Why, even the voice of the left hand seemed rapt as it said, “Heh, it’s hard to believe you’ve gone all this time and never once turned your fangs on all the women and men who pursue you. I bet the most gorgeous princess on earth would offer you her smooth white throat if you just said the word. I have to give you credit for the strength of your will, if nothing else. So, what do you plan on doing?”
“Concerned about me?” D asked softly.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I was just asking if you were going up to those castle ruins. I’ve got a vague inkling of what went on there. Might even be that creature came from—”
“I know.” D’s words cut the grating voice short.
Exactly. Ever since he’d laid eyes on the creature lying in the field, D knew it was just like the things that had attacked Lina and him in the dark depths of the castle.
“Guess we’ve got to go then. Since his highness is up there, too.” Down on D’s palm, the countenanced carbuncle bared its teeth in an eerie laugh.
-
In the middle of a dim room, several shadowy figures gathered.
The room was filled with such a sense of the unearthly, it made the snarls of a multitude of beasts coming from very close at hand seem stripped of energy.
“I failed,” one of the shadows moaned. But, despite the import of its words, it didn’t seem perturbed. The voice was all the weirder for its serenity. “If that Hunter can parry a psychological attack, he’s a man to be feared. A dhampir, no doubt. And no average half-breed, either. What do you think?”
The shadow it addressed was silent.
“Forget I asked then,” said the first shadow, fairly spitting the words.
Surprisingly, the voice was still young. Judging by the way he spoke, this was the leader of the group—the ashen figure in gray. And, if that were the case, might the remaining two be his victim Fern and the boy Cuore? Even that young man wouldn’t have been safe for long in a den of vampires.
“Whatever the case, we can’t allow him to remain in the village any longer. Or to find out who we are.” The shadow’s arm extended, and he pointed to the third shadow. “Tomorrow, collapse the entrance way. Let me say this now to be perfectly clear—I will not allow him to interfere again. Next time, it’ll be you that gets taken care of, regardless of what you are.”
The shadow he’d indicated shook as if frightened, but it said nothing.
Something small moved over by the wall. All eyes focused on the entrance, catching the diminutive creature that entered to the creaking of the heavy door. From its strangely protruding abdomen up to its clavicle there ran a raw black surgical incision.
“Is this the only one to come back?” the shadow leader asked. “It would’ve been better to catch them right away when they got loose, but that was beyond our control. With the scent of fresh blood and meat everywhere, it doesn’t matter that they don’t have to eat or drink—they’re going to want to run wild. Oh, well, soon enough this village, no, the whole Frontier will be in our hands. It all happens tomorrow.”
The shadow’s foreboding laughter was full of confidence. Pregnant with horror and mystery, darkness alone covered the downpour-drenched village.
-
GENES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
CHAPTER 5
-
D awoke when cold light filled the barn to the eaves. He’d slept perhaps all of three hours. To a dhampir like him, it didn’t matter whether he worked by night or day, but even his body demanded the occasional respite and sleep. Perhaps the shadow clinging to his exquisite countenance was due to the strain of having to work solely by day of late.
A fog had moved in, it seemed, and the whiteness slipped into the barn through the entrance and cracks around the windows, but it was not so thick as to hinder action. All the more so because in D’s eyes this was no different from midday in fine weather.
Making his preparations with characteristic superhuman speed, he exited the barn.
His stride was smooth. More like a shadow than a cat. If stealth was an innate characteristic of the Nobles, they could hope for no greater silence than D possessed.
Entering a stable a short distance away, D stopped cold. Seven or eight yards ahead of him, the stone walls of the main house reflected the morning sunlight. Dressed in a white nightgown, Lina opened one of the windows and leaned out into the street. Right below the sill there hung a small window box. Stretching out her hand, Lina snatched up something white that lay in it.
D saw it quite clearly. It was a single white blossom. Though he didn’t know what it was called, this tiny expression of life was a common enough sight along the roads of the Frontier. Who could’ve left it?
Pressing it to her breast, Lina looked down the road with an expression bordering on tears. The girl gazed for an eternity down the white road, hazy with fog.
Before long, the window shut quietly. D went into the stable, came out with his mount, and pointed it towards the ruins. Oh so quietly, as if trying not to make a sound, as if trying not to shatter a young girl’s dream.
As soon as D was off the mayor’s property, he started to gallop at full speed. The horse tore through the mist. The crusted remains of snow flew in all directions. Mist devils out to ravage crops were startled by this early morning rider and drifted down to see what he was all about, but they were crushed before they could even touch him, and were left swirling in his wake.
Racing through the village, in less than twenty minutes he had climbed the hill and arrived at the entrance to the ruins. Hitching his horse to the edge of a shattered stone wall, the Hunter entered the courtyard.
Fog permeated the ruins.
Passing from the corridor to the hall, D was going to make straight for the entrance to the laboratory, but he came to a stop almost in the center of the hall.
He looked back at a picture on the wall. It was the same painting that put a sparkle in a young girl’s eye as she stood before it, saying she wanted to study history.
