D stood up again and went outside. Once more the wind and rain covered his dashing profile. “No need to involve myself with anything aside from vampires, but those things . . . ” D muttered as he was about to place his foot in the stirrup. Suddenly, his body tensed.
There was nothing anywhere near him. Nothing and no one.
Despite that, D didn’t move a muscle. Perhaps he couldn’t move; then again, maybe he wouldn’t be moved.
Somewhere behind him, neither near nor far, a certain presence had gushed into being.
D, it called. Not with a voice, but the presence itself. I thought you’d come.
“You were here, weren’t you?” D’s voice was almost mechanical. From the way he phrased it, he seemed to be acquainted with whoever the presence behind him belonged to. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
Most likely failed, the presence muttered gravely. Best you come once again to the computation center. I’m always there.
D’s right hand moved. A lethal swipe mowed through the air.
Most likely failed.
Rain spattered against the naked longsword as D whirled around.
I’m in the computation center.
As if blown to the four winds by the silently speeding needle of wood, the presence was swallowed by the darkness.
D stared at the empty point in space while the rain, rebounding off every inch of his body, sounded like derisive laughter.
-
The mayor’s home was being battered by stormy waves of the supernatural. Nobles that walked by day were more than enough to send shivers through the entire village; now a new type of monster had appeared and attacked a farm. The disappearance of another villager only added to the mayor’s woes.
After hearing D’s account, the sheriff and a party from the Vigilance Committee visited the scene. Based on the other corpses and the vast quantity of blood spilled on the dirt floor, the consensus was Mr. Meyer had most likely been slain. His identity had been established when a member of the Vigilance Committee verified that the buckshot cylinder D brought back belonged to the teacher.
The corpse of the monstrosity was carted to the village physician for dissection, but the news from this hadn’t been particularly bright either.
It wasn’t a creature but rather a human being, though it differed from them in terms of its skeletal structure, musculature, and intestinal regions; all told, nearly two hundred distinct disparities had been noted. No incision had been made in the head, but from the shape of the skull the doctor concluded that its brain was exceedingly small. Its intelligence would be reduced proportionally. As for why the head hadn’t been opened, the government stipulated that, when new forms of life were discovered, the brain was to be properly refrigerated and shipped to the Capital, skull and all.
At that point, D, who happened to be present, made a surprising request. He wanted them to loan him the corpse and viscera for the evening.
“What the blazes for?!” the mayor shouted, knitting his brow. Like the physician, he was highly skeptical.
“I’d like to examine them with my own instruments. No disrespect intended.”
Perhaps the infamous eldritch aura gently brushed the nape of their necks, for the physician paled and held his tongue while the mayor nodded reluctantly. After all, he’d summoned D to their village, and, though the results so far could hardly be called favorable, after witnessing the nightmarish might of the vampire the previous night he knew in the marrow of his bones that this gorgeous youth alone could slay it, whatever it turned out to be.
“Have it your way. But just for the day. Tomorrow it goes off to the Capital. But I’m more interested in what you plan on doing with the woman.”
The woman in question was Kaiser’s wife, who’d been attacked by a vampire twice and now lay in bed dangling between life and death. A young man from the Vigilance Committee stood watch over her night and day with stake in hand. Her husband still hadn’t returned.
“No problem there. Bring her to the barn along with the cadaver.”
And so it came to be that D was going to spend the night with a pair of corpses.
With all that had happened—monstrous new creatures appearing, then encountering that presence in the downpour and seeing his lethal blow slashing through empty air—D’s nerves must have been extraordinary for him not to display any tinge of either excitement or concern.
When he got the news from the sheriff that the exhaustive search of the town had turned up nothing, D was composed, perhaps, because he hadn’t expected anything from the start. And when they told him Mr. Meyer hadn’t returned home, D didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow.
