The competitor in black left her feeling shockingly numbed, working on her like a mysterious drug, an anesthetic that violated her to the very marrow of her bones. As if to strip the movement from her heart, Leila roughly jerked her goggles back down.
“That’s too bad. This is the way we Marcuses do it!” Just as the crimson coverall settled back in the driver’s seat, the engine howled. She’d purposely cut the muffler to antagonize her opponents. The instant her hands took the controls, the massive tires flattened the grass. Not so much coming down the hill, the vehicle was closer to flying, and it kicked up the earth even as it touched back down. In less than a tenth of a second it had taken off again. Its speed didn’t seem that of a mechanical construct.
It made a mad rush straight for D.
D didn’t move.
A terrible sound shook the air, now mixing with a fishy stench. The smell was accompanied by smoke. White smoke billowing from the burnt tires, the vehicle stopped just inches short of D.
“You’re gonna feel this to the bone. Here I come!” Leila’s hysterical shouts were just another attempt to conceal the movements of her own heart. The foot that floored the gas to run down D had hit the brake a hair’s breadth from crushing him. But why hadn’t D moved? It was as if he’d read the ripples spreading through her chest.
Without saying a word, he pulled back on his stuck sword. It came free all too quickly. Sheathing it without a sound in a single fluid movement, D turned.
“I thought you’d see it my way. You should’ve done that from the get-go. Could’ve saved us both some trouble by not trying to act so damn tough.” Leila kept her eye on D until he’d climbed the hill and disappeared over the summit. An instant later, tension drew her feline eyes tight.
With a low groan, the earth shook violently. Though it weighed over a ton, the battle car was tossed effortlessly into the air, smashed to the ground, and was tossed up again.
Now that D had gone, the Shelter’s defense systems sprang into action.
Though it looked impossible to steady, Leila stood impassively in her car. She had one hand on the yoke, but that was all. She remained perpendicular to the car throughout its crazed dance—as if the soles of her feet were glued to the floorboards.
In midair, Leila took her seat.
The engine made a deafening roar. Blue atomic flames licked from the rear nozzles, and smoke from the spent radioactive fuel flew from exhaust pipes. The battle car took off in midair.
As it touched down, the penetrator over the engine swiveled to point at the Shelter. Unhindered by the wildly rocking earth, bounding with each shock, the car never lost its bearing.
The air was stained blue.
The ceiling of the Shelter opened, and a laser cannon reminiscent of a radar dish appeared and spurted out a stream of fire. It skimmed the airborne body of the car and reduced a patch of earth to molten lava.
If the Shelter’s weapon was radar controlled, then there was certainly cause to be alarmed. The second and third blasts of fire, usually vaunted for their unmatched precision, missed their target, as Leila slipped in front or behind, to the left or right of where they fell.
Her skill behind the wheel surpassed these electronic devices.
As far back as she could remember, the clan’s father had always impressed upon her how important it was that she refine her skills at manipulating anything and everything mechanical. Her father may have even known some basic genetic enhancement techniques.
Ironically, Leila’s talents only seemed to shine when it came to modes of transportation. Whether it was a car or even something with a life of its own—like a cyborg horse—her skillful touch gave them new abilities. “Give her an engine and some wheels and she’ll whip up a car,” her father had said with admiration. Her skill at operating vehicles surpassed that of all her brothers. Only the oldest boy Borgoff even came close.
And how Leila loved her battle car. It’d been crafted from parts gathered in junkyards during the clan’s travels. Some parts she had even taken from the ruins of the Nobility, when the opportunity presented itself. She’d quite literally forgotten to eat or sleep while she worked on it. Early one winter morning, the battle car was completed by the feeble, watery light of dawn. Two years had passed since then. Loving that car like a baby that’d kicked in her own belly, Leila learned to drive it with a skill that was miraculous.
The very epitome of that skill was being played out on this hill-hemmed patch of ground. Avoiding every attack by the Shelter’s electronic devices, the battle car changed direction in midair. Just as the laser’s fraction-of-a-second targeting delay was ending, the penetrator discharged a silvery beam.
It was form of liquid metal. Expelled at speeds in excess of Mach one, its molecular structure altered as it flew, changing it to a five-yard-long spear that shot right through the workings of the laser cannon. Sending electromagnetic waves out in all directions like tentacles, the laser was silenced. As she brought the penetrator’s muzzle to bear on one wall of the Shelter, a bloody smile rose on Leila’s lips.
Suddenly, her target blurred. Or more accurately, the car sank. As if the land surrounding the Shelter had become a bog, the car was now sinking nose-first into the ground.
Leila’s tense demeanor collapsed, deteriorating into devil-may-care laughter.
The rear nozzles pivoted with a screech and disgorged fire. Flames ran along the sides of the vehicle, blowing away the rocky soil that swallowed the battle car’s muzzle. The tires were spinning at full speed. Whipping up a trail of dust, the battle car took to the air tail first. It spun to face the hill even before it had touched back down. The penetrator’s turret swiveled and hurled a blast of silver light against the Shelter wall.
The blast broke in two, and, in the same instant, was reduced to countless particles of light that flew in all directions. Even Leila’s driving skills couldn’t get her through this web of shrapnel.
However . . .
Landing back on solid ground, the battle car went straight for the storm of metallic particles with its body at a wild tilt as it pulled a wheelie. The darkness-shredding bullets sank into the belly of the car.
Giving the engine full throttle, Leila pushed her vehicle to the top of the hill in one mad dash.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel Demon City Shinjuku in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has authored numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there were seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.
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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the U.S. as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman and Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer with best-selling author Greg Rucka.
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Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales Page 24
