“Why was Tajeel left here?”
“He was a failure, after all. Right from the very end of the experiments he was wild, with an excessive lust for blood. That’s why only the three of us were released. Given a grace period of ten years. It seems we were the best of the guinea pigs.”
Ten years—a long, long time until the results of the experiments would become clear. During that time, the modifications made to their cells caused the cells to change one by one, mixing a different hue into the blood flowing through their veins, and making their genes long for the darkness . . .
“I suppose you could say the experiments, including the ones to increase my intelligence, succeeded for the most part. Now I can see perfectly well in the dark, and the cells of my body produce energy even if I don’t eat anything. Though I haven’t tried it, I suppose I could even survive in a vacuum or underwater. D, can you do all that?”
Without waiting for an answer, Lina took the sword D had discarded from atop Tajeel’s remains. Thrusting it deep into her own heart, she let him watch as she pulled it out again.
“So long as we don’t get our heads cut off, we’re immortal. Tajeel knew that, so he brought me into the fold, and I fulfilled his desire. As I’m sure you could see. I wonder if my child will be a good one?”
“Why did he wait until now to make you his? He must’ve had countless opportunities.”
“Because, as the only one who had awakened, there was nothing he could do until our genes of darkness were perfected. All he had to do was wait. I would automatically learn the truth about everything and gladly let him have his way with me. So that we might increase our numbers.”
So, was that the real purpose of the ruins?
“But it seems the experiment failed after all. The same urge that Tajeel had dwells in me, as well.”
Within her slightly opened mouth, D saw a pair of fangs.
The girl frolicking on a road crusted with remnants of snow because she was going to the Capital.
The girl at the windowsill, a white blossom at her breast, gazing for an eternity at the road that had carried her mysterious suitor away.
“I don’t know if you found him or not, but before I came here I killed one of my classmates. Once we were alone, he suddenly grabbed hold of me, pushed me down, and demanded that I transfer my right to go to the Capital to him. He said that was the only reason he’d ever pretended to be interested in a Noble victim like me. At that point, something inside me changed forever. I wonder if that makes his murder justified?”
D was silent, just listening. There was nothing else he had to do. What had he fought for in this village anyway?
“And do you have the same urge, too?” Oh, but the Hunter’s voice was as cold and clear as ever when he sent the question back over his shoulder.
“Yes.” Cuore stood paralyzed in the blue light. He had an intelligent, rational expression that seemed to belong to someone else entirely—and he had pearly white fangs.
“He tried to protect me right up to the very end. Even knowing the fate in store for him, he did his very best, asked them not to bring me into the fold. Though he was the one who found the entrance in the forest and set Tajeel free in the first place, the night Tajeel attacked Kaiser’s wife for the second time, he was sneaking around after him trying to stop him. Unfortunately, he hadn’t mastered the use of his psychic energy, and he let it all out at our place.”
Letting a chagrined smile arise, Cuore came over and stood by Lina’s side. Twining her pale arms around his neck, Lina smiled lasciviously.
“I intend to let him have his way with me, too. What’ll you do, D—try to cut me down? Aren’t you supposed to be a Hunter?”
“I don’t work without compensation. Besides, my business here is done.” That was his farewell to the girl who’d listened to the song of wind and the brook with him.
D spun on his heel in the blue light. He made it as far as the door before a voice filled with positively unearthly malice drifted from a dark corner.
“Why . . . are you letting him leave?”
D saw the ash-gray shadow walking closer with a laser gun in his right hand. The last one—the man the computer had rendered.
“Stop it,” Lina said in a strident tone. “Killing him will accomplish nothing. We can live anywhere at all. Given time, we can probably discover some way to get by without lusting for blood.”
The shadowy figure shook his head. It was an oddly sluggish movement. “We haven’t been given time . . . Take a good look.”
One of his hands tore off the mask.
There were gasps of surprise.
What made Lina and Cuore’s eyes bulge wasn’t the fact that the face belonged to Mr. Meyer, of course, but rather that the face itself was warped and melting like a waxwork. One eye drooped all the way to his chin, trailing red tendons behind it.
D’s memory replayed a certain phrase. I must dispose of the failures.
“You don’t . . . seem surprised,” Mr. Meyer said. “You knew after all, didn’t you?”
D nodded. “When that farmhouse was attacked by a couple of creatures that escaped from here, there wasn’t enough blood to account for you. There could only be one reason. Because you were one of them.” His voice seemed pained. The man who’d let a light shine on the future of a girl. These, too, were words of farewell. “Apparently your vampire nature seems to have awakened without you being aware of it. Are you the one who attacked Fern and his daughter? That’d explain why, when the two blood samples from two different attackers were mixed together and analyzed, an unrecognizable face was displayed.”
A sapphire beam converted the floor by D’s feet to steam and ions. D didn’t so much as flinch.
“Why are you the only one who’s fine? Weren’t we . . . humans made in the same fashion? How come we’re the only ones . . . who must die? . . . ”
There was a sound like something shattering, and the teacher collapsed on the floor.