Left alone in the barn, D stood by the bench that bore the monstrosity. By its side were a number of jars with its organs in formaldehyde, the glass glinting harshly with light from a mercury lamp on the ceiling. Both the body and the jars had been brought from the physician’s home. Outside, the rain made a considerable din.
“You there?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yup,” his palm responded. The face was already surfacing.
D held his left hand over the cadaver. The eviscerated abdominal cavity sagged pitifully. And, on the neatly sutured incision on the flank, the stitches of cauterizing thread on the flesh were unusually grotesque.
From the clawed tips of the thing’s swollen toes the left hand crept slowly to the twisted ankles, then to the badly bowled thighs. Naturally, D had his eyes trained in that direction, too, but, as he held his hand close to the cadaver, the way the countenanced carbuncle in his palm continued to survey the unmoving patient with the gravest of expressions was more comic than spooky.
Moving his left hand over the flanks, chest, and face, then finally lightly touching the hair flowing from the crown of its head, D said, “Well?”
“Hmm, just as you expected. But at the moment it remains dead.”
D nodded. What exactly did it mean by “at the moment it remains dead”?
“When will it awaken?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions. From ancient times the demons have always gathered at three Morning. On another note, while I was dozing I overheard talk about some teacher named Meyer gone missing. Think this one’s playmate got him?”
Apparently the countenanced carbuncle could still see and hear what went on in the outside world while deep in the palm of D’s hand.
“Probably,” D said. “But there’s still one thing about this case I can’t figure.”
“Hmph,” the other voice snorted derisively. “No doubt the key would be in them ruins. You could always go up there alone and check it all out. Bringing the girlie along would be safe enough, too, I suppose. That is, so long as you-know-who is up there.”
The chiding voice died abruptly. D had clenched his left hand in a tight fist. He did it with such strength his flawless young flesh shook, and, along with the hoarse groan of agony, a trickle of bright blood spilled from between his curled fingers.
“Him,” D muttered, sending his gaze to the wide open doors. “It all started with him. All the dreams, and all the tragedies.”
A fierce wind gusted in through the doorway, setting the ceiling lamp swaying. In that light D’s face became a devilish one.
-
“Stop it . . . ”
Fishy lips sucked up the girl’s entreaty as the mayor pressed his face against hers.
When the impassioned breath and tongue invaded her ear, Lina let out an involuntary moan. Beneath her pajama top a wrinkled hand kneaded her breast.
“Please . . . just stop . . . I don’t want this.”
“Why is that?” Enjoying Lina’s refusal, the mayor pinned her white arms against the sheets. “Because that Hunter’s here?” he asked, letting a faint smile rise to his lips. “Can’t say as I blame you. I’m a man, and I have to confess his looks make even my heart beat faster. Well, that’s fine and dandy. Once in a while, it’s nice to get a piece of tail from someone with a little fight in ‘em.”
His lips attached themselves to her breast. Lina twisted her body, but there was nothing she could do. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, dampening the white sheets.
After a bit, the old man took his lips away and said, “You’re mine. It was me that saved you from becoming the village plaything, who adopted you, who kept them from doing anything against you. Soon you’ll be leaving town. Afraid there’s not much we can do about that. But until you do—hell, even after you’re in the Capital, I won’t let any other man have you. And I won’t have you falling for anyone, either.”
His voice was charged with obsession. Lina averted her face.
“I’ll see to it you don’t forget about me. I’ll hammer my memory into your body. Like so.”
The old man’s face sank below her waist, and Lina bit her lip to keep from voicing the fruit of that torment. A bony hand crept along the exposed whiteness of her thigh.
She looked to her pillow in desperation. Under the pillow she spied a single white bloom. It pulled the passion from her frame in an unbelievable way. Thoughts of the face of someone she’d never seen came to Lina.
Noticing a slight change in the way the girl’s body was responding, the old man increased the pace of his tongue, and yet the expression Lina wore was mysteriously serene.
The face conjured in her heart of hearts bore a striking resemblance to the Vampire Hunter.
