Behind her closed lids, an ash gray figure floated, and it spoke in a weird voice. Remember what happened ten years ago.
Lina shook her head ever so slightly.
Another voice. I must dispose of them all.
Lina had heard the voice of the presence, too.
-
PEOPLE OF THE TWILIGHT
CHAPTER 6
-
Her surroundings were awash with crimson.
What stained them was a mixture of hunger and thirst. It made noises and beckoned to her will.
Her will tried to resist. It had accumulated much thus far—love, hope, kindness, dreams, grief, and, finally, rage. This will developed as she had lived her life, and some called it her “personality.” The answer it always gave to the invitation was no.
But the time was drawing near.
The crimson surroundings busily besieged her will, diligently trying to pacify the tough walls of reason with the caress of instinct.
Gradually, the walls were crumbling.
The falling fragments were instantly assimilated by the hunger and thirst. Her will felt something sweet, as its senses were stripped away. The feeling was something akin to the joy of discovering the world where she really belonged.
And yet the core of her will resisted.
Swelling with spitefulness, the crimson lurched forward, ready to swallow the will whole.
The gruesome battle raged on.
I’m melting. Being absorbed. Changing. Becoming a . . .
-
When Lina opened her eyes, D was just about to leave the shack. The light slipping through the window and cracks in the walls was a hazy blue. It was near dawn.
“You heading off already?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. D stopped in his tracks and turned.
“It’s still early. Go back to sleep. And when you get up again, go home.”
“No way! I wish you’d get that through your head.” As she spoke, Lina crawled from the sleeping bag.
“Aren’t you cold?”
At this remark from D, Lina realized she was wearing nothing but a blouse.
Now that he mentioned it, though the wind was quite cold, she didn’t feel the chill.
“It’s kind of warm today, isn’t it? I always have been warm-blooded.”
Whether her answer satisfied him or not, D went outside without seeming to take much notice. Stretching, Lina followed.
“The ruins again? There’s nothing there, I’m sure.”
D was silent as he put the saddle on.
“Wait up, I’m going, too.”
“You can’t. Go home. And then go to school. Shouldn’t the exam board be here by now?”
Doing some quick figuring, Lina extended two fingers and waved them at him. “Not yet. I’ve still got two days.” She remembered that soon a great load would be off her chest. In two short days, she could bid farewell to this village.
But, Lina thought, all my tomorrows will be here in two days. I wonder if tomorrow coming is a good thing or not? “Please, D,” she said. “ I won’t get in your way. If I do, you can send me right home. Take me with you. I’m afraid to be left alone.”
“Do what you like,” D said with a nod, though she’d been certain he’d refuse. “But if you come, it’s because you want to. I won’t even spare you a thought.”
“Fine by me. Leave me behind whenever you like.”
Lina gleefully strode toward the wagon.
“You forgot something.” D gave a toss of his chin toward the entrance to the shack.
“Huh?”
“Seems someone came and left this while I was sleeping. It’s not for me. Must be a sophisticated guy.”
The dubious face of the girl shone like the morning sun when she caught sight of something, a small white shape, left by the entrance.
A single bloom.
Gently taking it in hand, she slipped it into the breast pocket of her blouse. It seemed the mysterious delivery boy was always watching over Lina.
“Looks like you’re not all alone after all.” Even D’s voice, as emotionless as ever, sounded like it was showering her with blessings. “If anything were to happen, someone would grieve for you.”
Perhaps D knew something already.
Lina’s thoughts were a thousand muddled pieces. “When school’s over, is it okay if I come back here?” she asked.
“Do as you like. Of course, there’s no guarantee I’ll make it back in one piece.”
Lina fell silent. Behind his soft words lay a world of carnage a young girl couldn’t possibly begin to imagine.
Lina shook her head. She shook it over and over, desperately. “Not to worry. I’m sure you’ll be back,” she said, trying to convince herself. “I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
D reined his horse around silently. He kicked the heels of his boots into its flanks, and his mount galloped away without a moment’s hesitation.
After the thunder of hooves had faded into the depths of the forest, Lina climbed up into her wagon and took a peek at the sundial in the storage compartment.
It was much too early to head off to school. However, she didn’t think she could handle her anxiety if left alone with it for long.
Why didn’t I tell D about what happened yesterday? she thought. About that mysterious hole, and the shadowy figure and bizarre creatures I ran into down there? Or about those words?
The shadow of the abominable events of a decade earlier grew all the heavier in the silence, and now it was poised to clamber onto her shoulders at any opportunity.
Lina suddenly remembered Cuore. Maybe the shadows of the past were giving instructions to him, too.
Guess I’ll go see him, she thought. She’d heard where he was from the mayor.
Lina gave the horses a lash.
-
On a narrow road, D suddenly stopped his horse and scanned his surroundings.
It was a perfectly normal track through the forest. Here and there, the last white traces of snow punctuated what grass remained, and the brown strip of road ran on forever. Nor was there anything out of the ordinary about the morning breeze blowing against him. Nevertheless, D’s senses, the supernatural perception possessed by dhampirs alone, told him he wasn’t going where he wanted to go.