“Mr. Meyer!”
“Keep away from me . . . ” Checking Lina before she could run over to him, the teacher tried to stand again.
Blue light speared through the twilight, burning through the walls and floor in succession.
The barrel of the weapon dropped.
A voice saddled with infinite anger and protest crept across the ground. “Lina . . . You mustn’t . . . study . . . the history of the Nobility . . . ”
Watching the putrid ichor and clothing fall to a heap on the floor, Lina asked D, “Is that our fate?”
D was silent. He heard a voice. You were my only success.
“I envy you.”
How must Lina’s words have sounded to D?
“I’m so jealous of you, I could hate you. When will we end up like that, do you know?”
“No, I don’t.”
Absentmindedly, Lina wound her arm around the neck of the frozen Cuore and said, “I’d planned on just dropping out of the picture, but I’m going to go before the exam board tomorrow. You’ll come, too, won’t you? True to Mr. Meyer’s dying wish, I’ve got to tell them how much I loathe the Nobility. To say there’s no tomorrow for them, and no history—just like the four of us.”
Suddenly, Cuore stepped away from Lina.
Speechless with surprise, Lina was ready to go right after him, but D caught her by the arm.
“He doesn’t want you to see him.”
Tottering, the youth disappeared into the reaches of the darkness. The time had come for him, too.
In the blue light that would most likely fill this place for all eternity, the beautiful Hunter and the girl trained their eyes on the depths of the darkness as they both, individually, bore witness to the cruelty of fate.
-
The next day, the trio of examiners who arrived in the village early in the afternoon received a strange proposal from the mayor, who looked somewhat pale. He said that the town wanted to conduct the exam in the ruins that’d once belonged to the Nobility.
The sel
ection of a human being who would help build the future would take place in the ruins of those that had ruled the past. Wouldn’t that be thrilling?
The proposal was accepted. That evening saw many in attendance in a subterranean hall filled with chairs.
Although the members of the exam board furrowed their brows as Lina stood in her white dress in front of mysterious devices, after a captivating smile from her they took their seats without complaint. The villagers lined up behind them.
Only one person, the mayor, wore an expression of discontent, and that was because D and Lina had coerced him into using this location. If his relationship with his adopted daughter was made public before the exam board, he’d have been run out of town, regardless of the power that he held. But, more than that, more than anything, it was the eerie aura from D as the Hunter stared at him that made the mayor tremble.
D stood quietly behind Lina, hidden in the depths of the darkness.
When everyone had gone to their seats, Lina bowed quietly, and the mayor stood up. “This year’s representative of the village of Tepes: Lina Belan. Her score on the selection tests—twelve hundred out of a possible twelve hundred points. Her excellent work has earned her a place before this exam board.”
Though they tried their level best to preserve their stern demeanor, the expressions of the examiners softened. Despite the fact that the results had been communicated ahead of time, Lina’s performance still had the power to inspire awe.
“Very well. Now, there’s just one question I must ask before the final decision is made. What studies do you intend to pursue in the Capital?”
A wave of tension passed through the assembly.
Many of her classmates knew of the girl’s desire. However, to say it aloud would be to throw away all her tomorrows. But they didn’t know that for Lina there was no tomorrow.
As D stood there, he had a fleeting shade of sorrow in his eyes.
“Before I answer, there’s something I’d like to show you.”
The assembly stirred at Lina’s comment. Such a proposal was out of the norm. This examination, which could have been concluded with a brief answer, was becoming a long, drawn-out affair.
“Once, this castle was referred to as the Nobility’s Frontier Center for Calculation,” Lina began. “Constructed about five thousand years ago—well, five thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven years ago, to be exact—certain top-secret experiments were conducted here. Five thousand years—isn’t there something familiar about that number? From the historical point of view, it’s generally said that the decline of the Nobility as a race began in this era.”
The blue light stirred. What was the girl trying to tell them?
Lina raised her right hand.
Between the girl and the audience, an image formed. While it was completely two-dimensional, it had depth and color. Realizing that the image was of the same subterranean hall they were now in, the people looked at one another.
Machinery ensconced in the darkness glittered, shadowy people dashed about, flasks spouted gouts of prismatic smoke. Children were sealed in medical casings on what looked to be lab tables, and men in black garb studied data rendered in strangely glowing points of light.
“This is a recording of the experiments,” Lina explained. “Experiments by the Nobility that were no less than an attempt to halt the decline of their species. However, their science had already come to the conclusion that their decline was inevitable. To them, this unavoidable decline also meant eventual extinction. How the few who reached that conclusion must have cursed their fate, perhaps even wallowed in the deepest despair, I can well imagine.”
Here, Lina smiled broadly.
“Gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, doesn’t it?”