The instant he turned back around and began walking deeper into the ruins, the ceiling and the wall around the door cracked. A red flash of light and savage gaseous energy came from the crack, headed for D. The time it took D to see this and make a conscious choice of how to avoid it would be the difference between life and death.
The impact swept D’s feet out from under him and slammed him into the wall to his rear. Thick chunks of stone went flying, and the roar echoed through the hall.
Now a mountain of rubble lay in front of the entrance. It would be impossible to get into the rooms beyond without bringing in motorized equipment.
D was on the floor, his upper body resting against the base of the wall. The flap of his longcoat was caked white from the dust that rose from the impact. There was no way he could move. He had taken a blast of energy that destroyed hundreds of tons of rock in the walls and ceiling, and he had been smashed headfirst into a stone wall. Of course, an ordinary person would’ve been killed instantly by internal injuries alone.
To say the least, it was an unhappy coincidence that D happened to be passing through the place when the project to block the entrance the figure in gray had mentioned the night before was underway.
-
A lone traveler advanced on horseback through a forest road a few miles from the village. Bristles covered his rocklike chin, and the atrocious gaze he wore complimented his face perfectly. His look, and the rivet gun at his waist, gave clear testimony to the nature of this man. He was one of the outlaws that roamed the Frontier.
When there was even a little money to be made, this man would stoop to blackmail or extortion, and he had no qualms about murder, either. The skin beneath his thick, electrically heated coat was carved by countless wounds from bullets and blades, and his right earlobe was missing, though horrible traces remained where it had been ripped off. While he was strangling a young lady in some village way up north, she’d torn it off in her death throes.
These last few days, he’d been hard p
ressed to find either good grub or a woman. Chances were he was imagining the pleasures that awaited in the next village, because a vulgar smile surfaced on his filthy lips.
“What the—?”
Before he pulled back on the reins, the man found himself doubting his own eyes. Fifteen feet or so ahead, a young lady stepped out from behind some trees and onto the road. That was enticing enough. But her curvaceous figure burned into the man’s retinas.
The girl was stark naked.
What’s this . . . a Frontier whore? Pro or not, I can’t figure why she’d be out running around like that . . . Maybe she’s wacko?
Although his mind had plodded along that far, the crass thug’s reason melted away in an instant, and his brain became occupied solely by deeds that might be done with the girl. Still, he waited a moment, scanning the surroundings with a caution he’d learned through his numerous bloody encounters.
No one around? If so, this honey’s a nut job all right. I can have her every which way, and kill her when I’m done. Way out here I won’t have to worry about anyone finding her till she’s nothing but bones.
His plan, however, didn’t prove quite so easy.
When the man dismounted with a disarming grin, the girl looked back over her shoulder and, giving him a seductive glance, dashed off into the forest. The curves of her backside drove him crazy—round and firm as a succulent fruit ready to explode, as only a young lady’s could be. Hitching his horse to a nearby tree, he took off after her. into the woods, into a world of darkness from which there would be no return.
He gave chase for perhaps all of five minutes, the breath rasping loudly from his nostrils.
Plunging through the same luxuriant foliage that swallowed the naked form, the man suddenly jolted to a halt.
The girl was lying in the meadow right in front of him. His gaze was riveted to her breasts, turning up to remarkable rosy knobs, and her damply glistening thighs. The girl moaned and twisted her lower half. There was precious little chance he’d realize her intent was to show more of her ass than was really necessary. Her pale skin was strangely bloodless, and yet her lips alone were weirdly crimson, but the thug did not notice.
He fell on that white body like a black hunk of stone. Sucking and twisting her lips, he forced his tongue into her mouth. And the girl responded.
This is fantastic!
Raising his eyes in delight, he glimpsed the face of the girl.
She was laughing with the face of a devil.
As he tried to jump off, one frail arm held his body down, and the fingers of the other sank into his right hand as he made a grab for his rivet gun.
When the lips that curled back to reveal fangs closed on him, the man finally screamed. And long though it lasted, the deep woods drank it all.
-
When they were informed that Mr. Meyer was absent from school, Lina felt the eyes of the whole class needling her.
The village had learned of the incident the night before.
A monster of hitherto unknown type had broken into a farmhouse near the school, killing and eating a mother, child, and someone who was just passing by. To top it all off, one of the Vigilance Committee members who’d gone missing after he went to check the water level was found dead this morning under the bridge, and the confirmation that the body had been completely free of wounds caused quite a uproar.
That much might have been excusable, but when the mayor learned of this and headed straight for the barn, there was no sign of either D or the corpse of the monster there, just the woman sleeping as soundly as ever, but with a mark like a “t” on her forehead. Lina still wasn’t sure if it had been drawn in blood or something else.
Of course the mayor was outraged, and he lambasted the Vigilance Committee for their negligence. On one hand he’d told them to ascertain D’s current whereabouts, but he’d also admonished them to keep this information secret. But it was a very small village. By the time Lina and the others headed off to school, a sketchy version of the events had made the rounds to almost every home in the area. The fact that Mr. Meyer was the one who had apparently been carried off by the monster was probably leaked by one of the Committee members who had visited the teacher’s house the night before.
