He stood rooted before the farmhouse door. The door itself was undisturbed, but in the mud wall beside it a huge hole gaped like a blackened maw. It was large enough for a full-grown man to pass through with ease. The teacher’s legs turned weak at the thought of the brute strength needed to make that hole.
Another scream. This time it was a child’s voice. Fear was banished in an instant by a powerful sense of professional duty, and Mr. Meyer flew in through the entrance. The teacher couldn’t have imagined the scene he would glimpse in that first heartbeat, a sight that replaced his sense of mission with a kind of numbness.
-
His field of vision was filled by a broad room and the body of a woman prone on its dirt floor. On top of the Rubenesque form of what was apparently the farmer’s wife squirmed a thing with disheveled locks. The thing, whatever it was, was roughly the size of a child seven or eight years old.
An ample breast spilled from the woman’s shredded clothing, and across the breast crept a scarlet tongue. There was the sound of licking, but it wasn’t the sort of sound that came from the loving play men and women engaged in. The thing was lapping at the redness that coursed down the woman’s bosom, running from the base of her throat.
The ebony head moved over the woman’s breast and her body twitched. It raised its visage gingerly to face the teacher. Weirdly jutting cheeks it had, and sunken eyes. Not a sliver of humanity was to be found in its bloodshot orbs, and its lips, uncommon only in their size, warped in an evil smirk at the appearance of fresh prey. With a wet thud, it spat something out on the earthen floor. One didn’t need to see the thing’s bloodstained teeth to know that what it spat was the well-gnawed tip of a breast.
The side door creaked open. In Mr. Meyer’s eyes, what came out of the back room looked like a werewolf with the body of a child in its jaws.
He still had the buckshot tube in his hands, but he didn’t bring it to bear on either of the creatures. Not only was he a teacher, but he was a Frontier person as well. Demons and monstrosities dwelt all around them, and he knew ways to deal with them. On two previous occasions he had fended off attacks with the weapon in his hands—by a harpy in one case and a man-serpent another time. But this time he didn’t move.
Realizing where his mind was starting to lead him, the teacher trembled violently.
The one that had been gnawing at the woman’s corpse rose, while the creature crawling about on all fours dropped the child’s body. The monsters closed in . . .
“Hold it. Don’t come near me.” The words barely escaped his throat. Side to side the buckshot tube wavered without fixing on a target.
Two creatures, the teacher tried to impress upon himself. Two things. Not people.
Eyes crazed solely with murder burned like flames, and blood-smeared lips hauled back to expose rows of teeth. Teeth that were average and human.
These things are just like me, the teacher mused.
From the front and flank dark shapes pounced.
Stop it!
A deafening report and thirty balls of shot stifled the teacher’s cry.
Outside, the squall grew stronger.
-
While that small but fearsome battle was taking place at one end of the village, Lina was already back at her home. After what had happened in the ruins it was no surprise she couldn’t focus in class, but the cause of her singular depression was what D had said.
Don’t follow me around anymore—that’s what she’d been told. In light of how she had fancied herself the young Vampire Hunter’s assistant, D’s order was a grievous wound to her pride.
Can’t allow myself to fly off the handle. Gotta get him to take that back.
Keeping these two sentiments in mind, Lina dropped her book bag in her room, then burst into D’s abode—the barn. D’s horse was tied up in one of the stalls. Goody, she thought. He’s in.
“Now I’ve seen everything,” she exclaimed, her amazement at this unforeseen tableau forming the words of its own accord.
She had heard from the mayor that D was a dhampir. And she had some knowledge about their nature. Though she had been certain that he would either be sleeping or feeding, D had in fact found a wooden desk and chair that had been moved out to the barn years ago. He was at them now, shaking what looked like a little flask.