How was this any different from the road he’d taken the day before?
Pausing a bit, D once again clomped down the road. After riding for a minute or so, he stopped. The scene that greeted his eyes differed not one iota from the last one. The brown strip, the grass, the trees.
“Stop running around in circles,” his left hand suggested.
“So, we’ve been sealed off in another dimension then, as I thought,” D muttered. “We could keep going down the road like this until the end of time and not get anywhere.”
Take two points in space and fuse them together at both ends, and whatever lays between is trapped forever, only able to keep moving within the confines of the closed dimension. The real question was, when had his enemy learned this little trick?
“So, what do we do now?” the voice asked with delight.
“We’ve got no choice but to get out.”
“Oh. And how would we do that? If we were on the outside it’d be a different story, but in the whole history of the Nobility there’s never been a case of anyone busting a containment dimension from the inside.”
“There was a magnetic containment field in the lab up in the ruins,” D said, getting off his horse. “As you could tell by watching the way the hill works, it was made to deal with normal human beings. It’s not half enough to contain me.”
The voice was silent, but it was a silence pregnant with agitation and fear. “You’re the boss,” it finally replied, “but I don’t know where on earth you get these crazy ideas. I don’t want to be anywhere near you when you break through.”
“As you like. But until then, I need you to do your job.”
Tethering his horse to a nearby tree, D entered the woods. Gather
ing dead branches as he walked, he snapped off the twigs before piling them on his shoulder. When he returned to the road some ten minutes later, both shoulders were loaded with as much as would possibly fit.
Piling the heap of wood on the ground like kindling for a fire, D began digging up the soil. He didn’t use his sword, a stake, or anything else. With all five fingers lying flat, he artlessly thrust his left hand into the ground, scooping out clods of dirt like his hand was a shovel, and piling the dirt in a mound beside the kindling.
But this was no plain soil. The earth was black and hard, packed solid by countless passing loads. What indescribable strength that hand must’ve possessed, to slide wrist-deep into the earth with such consummate ease. In no time, he’d dug a hole big enough for one person to lie in comfortably, and had accumulated a corresponding volume of dirt.
“We’re all set,” he said, smacking the soil from his hands.
“Not quite,” the left hand protested. “Earth, water, fire, wind—we’re still short water. Bringing you back to life is one thing, but we can’t hope to succeed in breaking out of a sealed dimension if we’re short even one of them.”
“No cause for alarm.”
Standing before the mound of dirt, D rolled back his coat and shirt sleeves, exposing his left forearm to the wind. He brought his right index finger to bear just above the wrist, at a point where the artery was. Both finger and nail were gracefully in keeping with their owner. Just what sort of trick he’d employed was unclear, but merely running the finger across the white flesh left a thick vermilion line, and bright blood gushed from the wound, pouring down on the lumpy black earth like a warm waterfall.
With evening so far off, this was a weird piece of work to see on a sunny little trail through the woods.
After making sure his lifeblood had sufficiently soaked the clods of earth, D wiped the same finger across the gash. The bleeding stopped, and there wasn’t even a trace of the wound.
Not surprisingly, his complexion was a bit paler, but it was disturbing to see how deftly he put the fingertip dripping with his own blood in his mouth, taking that little bit of sustenance.
Did he plan on using these arcane materials against a physics-based phenomenon like this sealed dimension?
“Taking from life to give life, eh?” the left hand fairly moaned. “A miserable bit of business to be sure. But really, it’s scary how coolly you can do it. Guess it should come as no surprise, since you’re . . . ”
“Enough.”
With that one word from D—his look pale, cold, and unearthly, changed by the single drop of blood he had tasted—the voice was silenced.
Taking two branches from the pile of kindling and holding one in each hand, D put the end of one against the side of the other and rubbed them together vigorously. He didn’t appear to put much strength into it, but both branches burst into flame, and, when they were tossed back onto the mound of dead wood, heavy black smoke and fierce flames instantly sprung skyward.
Earth, water, fire, wind—all four elements had been assembled.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said.
His left hand reached for the flames. Then into the flames.
The wind howled, and, perhaps guessing something, even the horse whinnied.
There. The blazing pillar of flame became a thin line that was sucked, like smoke, into D’s palm!
“That makes fire and wind, right? Earth and water are next,” he muttered in a beautiful voice, as his pale skin regained a luster that could rightly be termed bewitching.
-
Lina stopped the wagon a short distance from Fern’s house.
She didn’t think relying on common courtesy would see her through this visit safely. She’d probably be sent back to the mayor before she’d even had a chance to see Cuore.
So she decide to do it by less legitimate means.
Walking until she could see the walls of Fern’s compound, she ducked the woods. Following the wall, thirty feet down she found what she wanted. There was an opening at the bottom of the wall just about big enough for Lina to fit through. It was a little-used bolt hole she remembered hearing Fern’s daughter mention. The precocious Bess had used this to escape the watchful eye of her nagging father and meet with boys.
