Seeing how even the eyes of Marco, the shyest boy in class, gleamed with anticipation, Lina wanted to laugh. On the diversion-starved Frontier, children were more inclined to be excited rather than frightened when fearsome beasts ran amuck, so long as they didn’t directly harm the village. Aside from the giant behemoth or roc or other colossal monsters of legend, arrangements had been made to defend against most everyday creatures.
Plenty of adults were bustling down the street, but they said nothing when they saw Lina with her schoolmates.
The square was just about in the center of the village. Even if every one of the village’s nearly one thousand inhabitants were to assemble there, from 120-year-old Gramps Shakra down to the baby born some four months earlier, the square still boasted more than enough space to accommodate them all. Whether it was a festival or an exhibition of merchandise by traveling vendors, this was just the place for large-scale events of any kind.
When the students arrived with mud flying from their feet, some sort of bizarre show was just about to begin up on the wooden stage that’d been dragged into the square.
There, beside Vigilance Committee leader Fern and his haughtily puffed chest, was a type-three electrified cage—an iron enclosure that could contain supernatural beasts or savage, human-sized birds with high-voltage current. This in and of itself was not in the least bit unusual, but on seeing the prey it contained, the eyes of one and all went wide.
It was a human. However, what plunged every last one of them into the deepest depths of horror wasn’t the threatening physique or countenance of this apparent outlaw, but the pair of fangs jutting from his greasy lips.
A vampire that walked by day.
Is this their leader? This thought screamed in the minds of all of them. The rain had abated near dawn, and the gray clouds that had masked the sky had finally broken. Waves of tranquil light tinted everything a pearly hue, but this square alone was congested with dark, night-evoking fear. Jostling through the elders who were settled before the stage, the mayor climbed a set of folding stairs to stand by Fern’s side. He made a great show of ignoring the man in the cage gazing out at him with malicious eyes.
“Good people of Tepes . . . ” he started to say in a voice much louder than necessary, then paused as he took up the wireless mike he’d just noticed on the floor. Not a snicker escaped from his listeners. Whether it was a Noble or one of their victims, they were looking at a nightmare creature that couldn’t possibly exist—a vampire that could act without restraint in the sunlight. The gravity of the situation deeply shook them all.
“Good people of Tepes . . . ” the voice of the mayor finally echoed to their stupefied ears through the ultracompact speakers set about the square. “As you know, in our recent trouble with the Nobility four from our village have died, and I’ve burdened our meager finances by hiring not one but two Vampire Hunters. But in the end, that was for naught—happily, it seems they are no longer needed. To be more precise, early this morning Fern here caught this thing on the northern road. The leader of our very own Vigilance Committee has good reason to brag—taking a vampire alive is something few out on the Frontier have done.”
Seemingly frozen by the sight of this vampire scanning his surroundings with blood-soaked eyes, the villagers were finally returned to their senses by the mayor’s somewhat coercive compliments. The audience mustered a smattering of applause. Of course, none of them could see the sardonic humor in the situation.
Fern took the mike in turn and told how, when the search perimeter had extended beyond the village, he’d run into a man in the woods who attacked him before he could say a word. With the help of his guard beasts he’d managed to take the attacker alive.
Everyone knew far too well the power of guard beasts, but still those creatures wouldn’t do much good against a Noble, or even against one of their victims. Yet those normally inclined to doubt had proof positive right before their eyes; as the leader of the vigilance committee finished his war story, a tumultuous applause broke out.
“That’s great, Lina. Now you’re in the clear.”
Turning toward the encouraging voice, Lina was taken aback. The class rep Callis was smiling at her. A born leader and first-rate organizer, he was clear-headed and quite handsome. But Lina despised the coolness that lurked like a shadow behind his bright, smiling face, and she’d rarely spoken with him. For his part, he was used to the other girls in the village making a big fuss over him, which made approaching Lina a waste of time.
“What do you mean? Were you worried for me?”
“Of course. After all, we’re classmates, aren’t we?”
At his honeyed words, Lina wretched in the cockles of her heart. How stupid can this jerk be? Here he comes, sidling up a little bit closer.
“Hey, the mayor’s getting ready to slather another address on us,” Lina said, as she pinched the palm that’d stealthily been placed on her hand.
“It’s almost certain the fiend in this very cage is the cause of all our recent troubles. That being the case, I propose we slaughter it now and pray that this offering will give us peace. What do you say to that?”
By this point, convinced that the true source of their terror had been captured, the villagers put their hands together as one, and the square was buried in vocal approval. In Frontier villages, it was not uncommon for animals to be sacrificed when praying for a bountiful harvest or safety in the coming year.
“That’s horrible!” Without noticing the meaning of the words that spilled from her own lips, Lina felt her heart stop when Callis’ shocked expression turned toward her. It was the first time she was ever aware of feeling that way.
Do I pity a vampire?!
Suddenly, purple sparks flew from the iron bars of the cage, and the man within shrank back with a scream.
“Okay, Fern, finish him off.”
With a bow to the triumphantly nodding mayor, Fern stepped forward. The long wooden stakes he held in either hand were more like spears. The other members of the Vigilance Committee moved in and surrounded the stage.