Approaching dumbstruck, Lina saw the instruments laid out on the desktop. Her eyes went wide again, and this time wider than before. Not only were there a number of silvery cylinders and medicine bottles filled with draughts of unsettling shades, there was also a rack of flasks with pale vapors rising from the flasks’ openings. Unless her eyes deceived her, besides the rack a microcomputer hummed dully and gave off flashes of cyanic light. “Wow! Can all Vampire Hunters do chemical analysis?”
Though he’d probably long since noticed his visitor, D made no move to face her. But there wasn’t necessarily any enmity in that.
“Hey,” she called out, firming her shoulders for a struggle.
“I thought I’d dismissed my assistant.”
“Yippee!” Lina snapped her fingers. A smile spilled from her.
“What are you so happy about?”
“It looks like I get to be your assistant again. Oh, now don’t try and talk your way out of it. I see some hope for me yet in the way you phrased that. See, I’m a mind reader, too. I know full well where your mind’s headed.”
Really just yours and no one else’s, Lina thought.
D turned to Lina and said, “If I say it some other way will you get out?”
Her body trembling with chill at something carried in that soft tone, Lina shook her head as gaily as possible. “Not on your vampire-hunting life.”
She wondered what she’d do if her words offended him, but D returned to his desk expressionless.
She wasted no time going over to him. Shifting her eyes to the computer, she said, “An estimated 14.3 grams per 100 cubic centimeters, 4.5 million in a cubic millimeter—that’s the amount of hemoglobin and blood count for a woman you’ve got displayed there. Has someone else been attacked?!”
D turned to her and said, “Good call.” He wasn’t referring to the disturbing incident, but rather to her take on the numerical data displayed on his computer.
“What do you expect from a prodigy?” Lina chuckled, puffing her already ample chest. A second later, she slipped her cheek in by D’s face. “Your assistant would like to know something, Boss. Whose blood is this?”
D met the mischievous girl’s look with his sparkling eyes, then turned the other way.
Humph, that was an unexpected move. Does he think I’ll call it quits so easily? “Fine,” said Lina. “Don’t tell me. I guess I’ll just have to tag along and do my own thing. Wherever you go, I’ll be there on my own little agenda. So try not to get bent out of shape when I trample all over your precious evidence.”
“Do what you like.” End of discussion.
Of course, throwing a sulking fit wouldn’t sway D. And it would be galling to go now with things the way they stood. Lina wound up hovering over the computer.
Once, several years back, she’d seen a computer that a traveling merchant had brought to town. A legacy of the Nobility’s vanished scientific culture, computers were few in number, and rarer still were people who could use them. Clearly this must be one of the most powerful models, with a built-in ability to draw inferences in addition to the usual data-analyzing functions. Still, it was hard to believe a Vampire Hunter was used to using such a device.
D’s fingers gently brushed the magnetic ball and the display changed.
“That’s 16 grams of hemoglobin, blood count of 5 million—that one’s a man’s. D, you don’t suppose—”
“There were drops of the woman’s blood in the middle of the woods where Cuore was found. Thanks to the high humidity, it hadn’t dried completely. It still had its scent, too. I’ve added some blood from the woman last night to it.”
Just as Lina was about to jump for joy at finall
y receiving a civil reply, the computer began to display something other than numerical data. Top and bottom, left and right, the pale spark dragged its tail.
“Oh, I get it. From saliva mixed with the blood of its victim you can deduce who the Noble really is. Sensational!” Lina trained a gaze of fear and curiosity on the display.
Where the randomly flowing flashes made contact, a cluster of luminous points formed and shifted locations in a manner that was momentarily dizzying. In no time, a single face had been rendered on the dark-green display.
Lina swallowed her spittle.
“Recognize this?” D inquired.
Lina shook her head. The screen was filled with a three-dimensional image of a man she’d never seen. D’s hand moved and the perspective of the “face” changed several times, but Lina couldn’t recall seeing it. “It’s no one from the village. Not Tajeel, either. That’s a relief . . . ”
That seemed to dispel some of her doubts. The sound of falling rain came clearly to her ears.
