Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Feeling the gentleness in D’s voice, Lina bugged her eyes a little. She thought she should say something, but, by the time her lips moved, the beautiful silhouette was already dwindling against the sun that filtered through a sieve of overlapping trees.

  For a long time, Lina didn’t move from the spot. When she did move, however, it wasn’t to go straight ahead, but to the side.

  The wagon turned a hundred and eighty degrees, thanks to some surprisingly masterful handling by the young lady, and sped back the way it had just come, wheels creaking in the tire ruts all the while.

  Lina lashed with the whip. The wind ruthlessly buffeted her brooding countenance.

  In about twenty minutes she was back at Fern’s house.

  Riding as far as the courtyard, she leapt down from the driver’s seat, a canteen from the storage compartment in hand. Racing to the barn as if she’d forgotten all of her earlier fears, she pulled Cuore from the guard beast’s cage.

  Lina had deceived D. Cuore had been lying out on the path, and she’d hidden him in the cage when she said she was going to fetch some water. Even she didn’t know for sure why she’d done such a thing. Was it that she didn’t want D to find out something she needed Cuore to tell her? She wasn’t sure.

  Propping his head—which reeked of grease and dandruff—on her knee, she forced Cuore to drink some water, and he opened his eyes, coughing and sputtering.

  Spying Lina, sense took residence in his muddy pupils.

  Though she gave a sigh of relief, Lina found her heart wrung by how horribly emaciated his face looked as he tried, with little success, to form a smile.

  He looked like a skeleton draped with skin. He was so terribly thin, like everything in his powerful frame had been ripped right out of him; he looked like he might be on the brink of death.

  His body felt unusually light to Lina, as she lifted him up, and, while carrying him, she couldn’t keep a few tears from coming to her eyes.

  Why now, now that a good ten years had passed had all the gears started running in reverse? Didn’t Cuore’s wasted form presage her own fate and that of Mr. Meyer? Her tears sprung from that thought.

  When she’d finally slid Cuore up onto the driver’s bench, Lina heard hoofbeats approaching quickly from the direction of the gate.

  Lina bit her lip. Who should discover them but the very last people she wanted to see right now—the men of the Vigilance Committee.

  “Well, now, look who we have here,” said the second-in-command, Corma, as he stood up in the stirrups. Noticing Cuore’s condition, his eyes glittered cruelly. He had a pole of shiny black iron slung across his back. His real trade was clubbing lesser dragons and bears to death for meat and hides that he could sell. “Seems like something ain’t quite right here. What’s up with Fern? Ain’t he around?”

  “How should I know?” Lina replied, glaring back at the gawking men. “Go ahead and look for him. I just came out to talk with Cuore. He looks so bad off, I was just taking him to the doctor’s. If you don’t have any further business with us, kindly get out of the way.”

  “That’s awful serious, now, ain’t it? Well, I wish I could just tell you to be on your way, but something just ain’t right about how thin he’s got. You’ll have to hold your horses a minute.”

  At a signal from Corma, a few of his men went into the barn and the main house, then came right back. One came out of the barn with an agitated expression and reported that the guard beasts had been massacred.

  In a threatening tone, Corma said, “Looks like we’ve got business with you now. So, are you gonna come along with us?”

  -

  Having thoroughly combed the interior of the ruins, D returned to the courtyard. The passageway to the subterranean lab was sealed by several tons of rubble, and there was no sign of another entrance.

  Why was D still so obsessed with the ruins? His contract as a Vampire Hunter had been terminated, but he knew his work wasn’t yet done. Could it have been professional pride that kept him in the village?’ Well, that was part of it. But that gelid beauty of his—a sublimation of anger, sorrow, joy, and all other human emotions—was lent a hue akin to vindictiveness by the outcome of the activities that had continued for centuries in the depths of this laboratory. Still, even if those feelings were the reason, did D himself even notice?