The assembly stirred a bit, the tension broken. The examiners exchanged glances and laughed. Still beaming her smile, Lina continued. “The way they chose to combat their despair was through these experiments. If the inevitability of their ruin was written in their genes like letters carved into a milestone, then they had only to make those genes into something else. Turn night into day, darkness into light. Become a creature with a far greater will to survive as a race—a higher potential energy. In this way, they began trying to genetically combine humans with the Nobility.”
It took a few seconds before all assembled there could catch the import of Lina’s words.
This time, shock waves ran through the assembly. The mayor and one of the examiners rose to their feet.
“How—how do you know that? What are you?”
As if to answer the examiner’s question, the image hanging in space changed.
Warped children were born one after another, men and women transformed into something no longer human. A part of the ruins was suddenly consumed by flames, crumbling.
“These experiments were carried out secretly in one area of the Frontier, far from the Capital, and you can easily imagine what the results would have meant to many of the Nobility. Just as we find it repulsive to even consider such a thing, they, too, detested the thought of mixing with humans. Let’s say that the destruction by the opposing faction you just witnessed was one answer. Those privy to the secret fled from the ruins, and silence reigned here for five thousand years.”
About to say something, the examiner saw a look rising in the girl’s eyes. He held his tongue. Such a mysterious look it was. When hatred and sorrow are mixed together, could they produce a picture of supreme bliss?
“Ten years ago, the ruins came back to life. A being of tremendous importance, one whom even I find difficult to comprehend, took four children from our village and performed the same procedures on us. Why at this late date? And why were those children chosen? That I don’t know. Perhaps the decline of their race had highs and lows, like a biorhythm, and there was an optimal time for starting up again. At any rate, the children underwent the treatment, and were then returned to the village. All memories erased, unaware that the results would manifest in their bodies a decade later. And now the results are in. Taking this shape . . . ”
The eyes of people focused on Lina—on the pair of fangs poking from the corners of her lips.
There was no more stirring of the crowd. A deathly silence fell over them, and the mayor covered his face with both hands.
Erasing the image with a slight wave of her right hand, Lina continued softly. “Yes, but now it’s all over. The four children, in accordance with fate, will leave the village. Even if that fate was forced on them by someone else.”
At this point, Lina turned her back to the audience, as if to let someone standing in the darkness hear her last malediction. “There’s no need to mourn for them any longer,” the girl said, “because now they finally understand. What was hoped for them. What’s waiting for them where they must go. And though in the long run they themselves didn’t quite get to the top, they were one step in what will continue to be a very, very long climb.
“The Nobility perished, and the human race remains,” Lina continued. “However, couldn’t we say the biological disposition of human beings—in both their physiology and psychology—is superior to that of the Nobility? Who could claim that the worth of a creature is based on the height of the biorhythm for its species? Brutality and cruelty on par with the Nobility, an urge to destroy anything more beautiful than yourself—these things have been all too familiar to me.”
Transfixed by those freezing cold pupils, the mayor grew pale.
Once again, an image hove into view.
The people saw stars glittering in a pitch-black ocean. In the distance, a hundred billion more stars sparkled, a vast spiraling nebula nurturing a multitude of life-forms, the sea of hydrogen atoms giving birth to existence itself.
“The four children were supposed to go there.”
Lina’s voice sounded as if it had crossed a great distance when it rang in the ears of those assembled in the rows.
“Free from the black destiny hanging over the humans and Nobility, they w
ere to go out and join the universal consciousness as a perfect form of ‘intelligent’ life. Now even that dream is gone, but because of that, I suppose they don’t mourn for themselves.”
Suddenly, the image changed.
The darkness faded rapidly, and light filled the hall. The white light welling up drove away the twilight, swathing the exhausted-looking faces of the people, and every inch of their bodies, in a wonderful and serene hue.
“This is the potential of the new humanity.”
Her whole body glittering beautifully, Lina quietly looked at D, then gazed at the shining people.
“The people who uncovered this potential, the beings who guided the human race to a higher level—were they really so cursed?”
The girl suddenly pressed a hand to her chest. The time had come. If nothing else, her voice was proud.
“I believe I’d like to learn about the history of the Nobility.”
-
As soon as she finished saying the words, Lina collapsed.
“Don’t come near me! Don’t watch! D!”
The people stopped where they were, and the beautiful shadow knelt by Lina’s side.
“Just hide my face . . . ”
A black scarf fell across the face of the girl.
“Thank you . . . D . . . Stay by my side, won’t you? I’m so scared . . . ”
“I’ll always be here.”
“Back at the shack . . . ” Lina wrung a voice from her pain. “At the shack . . . the white flower I found in the morning . . . that . . . was your doing, wasn’t it? If someone had left it, there’s no way . . . you wouldn’t have noticed them . . . ”
“That’s right.”
“I was so glad . . . so very . . . glad . . . There were two people who cared about me . . . I wish I could’ve met the other one . . . ”
“Don’t talk.”
Lina’s hand came up. Just before it started to melt and dissolve, D took hold of it gently. It was the first time he’d done so. It would never happen again.
Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 20