Even though the secondary school instructor who came to inform them of their teacher’s absence pretended the absence was due to a cold, there was no chance of that shaking the dark conviction that flowed between the students.
Oh, not again. I hate this, thought Lina, sighing with grief.
School wasn’t always a warm, nurturing place, partly because of the incident that occurred a decade earlier. Abducted by the Nobility, the children had returned after some horrible things had been done to them; in a Frontier village, that alone was sufficient cause for exile. The humiliation of the examination Lina underwent over the next few weeks opened dark wounds on her soul that still lurked, somewhere, even now. The strain had killed both her parents in rapid succession, and, even after the mayor adopted her, she hadn’t been allowed to go near the other children for another two years. During that time, no matter where she went or what she did, the gleaming, probing gaze of the mayor or Vigilance Committee was locked on her every move.
They all know what’s going on between the mayor and me, I bet.
Lina wanted to blubber like a baby.
Most likely they didn’t know how he had forced himself on her on her seventeenth birthday, but knowledge of their immoral relationship had spread throughout the entire village.
Some rather iniquitous relationships were commonly permitted in Frontier communities. Villages that could be cut off from the outside world by rain or snow needed a guaranteed labor force—that was their greatest concern. If it weren’t purely in the pursuit of pleasure, then any relations—be it between a man and someone else’s wife, a mother and her own son, or a father and his daughter—could be termed valuable in so far as it might sow the seeds of new life.
In this era, mental defects and other problems traditionally caused by inbreeding no longer existed. For some reason, the Nobility had chosen to share the fruit of their genetic engineering expertise with the human race. Hereditary diseases were a thing of the past. Even the names of the diseases were no longer remembered by humanity.
No doubt it was the shadow from ten years earlier that made Lina’s spirit sink like lead.
Cuore had never recovered from his dementia, and that fact alone was enough to terrify the villagers. And then, at the opposite extreme, examinations had determined that both Lina’s and Mr. Meyer’s intelligence had risen to a startling degree. That was the reason the mayor had adopted Lina; it was also the reason why all her classmates abhorred her relationship with him.
A woman made clever at the hands of the Nobility.
And yet, Lina wasn’t openly teased or shunned, thanks to the brightness of her disposition, her splendid bearing, and the efforts of Mr. Meyer, who’d endured the cold shoulder from the villagers and did an excellent job of passing the circuit committee’s test to become a teacher. It was impossible to say how much strength Lina drew from seeing him—a weakling and a crybaby in their childhood—standing up to the bullies and protecting her now.
Even Cuore, who started aimlessly wandering about the village after his parents’ premature death, had saved Lina from harm. His decline in intelligence had done nothing to change his innately courteous and gentle character. Lina could still clearly remember how reliably his hulking form had shielded her from the stones other children had thrown.
And now she no longer had either of them to protect her. Although Cuore was in Fern’s care, Mr. Meyer’s disappearance was more than sufficient to earn Lina the evil, suspicious glances of the whole class.
“Well, Lina, we finally know the real reason you were chosen to go to the Capital,” her worst enemy, Viska, said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “I don’t know what went on up in that castle, but you didn’t have to keep all the rest of us living in terror for the pas
t ten years. As soon as you’re gone, things should be pretty peaceful around here again.”
“Yeah, but there’ll be hell in the Capital!” a member of Viska’s clique said sarcastically, laughing shrilly.
Oh, that does it. I might have to smack someone now, Lina thought, about to arm herself with one of her leather slippers. But she restrained herself because she knew the remarks reflected what everyone in the class felt. The others just didn’t say anything because they still counted her as one of their own.
That being said, it was undeniable that the whole class had become exceedingly distant since it had been decided Lina would go to the Capital. When one considers the import of getting to leave the Frontier, there were those who would never understand why the person representing the village was someone with a connection to the Nobility.
Well, let ‘em say what they will.
Just as Viska was about to say something else to Lina, who was now in a fresh and easier state of mind, the substitute teacher from the secondary school came in and the morning’s tribulations were at an end.
Advancing vapidly through math and physics, the school day was just about to enter third period when an unexpected siren resounded.
“Hey, what’s that all about?”
“Three successive blasts—it means to assemble in the square!”
“Maybe they captured a Noble alive?”
“Don’t be stupid!”
“Quiet,” the teacher ordered. “I have to go out. Your class representative will have to accompany me. The rest of you will have a free study period.” But he knew the students had ignored him.
When he’d gone, and taken Callis, the class rep, with him, everyone else busily prepared to leave—this was just what they’d been waiting for. There were some who rattled around in the lockers full of weapons kept in case monsters attacked, and others who raced to get their lunch boxes to bring home; in no time, the sound of the activity grew to quite an uproar, and a second later the students had all vanished, leaving the windows and doors still shaking.
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 11