  “Can’t find it at all, eh?” his left hand laughed scornfully. “But even if you did find it, what’d you intend to do? What happens when you know for sure the results of those experiments a decade ago? It’ll just make for that many more dark nights. The fate of those four kids was decided ten years back. No one can change that. Or could it be . . . ”

  “Could it be what?”

  “That you’re doing this to meet him?”

  D’s expression stiffened for a moment, but calm quickly returned. “You may be right.”

  “Oh ho! Grown a human side, have you? Then it looks like this interminable wandering hasn’t been a complete waste.”

  Suddenly, the sky clouded darkly. Even the sound of the wind died sharply.

  D’s right hand stretched for the sword on his back.

  The courtyard was no longer the courtyard.

  With every inch of his body, D felt it rising into being.

  His immediate vicinity was pitch-black. Allowing not even light itself to pass, its density was comparable to that of a black hole. But as incredible as the density of the darkness was, it was several orders of magnitude lower than the presence that stood before D, blocking his path.

  D sent all that density right back at the presence.

  I should have expected as much. You did well to resist it, a disembodied voice said disinterestedly. It wasn’t praise. This was something the meaning of which was beyond words. Anyone else would have been crippled by this point, their psyche physically crushed. You certainly are a success.

  “Silence,” D said. He didn’t have to speak the words, nor even think them. This was a conversation of an altogether different kind. “What did you do here? What were the results of your experiments ten years ago?”

  You mean the genes of darkness and light? Simply remarkable. How well you’ve done to fathom that much, the presence said, as it circled around D. How cruel it is—that the genes of one person, even one solitary gene, can prove the deciding factor for its entire species. Crueler still when their race knew glories unrivaled by any other creature, yet gallantly accepted their fate in time. In that sense, couldn’t one say that the Nobility are truly superb?

  “So they’ve all quietly accepted their demise then?” D laughed scornfully. “If that was the case, there’d be no need for Vampire Hunters.”

  It’s not the Nobility that needs them. It’s the humans. Why don’t you give us as much time as we need to die off?

  “I’ve grown tired of listening to your quibbling. What were you doing here, tell me that.”

  In place of an answer, a certain image appeared.

  Light didn’t suddenly spring into being in the blackness. The image wasn’t projected into D’s mind or his brain. Nonetheless, there was that one image.

  It was the naked body of a woman.

  Not just one. There were countless bodies, pale and nude, existing simultaneously in one simple image.

  A black shadow bent over her. The shape of that silhouette alone blackly eclipsed parts of the woman’s body. It looked like finger-shaped holds opened on her breasts, and the shadow’s thick legs seemed to lop off her slick, writhing thighs.

  The woman was reaching her peak. Her climax seemed to stretch on forever. Plunging her nails into the figure’s back, she bit the flesh of its shoulder. The rapture on her face as she turned away became a voice spilling from her gleaming, wet lips.

  However, an eternal climax might also mean eternal anguish.

  A number of the faces were etched by death and faded away from the image. And more, so many more. D counted tens of millions.

  The presence inquired, Have you no memory of this
? You of all people should remember it. It was the instant you came into this world. You were my only success.

  “You bastard—you were doing the same thing all over again here, weren’t you?” D asked, resorting to normal words—words ablaze with white-hot rage—for the first time.

  Exactly. You see, this was once a computational center for such things. Over the course of three-and-a-half millennia, I conducted countless experiments and all ended in failure. All the by-products were erased.

  The scene changed.

  D was surrounded by strange-looking creatures. Though clearly reminiscent of human beings, they were such weird creatures. Craniums swollen, limbs twisted, eyes glittering like those of a cat. Their whole bodies were mantled in fur. Infants cried feebly.

  D realized each of them possessed an unimaginable strength. He saw their power. Every last one of them could operate night and day, without sleep. They could breathe in a vacuum, too. They could swim freely underwater, and their cells could regenerate from even fatal blows.

  They were the pinnacle of biological evolution. However, a sole drawback brought death upon them.