The vampire in the cage seemed frightened and backed away, only to receive a massive electric shock. Discerning unrest and fear in that atrocious face, the people loosed mocking laughter and catcalls.
“You like that? Go on, try and run away again!”
“Ha ha, I think it’s gonna start bawling. Some Noble you are!”
“Fern, don’t kill ‘em with one shot. Do it slow, real slow!”
As if to acknowledge the cheering, the Vigilance Committee leader waved to the crowd. Intoxicated with pleasure by this murderous show, the villagers couldn’t see that his lips were redder than normal and that something eerie lingered in his smile. Nobody questioned his assertion that this vampire was indeed a Noble, and that the vampire was the cause for the village’s woes.
The spear lunged forward.
The vampire twisted out of the way. Sparks leapt from his right hand, and his exposed back was pierced by a quick thrust of the tip into his right shoulder.
Cheers rocked the square.
With a faint smile rising on his lips, Fern poised his spear again.
Lina pushed forward from the very back of the crowd. Sending mud flying everywhere, she shouted, “Stop!” Shoving people out of the way as she ran, she finally got to the stage.
“What the hell you think you’re doing, Lina? Keep out of this!”
The girl didn’t flinch at the mayor’s words. Beautiful face and softly curved body trembling with rage, she opposed everything that was happening here.
“You’re the one who should keep out of this, mister Mayor. I can’t believe you’d do something so cruel. You’re dealing with a human being.”
“It’s not ‘mister Mayor,’” the old man bellowed. His gray hair fluttered more from anger than from the wind. “I’m your father. Why can’t you call me that? Keep out of this, you little idiot! I’ll whip the tar out of you later!”
“I said no, and I mean no,”
Lina replied, and mentally she tossed her head in defiance. I couldn’t even stand by and watch an animal slaughtered now. Why have these feelings come over me? As if to push those thoughts back into their hiding place, she said, “Don’t you think this is awful? If you were human, you’d be ashamed of yourself for torturing an unarmed person to death, and one locked in a cage no less!”
Restraining the mayor, who was about to explode with rage, Fern leaned down off the stage. Thrusting the bloodied point of the spear right under Lina’s nose, he said, “Oh, I see. Then what you’re saying is, it’d be better if we gave it a weapon before we do it, right? Fine by me. Why don’t we let you do the honors, little chatterbox? You’ve had some training with swords and spears, haven’t you?”
On the Frontier, where life and death existed side by side, it was customary for women to learn how to use weapons. Although it wasn’t necessary to master gunpowder firearms, crossbows, and laser guns like it was for men, all of them could wield a short spear, a lighter version of a longsword, or a whip.
When the head of the spear was thrust before her, Lina grabbed it without hesitation. The wrath she felt toward the mayor and Fern and the villagers—for the entire human race for that matter—wouldn’t allow this girl of seventeen to be cowed.
The mayor went pale, and a clamor ran through the inhabitants of the village.
At that moment . . .
A beautiful, rusted voice raced across the ground, leaving the wind twisting in its wake. “That’s my job.”
-
Every face—even that of the vampire in the cage, who seemed to forget the pain of his wounds—turned to the young man in black astride his horse. Each face took on an expression of wonder. With the sunlight spilling through gaps in the clouds for his backdrop, this youth of a beauty rarely seen in the world glared down at them from his mount.
The instant they set eyes on his beauty, the men burned with envy, and the women became slaves of desire. However, in the next instant, those higher emotions were effortlessly blown away, and an ineffable terror took hold of the dark recesses of their psyches. It was a terror instilled by the unearthly aura of the Nobility.
The crowd parted, and D arrived at the stage without meeting so much as a second’s delay.
Easily taking the spear from Fern and Lina, who’d both retained a steady grip on it, he asked, “So, what do we do?”
“Oh,” Fern responded, his bonds of paralysis finally melted by D’s voice. “I don’t know where the hell you’ve been up till now, but it sure is nice to see that at least you didn’t run off with your tail between your legs. This is just perfect. No matter how you slice it, you were gonna be out of a job anyway. If you’re a Hunter, then act like one and give us a show before you’re on your way. Right, Mayor?”
The mayor hemmed and hawed. D’s steadfast gaze bored through him. The pressure Fern put on him couldn’t begin to compare to the unearthly aura radiating from that youth.
“It, err . . . Well, it was me that called him here . . . And his work’s not quite finished yet . . . ”
“That’s right.”
The next instant, D leapt easily from the saddle and onto the stage. He exhibited remarkable recuperative powers for someone who’d met with an intense explosion mere hours earlier, but his stamina was probably due, at least in part, to the thing that lived in his left hand.
Seemingly heedless of Lina’s infatuated gaze, he went over by Fern and clicked off the power for the electrified cage, having already removed the electronic lock.
“Hold it,” came the cry from what sounded like the sheriff, but, seeing the door to the cage swing open smoothly, the hitherto paralyzed crowd gave a scream and retreated.
The loud thud reverberating behind D was the sound of the fleeing mayor tumbling down the stairs.
