by night but by light of day as well, do you have any idea what would become of the world?”
The darkness and chill of the room seemed to increase exponentially. To save wear on their generators, it was commonplace to use lamps fueled with animal fat for lighting at night on the Frontier. The old man’s eyes seemed to smolder as he stared at the hands he held out to warm. D didn’t move a muscle, as if he’d become a statue.
Really set my hooks into him that time, the mayor snickered in his heart of hearts. His words had been chosen for maximum effect on the psyche of his guest, and surely they would’ve dealt a severe blow to the beautiful half-breed Hunter. Oh, yes—come tomorrow, things are bound to be a bit more manageable around here.
However, all did not go quite as expected.
“Could you elaborate on what’s happened in this case so far?”
D’s voice carried no fear or uneasiness, and, for a moment, the mayor was left dumbstruck. So, the horrifying thought of bloodthirsty vampires running amuck in the world by day had no impact on this dhampir? Wrestling down his surprise a split second before it could rise to his face, the mayor began to speak in a tone more subdued than was necessary.
It all started with the ruins and four children.
Even now, no one knew for sure just how long the ruins had stood on that hill. When the village founders had first set foot in this territory nearly two centuries earlier, the ruins were already choked with vines. Several times the hill had been scaled by suicide squads who produced roughly sketched maps and studied its ancient history, but while they were doing so a number of strange phenomena had occurred. Fifty years ago a group of investigators had come from the Capital to see it, and they were the last—after that, there were very few with any interest in surmounting the hill.
It was about ten years earlier that four children from the village had gone missing.
One winter’s day, four children vanished from the village—farmer Zarkoff Belan’s daughter (eight at the time), fellow farmer Hans Jorshtern’s son (aged eight also), teacher Nicholas Meyer’s son (aged ten), and general-store proprietor Hariyamada Schmika’s son (aged eight). There was some furor over the possibility that it might be the work of a dimension-ripping beast that had been terrorizing the area at the time, but then there were villagers who had seen the four children playing part-way up the hill on the day they went missing. Their disappearance forced the community to eye the ruins with suspicion.
For the first time in fifty years, a suicide squad was formed, but, despite a rather extensive search of the ruins, no clue to the children’s whereabouts could be found. Rather, toward the end of a week of searching, members of the suicide squad started disappearing in rapid succession, and the search had to be called off before all the passageways and benighted subterranean chambers that comprised the vast complex of ruins could be investigated.
The grief-stricken parents were told that their children had probably been taken by slave-traders passing by the village, or had been lost to the dimension-ripping beast. Whatever fate awaited the children in either of those scenarios, it was a far more comforting hypothesis than the thought of them disappearing in the remains of a vampire’s mansion.
One evening, about two weeks after the whole incident had started, the tragedy came to its grand—if somewhat tentative—finale. The miller’s wife was out in the nearby woods picking lunar mushrooms when she noticed a couple of people trudging down the hill, and she let out a shout fit to knock half the town off its feet.
The children had returned.
That was to be both a cause for rejoicing and a source of new fears.
“For starters, only three of the kids came back.” The elderly mayor’s voice was so thin, it was fairly lost to the popping of the logs in the fireplace. “You see, Tajeel—that would be Schmika’s boy, from the general store—never did come back. To this day we still don’t know whatever became of him. Can’t say it came as any great surprise when his father and mother both passed away from all their grieving. I’m not saying
we weren’t glad to get the rest of them back, but maybe if he hadn’t been the only one that didn’t make it—”
“Did you examine the children?” D asked as he turned his gaze toward the door, on guard, no doubt, against any foe who might burst into the room. It was said that even among Hunters, there was an incredible amount of animosity, with hostility often aimed at the more famous and capable. D’s eyes were half-closed. The mayor was suddenly struck with the thought that the gorgeous young man was conversing with the night winds through the wall.
“Of course we did,” the mayor said. “Hypnosis, mind-probing drugs, the psycho-witness method—we tried everything we could think of. Unfortunately, we used some of the old ways, too. I tell you, even now the screams of those kids plague my dreams. But it was just no use. Their minds were a blank, completely bare of memories for the exact span of time they’d been missing. Maybe they’d been left that way by external forces, or then again maybe it was something the kids’ own subconscious minds had pulled to keep them all from going insane. Though if it was the latter, I suppose you’d have to say that as far as Jorshtern’s boy went, the results weren’t quite what you’d hope for—to this day, Cuore’s still crazy as a bedbug.
“The upshot of this is, exactly what happened in the ruined castle and what they might’ve seen there remains shrouded in mystery. I suppose the only saving grace was that none of them came away with the kiss of the Nobility. Cuore’s case was unfortunate, but the other two grew up quite nicely, becoming one of our school teachers and the village’s brightest pupil, respectively.”
Having progressed this far in his story, the mayor seemed to be finally at ease. He walked over to a sideboard against the wall, got a bottle of the local vintage and a pair of goblets, and returned.
“Care for a drink?”
As he proffered a goblet, his hand stopped halfway. He’d just remembered what dhampirs usually consumed.
As if to confirm this, D replied softly, “I never touch the stuff.” The Hunter’s gaze then flew to the pristine darkness beyond the window panes. “How many victims have there been, and under what conditions did the attacks occur?”
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 2