  The accursed deed—the need to drink blood.

  That was the reason they were erased. Hundreds of thousands of them, still infants and unable to offer any protest, were buried in the darkness for all time.

  “Why did you do all these things?” The strictly serene query bore an infinite weight of grief.

  In the pursuit of possibility. There were more ten years ago. But it all ended in failure.

  “And do you intend to erase them, as you did all those young lives?”

  It’s not my habit to leave failures around, the presence said in conclusion. His final word on the matter was spoken with silence, but was all the more frightening for its import. I shall dispose of all the genes of darkness. You can watch to make sure, if you wish. You’ve seen a great many things. A few more shouldn’t pain you.

  While he listened to the presence, D half-closed his eyes. He was changing this being that possessed the density of infinitely compacted darkness into a form like his own.

  That was his only chance of victory.

  Of course, this was totally unrelated to the actual physical form of his opponent. D would only cut down the form made manifest to him—that was the extent of it. Somewhere within D, a gigantic, powerful figure was moving toward completion. An image of the Sacred Ancestor, wrapped in a black cape, a pair of fangs jutting from the vermilion lips chiseled into his pale skin.

  The instant it was complete, D focused all of his physical and mental energy into the sword racing from its sheath.

  Light cut the darkness.

  With the sunlight of midday showering down on him, D thrust his blade into the ground and clung to it almost like a crutch as he got to his feet. The heavy shadow of fatigue clung to his beautiful countenance.

  “Looks like he’s taken off,” he said, even his breath ragged. He was answered by a quavering voice.

  “You scare the hell out of me. That you could wound him . . . your own . . . ”

  Without replying, D started to walk over to the gate where he’d tethered his horse.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “I don’t know what the four of them have planned, but now at least I know their fate.”

  “Then let’s get out of town. Wash your hands of it, D. You’ve got no connection to these people.”

  “Tomorrow, it’s going to be decided whether or not one of them goes to the Capital. For that reason alone she made it through the winter. Through a winter that’s lasted a decade.”

  “So what you’re trying to say is you’d like to watch over her so that she doesn’t know the truth right up till the very end? What a sentimental softy you are.”

  D didn’t say a word as he lashed his horse.

  -

  The whip rebounded off her white back.

  Sobs escaping through her grit teeth, Lina opened her eyes and fought off the sudden urge to faint.

  Though her face and her fully exposed torso were both soaked with sweat, her body was quite cold.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw before her a bunch of jeering men. A bloodstained Cuore lay on the stone floor.

  Lina’s wrists were bound together by a rough rope, and she hung from a pulley in the ceiling. There were a great many welts across her back. The men laughed and told her they were still going easy on her. Though there’d been a few pauses along the way, she’d been whipped for nearly twenty minutes so far. This wasn’t about getting a confession out of her. This was all about Lina’s pain—about them enjoying the agony their whip wrung from the girl’s flesh.

  The men had no questions of any sort for her. Before they brought Lina and Cuore to the interrogation chamber, located in one of the outbuildings at Fern’s place, they’d asked things like where Fern and Bess were or what their connection was to the vampire attacks. But when Lina steadfastly maintained she didn’t know, the men looked at each other, smiled, and started to torture the already half-dead Cuore. Perhaps trying to protect Lina as much as he could, Cuore held on through more than an hour of electric shocks and dunkings before he passed out.

  “Hey, call the sheriff!”

  Aware in her hazy, dim state of consciousness that this entreaty hadn’t come from her, Lina let a smile rise on her lips. What, is that the best they can do? Aside from the physical pain, this is nothing compared to what I’ve been through the last ten years.

  One of the men approached her. Judging by the unkempt beard, it had to be Corma. A powerful grip on her chin spun her around to face him .

  “Oh, still got some fight in you, do you? We don’t have to call no freaking sheriff, boys. We can handle this just fine. First of all, you ain’t told us nothing yet.”

  “And I don’t have anything to tell you, you fuzz-faced sadist! Don’t touch me!”