-
Winds joined the torrential downpour, and the level of the river continued to rise. Although the flow had been intense to begin with, it couldn’t keep pace with the cresting waves whipped up by the wind. At the angry tone of the muddy tributary, now surpassing even the piercing sound of the rain, the residents along the riverbanks exchanged anxious looks.
Two figures moved at the foot of the bridge. Both were men from the Vigilance Committee. In their black raincoats, they were reminiscent of the creatures of the night they so feared.
“Looks like trouble. Could be she’s gonna give way.”
Hearing the opinion of the bigger man, the smaller one stood on the incline shaking his head. “Nah, it rained just as hard last year. The bridge’s girders have been reinforced, and they even built up these embankments. Nothing to worry about. Of course, I don’t know what’ll happen if it keeps up like this for another day or two more. And how many times have I got to tell you not to grab hold of my legs like I was your own personal ladder?”
A silence fell between the pair. Actually, the bigger man was above the little man on the embankment.
It took a long time for the little man to summon the nerve to look down at his ankles.
The arm wrapped around them belonged to a man whose upper body jutted from the black water.
“You, you’re . . . ” The little man recalled the face of the Vampire Hunter who’d fallen off this very bridge, coffin and all, not so many days earlier. Pale face expressionless, the Hunter drew a stake from his belt and drove it through the little man’s heart. Death spasms wracked his short frame. Lifeless, he tumbled into the water and was quickly washed away.
Climbing the embankment coolly, the reanimated Hunter came to stand before the petrified giant.
Just before the pale figure’s upraised stake stabbed into the big man’s chest, he saw the dark shapes of men and women creeping one after another from the black surface of the water and up the slope. Something long and round stuck in the heart of each. They were all the victims of the Nobility who had been disposed of at the river.
So this is how I die, the big man thought. With a stake through the heart from this freak. The stake sank into his chest. He saw a bloody spray billow out with a poof.
An unexpected wind blew against the gigantic body that rolled halfway down the embankment, ruthlessly tearing off his coat. There was no bloodstain to be seen. What’s more, neither the chest of the big man nor the heart of the little man had been pierced by a stake. And there wasn’t a trace of the horde of corpses that had risen from the watery depths.
-
At two fifty-nine Morning, D rose from his bed of hay and turned the light controls on, keeping the solar lamp dimmed as much as possible. A faint darkness ruled the barn. Strange things, creatures and phenomena alike, had a strong aversion to light.
Returning to his resting place, he stared at the corpse on its hastily improvised bed and at the woman who was neither living nor dead.
The matter of the woman herself didn’t seem so urgent. If it wanted to, the vampire that had gorged itself the previous night could hold off for an interval of several days. What’s more, because the vampire knew what D was capable of, the vampire wasn’t likely to make a casual call on his victim. Despite the slim chances of attack, D had taken custody of her because he’d surmised what would happen if she were to be summoned.
Victims who fell under a vampire’s spell came under a kind of long-range hypnosis and could unleash brutal attacks even on the people who were trying to protect them.
The most fearsome thing about this hypnotic state was the way it could surpass the subconscious limits humans imposed on their own flesh. Trying to hold down a victim thrashing about with the full power inherent in the human body—roughly seven times their normal strength—was a difficult task for a team of five men of like physiques. A graceful maiden shattering the shinbone of a professional combatant wouldn’t even be considered news on the Frontier. Before it came to such a struggle, those attending to the victim would do their best to make merciless use of a stake. Those who should be protecting them became their murderers—was that a tragedy or a comedy?
But if that was the case, toward what end had D appropriated the creature’s corpse? And what was the meaning of his weird conversation with the countenanced carbuncle?
The change came at exactly three Morning.
D’s eyes shone mysteriously.
Without any extraneous action, the cadaver slowly raised its torso.