D tossed the rough wooden spear to the vampire sluggishly slipping out of the cage.
“It’s strange meeting like this, but this is our destiny, hunter and hunted. Come on.” As he said this, he didn’t reach for the longsword over his shoulder.
The vampire started to move slowly to the right. Unable to use his right hand, he held the spear with a single finger of his left, his whole body boiling with flames of murderous rage.
Without a single telltale movement, the spear became a streaking blur in flight. Seeing it pierce D’s chest, which was exactly where it had been aimed, Lina had the breath knocked out of her. The vampire leapt at Fern, grabbing the rivet gun at his waist. The muzzle, as thick as a man’s thumb, pointed skyward with a speed that escaped the naked eye.
D was in midair. What Lina had witnessed was an afterimage left when he flew up with superspeed.
Along with a roar, high-energy gunpowder sent a stream of iron tacks racing at D’s heart.
With one of the most glorious sounds in the world, the iron tacks were deflected.
Before he even realized they’d been parried by the drawn longsword, the vampire’s gun-wielding hand was chopped off at the wrist by the naked steel slashing down from above. A backward thrust of the blade penetrated the deepest reaches of his heart.
Not sparing so much as a glance at the massive form as it fell in a bloody mist, D started to walk toward where Fern had frozen in his tracks.
Noticing that it was his left hand that held the bloody blade now pointed at Fern’s throat, Lina knit her brow. The girl didn’t understand that because of his opponent’s injured right shoulder, D had fought with only his left hand.
“You got what you wanted. Next time, you’ll be the one doing what I say.”
His voice was low, but would brook no resistance. Fern’s pale face bobbed negligibly up and down. D thrust his left hand right in front of it.
Seeing the red cross limned in the middle of that powerful palm, Fern’s eyes shot wide open. For a few seconds, a wind pregnant with bloodlust cut across the square.
D’s hand came down, and Fern let out a sign of relief. There was nothing, it seemed, out of the ordinary.
The crowd stirred again.
“So, what are you going to do?” D called down from the stage to the mayor, cleaning the blood from his longsword with one shake and gracefully returning it to its sheath. He must have meant what were they going to do about him.
Pale faced and still holding down the lump on his forehead, the mayor said, “I know what I said a moment ago . . . But, well, I believe we’ve pretty much accomplished what we set out to do. Needless to say, you’ll be paid the amount we agreed on. Good work.”
“Fine,” said D, nodding impassively. “But I can’t leave the village just yet.”
“What?!”
“There’s something I still have to look into. Or is there some reason you’d want me gone?”
This time it was the sheriff’s turn to shudder as that gorgeous countenance turned his way. “At the moment . . . no,” he said with great difficulty. “But if your being here causes us any inconvenience whatsoever, we’ll have to run you out of town.”
“Agreed. I’ll tell you one thing—if this man was responsible for your difficulties, then the female victim we have should be regaining consciousness right about now. We should check on that.”
When the mayor and his group arrived at the barn, however, the woman they’d left there had a rough wooden stake hammered deep into her breast, and the dirt floor practically seemed to drink the lifeblood dribbling from the sleeves of her formerly white clothing, now soaked with red.
“Who could’ve done such a thing?” the mayor moaned, looking to the heavens.
“Don’t know who it was, but someone in the village must’ve gone off half-cocked. I don’t care if having her around gave people the creeps, there was no need to put her down like this.” Saying this, Fern turned his eyes up at D. “How do we know it wasn’t you? If that other guy wasn’t behind all this, you still stand to make some more money . . . ”
Fern’s tough talk vanished in the back of his throat. Shifting his gaze from Fern back to the depths of
the barn, D moved away from the group and started to put a saddle and saddlebags over his shoulder.
“Hey, wait. Where do you think you’re going?” the mayor asked, running over to him in a fluster.
“You’re a suspect in this murder. We can’t just let you leave town whenever you please. After all, you were here with the woman until this morning.” There was a tone of fretfulness in the sheriff’s voice.
Silently, D pointed in a certain direction.
The mayor and sheriff followed his finger with their eyes, then turned back to him. “So that’s where you’re headed?” said the lawman. “The abandoned waterwheel mill’s out there on the edge of the village?”
“If you want me, that’s where I’ll be. I’ll be back later for my pay.”
The men just watched in a daze as D galloped off.
When Lina’s classes had finished and she was getting into her wagon, Callis was waiting near the gate to the schoolyard. This was a rare occurrence, perhaps even a first.
When she rode past oblivious to him, he ran after her in a state.
“Please, wait up, Lina. I thought maybe we could go home together.”
“What’s gotten into you? You suddenly feel all friendly toward me? Tina and Miria and all the rest of your little friends will be none too happy with you.”
“Spare me. They just have this one-sided thing for me!”
Presumptuous as it was, he got his foot up on the step of the wagon, and, after quickly taking a seat, this optimistic Romeo even went so far as to try to take the reins. Lina slapped his hand and made a disapproving face. “Don’t try anything funny. Why don’t you just climb back down.”
“Oh, you’re a cold one. I was waiting because I wanted to talk to you. Say, wanna go into the woods?”
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 12