“Why are you crying?” D asked, switching off the computer. The sample of blood he’d collected in the forest had since dried, making it impossible now to deduce the identity of the woman who had been bitten there.
“Hmph,” Lina snorted, turning the other way and dabbing at her eyes. “Rainy days are supposed to make you sentimental, you know. What kind of girl would I be if they didn’t?”
She hoped D would pick up the conversation, but instead he looked out of the entrance, commenting on how it was really pouring down.
“Why is it the Nobility have problems with the rain?” Lina had wondered about this for years. When she was little, it seemed any time there were rumors of Nobles appearing in some distant village she’d only been allowed outdoors on rainy days.
As he replied, “I don’t know, either,” D’s face became mysteriously pale. He was questioning why he bothered answering each and every question the girl posed. “From a biological standpoint, a number of mysteries remain about how their metabolisms work. The question of why they can only move by night, or how their bodies can heal wounds from bullets, or why they can be destroyed with a single wooden stake. The same can be said for their inability to cross running water, or the way rainy days prevent them from venturing outdoors. It’s rather ironic that so many defects remain when they’ve attained what’s believed to be the pinnacle of biological evolution—true immortality.”
“Looks like the all-revealing light of science isn’t perfect after all,” said Lina, eyes alight with inquisitiveness. “I wonder if the Nobility themselves ever solved those mysteries.”
“So far as I know?” D shook his head. “Biological weaknesses are linked to some defect of the species. If they had seized on some clue, some explanation, I doubt the day when men ruled the earth would have ever come. The Nobles vanished from history without even knowing why they were doomed. All told, I suppose they were rather good sports about it.”
“A fundamental defect of the species,” Lina muttered, deeply moved by what D had said. “The Nobility died off, while mankind remained. But even now we’re terrified of some vision of those who’ve gone. Doesn’t that seem sort of pitiful for the supposed rulers of the earth?”
D kept his silence as he moved to the entrance, then put his hand out into the cascade pouring down from the eaves. As he did so, his eyes fixed on a spot outside. Lina tilted her head in consternation and followed after him.
Beyond the blurring gray membrane they could see the profile of the hill and a number of human silhouettes. People swinging hoes up and down. They could hear the whine of atomic tractors, too. If you didn’t mind getting a little wet, this was the finest weather one could ask for to put in some extra hours in the fields without the threat of the dreaded Nobility.
“If I were to go out now, my body temperature would drop nearly four degrees,” D said, watching the droplets smashing against his outstretched hand. “My running speed would fall by thirty percent, you see, as my whole metabolism slowed down. On the other hand, your kind . . . ”
Reading the faraway look in D’s eye, Lina felt pained by the destiny the gorgeous youth bore. What was it like to spring from Noble and mortal blood? When stalking one of the two, what went through his heart?
Lina took D’s soaked arm.
“What the . . . ?”
Clasping everything from the wrist up with both hands, she pressed it to her cheek without saying a word. His hand’s so cold, but maybe I can warm it up just a bit. Maybe it’ll make me his temperature. Lina shut her eyes and heard only the sound of the rain.
Suddenly the eeriest sensation struck her countenance. Goosebumps rising all over her body, Lina let go of his hand. D’s gaze hadn’t moved in the least; his profile still pointed in the same direction. But what stood before the girl wasn’t the same young man, gorgeous, solitary, and proud.
“Don’t leave this spot.” His parting words vested with an authority that made them impossible to disobey, the Vampire Hunter stalked out into the falling droplets. It took a minute before Lina realized he also carried his longsword in his left hand.
D’s speed didn’t appear to have dropped the least bit below normal. A hundred yards took him less than six seconds. He didn’t even close his eyelids against the wind-whipped rain lashing his face.
Easily clearing the fence, he entered a field. This didn’t cause even the slightest delay. Not even the mire would think of catching the youth’s feet or making him slip.
He arrived at his destination some fifty yards distant in another three seconds flat.