The dead body got up now and slipped off the table, its face alone remaining set in the blank mask of death. But, for something with all its internal organs extracted and a great subsidence in its abdomen, it possessed a tenacious, even mysterious, vitality.
“Just as I thought,” D muttered.
The living corpse went to the jars and began a hair-raising activity. Skillfully removing the spring-loaded cap from one and plunging its hand in, it extracted the dripping entrails, ripped open its sealed wound, and lovingly pushed inwards, shoving its intestines back into their rightful place.
This activity, the sight of which might have driven anyone but D to madness, continued for some time. Having reclaimed its heart, lungs, stomach, and other parts, and naturally heedless of the great lump of viscera that had collected in its abdomen, the cadaver ran its muddy pupils over the surroundings. It began to move toward the entrance with an awkward gait.
D got up, too. The sheath of the longsword on the back of his coat shone dimly. Not a single bit of hay stirred. With muted footsteps he followed after the reanimated monstrosity.
The small silhouette went out through the entrance.
D stopped, and seemed to consider following it. He had no fear of the lashing rain, of course, but all of his dhampir senses detected a mass of powerful mental energy thronging to the back of the barn. Whatever it was, he couldn’t yet see it.
From D’s back rose the sound of his blade unsheathing. After that, there was no movement at all.
The presences—a horde of soaking corpses—surrounded him, young ladies and lads with stake-pierced hearts, their burial vestments vividly dyed with their own blood. They were the corpses of all who had fallen under the pernicious fangs of the Nobility and been thrown into the rushing waters since this village was first incorporated.
However . . .
“A psychological attack? They’re using rather advanced abilities.” D had already noticed that the rows of corpses cast no shadow.
“Long time no see, D. Never thought I’d find you here.” The bloated corpse of a
drowning victim, the only one that had been spared a staking, stepped forward. It was the Vampire Hunter Geslin. Could the enemy be trying to use some memory of this man as a way in, to project their illusions into D’s mind?
“How about it, D? Can you cut us down?” Geslin’s right hand moved, and white lightning brushed D’s cheek. Raindrops spattered the running blood. “You can’t cut us with that sword of yours. But we can stick you with our stakes.”
Wedges of wood glistened in the bloodied hands of the dead.
The needles of plain wood flying from D’s right hand passed through the bodies of the dead and stuck in the barn wall behind them. Geslin chortled. “What do you make of that, D? Is this the best you can do? Just try it. Can’t you cut us down?”
“I can cut you.”
“What?!”
D’s eyes gave off a fierce red glare. Parrying all the nonexistent stakes roaring towards him with a graceful movement, D charged into the very center of the besieging horde of dead.
Geslin’s head was split it two, the expression of shock still plastered to his face. The head flew off a youth who had a stake held high and was ready to strike. Naked steel penetrated the bosom of a woman who was retreating in screams. A pair of fangs jutted from D’s mouth. Who could have stood to look directly at that ghastly visage? This was no less than the slaughter of the dead by a demon of a man.
Rain splashed off the silver blade.
Amidst the wind and rain and darkness stood the lonely figure of D.
There was no one there. Just as it always was.
Even the cut on his cheek had disappeared. The whole battle had taken place in his mind.
“That’s a relief. No matter how many times I see it, it’s always an intense show,” came the thoroughly disgusted voice from D’s left hand. The Hunter had already regained his paraffin beauty and was scanning the area. “Can’t fight your blood, I say. At any rate, that threw quite a monkey wrench into your scheme to see where that beastie was going to hook up with his cohorts. The question is, was it a coincidence or not?”
“If it was a coincidence, then that creature and the attacker yesterday are unrelated. If it was intentional, then all our mysteries are coming together around a single point,” D said, brushing the raindrops from his shoulders at the door to the barn. Raven hair clung to his nigh translucent skin, and a desolate unearthliness hung over him, but still his beauty was beyond description. Surely even the most dazzling of women would pale before this youth.
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 10