A little more, just a little more now, Lina mentally chanted as she squeezed through, eventually coming out behind a plastic structure that appeared to be some sort of breeding coop. Not far ahead she could see the main house, and behind that the roof of the barn. The property was eerily quiet, perhaps because it was still early morning, but she knew from growls and howls spilling from various small structures spread about the place that the guard beasts were already awake.
I’m in trouble if any of these critters have a sharp nose and a loud bark, Lina thought. But I suppose I’ll be fine so long as none of them sink their teeth into me. Checking that there was no one around, Lina made a quick dash for the barn.
Maddening as it was, there was truth in what the mayor had said—there was no way a man like Fern would give Cuore a room in the main house.
The barn was quite a bit larger than the one at the mayor’s residence. The door wasn’t barred. That was proof someone was inside. When she pushed open the door, the reason was immediately clear.
The heavy stench of the beasts assailed her nostrils.
The barn doubled as a breeding place for guard beasts. Given that Fern had lost his wife early, and that he only had Bess to help him take care of the creatures, there was an extraordinary number of them. Lina cocked her head.
The shack was sectioned off by panels—partitions fashioned from metallic alloys, glass, plastic, and various other materials that had to withstand the acid, flames, and whatever else the guard beasts could spew. The sight of a giant spider like the one she’d seen a day earlier, a monstrous snail-like creature some seven feet long, a mammoth quadruped going berserk behind a semi-translucent barrier, and countless other strange beasts made Lina nauseous. With a sudden whoosh, a gout of flame shot into the air down at the far end of the barn.
“I’ve had quite enough of this. What kind of sicko would keep these creepy things?” she cursed in a low voice, though she continued bravely on. Once past the monsters’ pens, she entered an area hemmed in by farm implements and piles of feed containers. The stink of the savage beasts was thinner, but the air had become strangely chilly.
“Cuore?” she called out in a low voice. “Cuore, it’s me, Lina. Are you in here?”
“Too bad.”
Why did that cheery voice make her whip around with a scream?
“Bess! For goodness sake—don’t scare me like that!”
As Lina took a breath of relief, her classmate approached her in a pure white robe with the collar turned up.
“If you’re looking for Cuore, he’s not here. He’s staying somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else? But your father took him in.”
Bess laughed. She drew closer. For no particular reason, Lina backed away. Before she knew it, she was in the corner of the room. She felt boxed in. Her foot brushed something hard.
Turning to look, Lina’s face grew stiff. It was a coffin. Apparently, it had been exhumed from a graveyard, as dried mud still clung to it. She hadn’t seen it before, hidden there behind the bales of hay.
“Bess, what’s this for? Did someone pass away?” Even as she was saying it, Lina half-realized the truth. “Aaaaaah!”
Something cold caught hold of her ankle just as she was about to step away. She screamed, and the lid of the coffin slipped ever so slightly, revealing a pale hand.
Desperately, she wrenched her way free, but Bess blocked her escape. “Relax and stay a while, Lina,” she said. The bloodshot eyes gazing fixedly at Lina nailed her to the spot.
Behind here, there was the sound of something hard hitting the ground. She spun around.
Fern was standing in front of the coffin. His insulated vest and somewhat filthy pants—these clothes she’d seen so ma
ny times before—served to fuel the fear bearing down on Lina’s reason.
“That’s a hell of place to be taking a nap.” Her voice quavered pitifully as she said it half in jest, and Fern’s mouth twisted into a grin.
“I was gonna go out and get you, but I’m glad you came to us. I’m sure everyone will be plenty happy.”
“Hold on there. Who exactly is this ��everyone’? I came here to see Cuore. Where is he?” Lina asked, estimating how long it would take to run to the door.
“He’s with everyone else. I’ll bring you to meet them all soon enough.” Fern laughed again.
Seeing the fangs peeking from either corner of his lips, Lina cried out to Bess in desperation.
While the girl in the white robe bared her fangs, she was also unbuttoning her clothes. “I’ve been so lonesome, Lina,” she cooed. “I couldn’t go out to see anyone, and I’ve been so hungry. After all, ever since I drank Papa’s blood, I haven’t had anything to feed on but the guard beasts. And on top of that, Papa . . . ”
Her pale-as-paraffin hand made a motion, and the white garment fell to the ground.
For the first time, Lina realized there were some things so terrible you couldn’t scream, no matter how badly you wanted to.
From the neck down, her classmate’s body wasn’t that of a living human being. Her flesh was black-and-blue and shriveled dry, and beneath the painfully prominent ribs only the lump that must have been her heart continued grotesquely hammering away, beating out the pulse of something without life.
“Papa’s been drinking my blood.” Bess smiled enigmatically. “Every day now, every single day, he kisses me on the neck and drinks his fill, you know. He says he’s wanted me for a long time. And after all that, he won’t even let me drink a little bit of his.”
“This is . . . this is just too . . . ”
New fears shattering the old. When Lina bolted for the door like a scared rabbit, one of the withered branches that was Bess’s arms caught her and held her close.
She felt cold breath like moonlight on the nape of her neck.
“You know, I wanted you. I always used to think about you at school. I wanted to kiss you at least once. And now I will.”
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 15