  While his grimy hands stroked her white breasts, Corma brought his vulgar lips close to Lina’s face.

  “Oh, you got a million things to spill. Like where’s Fern at? And how the hell are you tied in to the Noble that’s been running wild in town lately? Well? If you ain’t inclined to tell, we’ll just have to get the answers from your body then.”

  A warm tongue traced the nape of her neck.

  She tried to pull her face away from him, but he held her tightly by the chin.

  “Hey, stop that! Let me go!”

  “Getting a little feisty, are you?” Corma turned to the others “Hey! Give me a hand with her.”

  With nods and grunts of agreement, three or four more men gathered around her.

  Hands and tongues wriggled against her back, across her belly, between her tightly shut legs.

  “Stop it, just leave me alone!”

  But as she squirmed, something was about to change deep inside Lina. She felt an anger unlike any emotion she’d known, a white blaze, directed more at the boundless depravity of human nature than at the outrages against her own body

  These bastards—these damned humans!

  Her pale body flew up. It was a fierce snap. The men, on her like a pack of hyenas ravaging a corpse, were smashed against the walls and floor.

  The blaze raced into the blood vessels in her wrist. With the exertion of just a modicum of power, the coarse ropes burst and Lina fell to the ground.

  “You . . . bitch!” Corma exclaimed, jumping back up from the floor.

  He grabbed the iron club leaning against the wall. It was a vicious weapon, with sharp conical knobs protruding from all sides. In Corma’s hands, it could knock through a stone wall, and, used against prey at close range, it hit harder than a slug from a high-caliber rifle.

  The other men got up and surrounded Lina.

  “No more mercy for you. Tear them bottom duds off, too, and then we’ll fuck her to death.”

  “Heh heh. We’ll stick it to her from the front and the rear!”

  Vulgar promises and violent threats spewed from every mouth. They were just
about to pound across the floor to her when—

  The door opened with a dull creak.

  All eyes turned that way, and while five pairs looked dubious, one pair widened in surprise and delight.

  “Mr. Meyer!” Picking her clothes off the floor, Lina took cover behind the young teacher.

  Not surprisingly, the men were trembling. They looked embarrassed, averting their gaze. Corma alone challenged the teacher, and just barely at that. “What are you here for? Why all the way out here? I could’ve swore you was among the missing.”

  “I went on a rather long journey,” the teacher said, as if wholly unsurprised by the strange circumstances. “I’ve just now gotten back to town. I merely dropped by with the intention of asking Fern what new developments there’d been in our local problem.”

  “Fern ain’t here,” Corma spat, jabbing a finger at Lina. “Now he’s the one missing instead of you. The girl knows where he’s gone. So we was just interrogating her.”

  “You don’t say?” Mr. Meyer said with a nod. Looking straight at Corma, he said, “Well, from the look of things, it doesn’t seem to have gone very well. Leave this to me. Let me try discussing this leisurely with her at my home. That’s fine with you, isn’t it?”

  For some reason, Corma swallowed the “no” that was just about to leave his throat.

  “Well then—begging your pardon.” With a simple bow, Mr. Meyer pushed Lina along and disappeared through the door.

  Between the men who exchanged idiotic looks, spirits that contained equal amounts of relief and fear were rising.

  -

  Once the wagon had gone out through the gate, Mr. Meyer looked at Lina’s wrist and said, “Got a little rope burn, I see. That was just horrible of them. How did you get out of your bonds, anyway?”

  “Uh, well . . . when I was fighting back, they came undone on their own.”

  “You don’t say.”

  The teacher asked nothing more, but gazed straight ahead. Growing somewhat anxious, Lina inquired, “Um . . . where are we going?”

  “Where do you want to go? I’ll take you wherever you like. I’ve got today off, too.”

  D’s face and the shack out by the waterwheel drifted into her mind, then Lina shook her head. Such precious memories. The girl knew there’d never be another day like that one.