The farmers had formed a ring, but they whirled about as the ghastly aura struck them. Their faces were fearful as they cleared a path.
D planted his knee by the side of the thing lying on the ground.
The creature had a diminutive body and was crowned with a head of lengthy hair. Its flesh was as pale and blue as a drowning victim, but something red leaked from it. Apparently there was still some life in it.
D had no difficulty flipping the body over. A murmur ran through the assembled farmers. The chest and flank of the creature bore a number of entry wounds. Probably left by buckshot, judging from the spread.
“Which way did it come?” D asked without turning.
“Over yonder . . . from the direction of the school,” a tremulous voice answered.
“Relax. It won’t be moving anymore,” D said, pointing at the creature. “Carry it back to the mayor’s barn. Or if you don’t feel like touching it, summon the sheriff.”
“You . . . you do it. Ain’t that your job?” someone on the other side of the group protested. “If we touch that there abomination, our hands will rot and drop off. Hell, I say one monster should clean up after another.” The boldly blurted words became a shriek and the farmer dropped on the spot. Nothing had happened, aside from D standing up again. But as the wind and rain unexpectedly grew wilder, the men saw something blazing with a brilliant red light.
D’s eyes.
“I said carry it.” His tone hadn’t changed at all—if anything, it was calmer—but the men seemed to sense something in it and they jostled to be the first to the corpse of the creature. Without sparing them another glance, D returned to the barn with the same speed he’d come.
Lina and the mayor stood in the doorway.
“What the blazes is going on?” the old man asked. His wrinkle-rimmed eyes had a glint approaching madness.
Replying simply, “I don’t know,” D swiftly moved inside and made the necessary preparations. He donned his coat and traveler’s hat. Around him and only him the flow of time seemed different. From where the mayor and Lina stood, the clothing seemed to move to D’s body as if magnetically attracted. Less than ten seconds after returning, D passed the pair again on his way back out.
A considerable while after the thunder of shod hooves faded into the far reaches of the rain, the farmers came into the barn carrying the remains of the thing.
-
Going on for a mi
le and a quarter, D halted his horse. Mortal eyes would have seen nothing but rain, but D could discern the black shape of the schoolhouse wavering some five hundred yards ahead.
“Lost the scent. Your turn,” he said to his left hand. His palm puffed and swelled into a masculine face that needed no introduction—the ghastly countenanced carbuncle.
In a tone of undisguised displeasure it said, “Sheesh, and right in the middle of a good dream. Oh, raining, is it?” No sooner had he said this than he opened his tiny mouth to greedily gulp down a share of the torrential downpour.
“What about the scent?” D pressed him. There was a frigid anger in his voice.
“Keep your drawers on. Just because I’ve been asleep don’t mean I haven’t worked up an appetite. East of here. Four hundred yards, give or take a smidge.”
It seemed both of them—D and his companion in his palm—were able to catch the bloody scent of the beast that’d disappeared in the heavy rain. In less than a minute, D was making his way through the entrance to a lone farmhouse—the same home where a mere hour earlier Mr. Meyer had encountered tragedy.
The thick stench of blood assailed his nose.
On the room’s earthen floor lay the bodies of the farmer’s wife and child. Confirming that both had expired, D knelt by the entrance to the room.
Lifeblood was spilled across the packed earth, and the stains crept outside like a serpent. Probably blood from the monstrosity. Just as he had in the forest, D sealed some bloodstained soil in a glass vial from a pouch on his combat utility belt, then retrieved another object with his right hand.
The buckshot cylinder. It was the one Mr. Meyer had used, but D didn’t know that. Holding the muzzle to his left hand, he asked, “How about it?”
“Fired an hour ago, more or less.”
“From the look of those corpses, this wasn’t the work of a Noble. There were two of them. One being was the thing in the field, I take it. So whose blood is this—the weapon’s owner or whatever the owner shot?”
“Can’t say. But there’s no one here anymore.”
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 9
