“Is that an OSB?” the left hand asked, standing bolt upright on the floor. A tiny human face complete with eyes and a nose had risen on its surface.
It was Lord Greylancer who replied, “Yes, it is.”
III
A disturbing air of danger pervaded the house. It was generated by the three humans and single dhampir that currently occupied the building.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Brennan asked, repeating a query he’d made a dozen times before. “I’m human. D even vouched for me!”
“Are you an idiot or something? How’s someone with a face like that supposed to have a voice like a dying old frog? Whoever it is, it ain’t got nothing to do with D.”
This reply came from Bligh, naturally.
“I’m still human. The fact that I can move around in daylight and work with the rest of you is proof of that.”
“That thing D cut down was out there walking around, too, and all but humming a tune!”
“That thing was a monster. You’ve gotta see that, don’t you? Isn’t that right, Josette?”
“Yeah. I believe you.”
“Oh wow, now that’s the kind of love between a man and his wife that brings a tear to my eye,” Bligh said in a tone that would convince anyone he was obstinate. “But that don’t count for a damn thing. Does the love between a couple let a woman know if her hubby’s a servant of the Nobility? You can say, ‘I believe you,’ till you’re blue in the face, but if he puts the bite on you later, that’ll be the end of that.”
“You son of a bitch!” Brennan growled, reaching for the longsword on his back, but Bligh leapt out of range of the blade and stood with a short spear at the ready.
“Stop it!” Josette cried, her minigun quivering violently as she tried to decide which of them to point it toward. For the warrior woman was equally befuddled.
Brennan was put at a disadvantage by his inability to tell her the truth of what had happened while he was missing or how he’d managed to escape. He’d explained the situation. Though Josette seemed to accept it, Bligh took him for a liar from the very start and would hear none of it. Josette probably didn’t trust him entirely, either, so her attitude had inevitably hardened.
However, where attacks from outside were concerned, Brennan remained completely calm, saying, “They promised that as long as I was here, they wouldn’t raise a hand against you.”
Yeah, Bligh would say, but what about last night?
They hadn’t broken off their offensive. Brennan had to have been part of an undercover operation to slay D. That much was true, and Brennan didn’t protest very strongly, he just grew agitated and went outside. Interpersonal relations were growing increasingly strained. But even given that discord and the fact that rain continued to come down in buckets, once the sun came up, the world was full of light. The minds of all three couldn’t help steeping in relief and relaxation as if they were in a tepid bath.
“I wonder how the others are,” Josette finally said.
“They’ll be back safe and sound soon, just like me. Stop harping on me about it.”
“That’s not what I—”
Oh, a domestic spat! This oughta be good, Bligh thought, feeling the tension slack around his lips.
Suddenly, an explosion rocked his eardrums.
That’s not gunpowder. What, then? the three of them suddenly wondered.
“It’s outside!”
They raced over to the western windows and peeked out. There was a row of farmhouses on that side.
First, Bligh focused on the scene. “The last one in the row ain’t there,” he said.
“Huh?” husband and wife asked in unison.
“It’s gone, clean as a whistle. Not a damn trace. No fire, no smoke pouring out. It sure wasn’t gunpowder they used. Come to think of it, since D’s asleep, all they’d have to do is blow us to smithereens. The bastards have upped the stakes. That was a threat!”
“If they just have to blow us to smithereens, they wouldn’t need to threaten us,” Brennan countered. “In that case, they wouldn’t bother with any needless destruction. They’d just come straight here. Something’s strange about this. Get ready to pull out.”
“What about D?”
“Leave him.” Brennan didn’t say the rest: If we do that, they won’t have a problem with us.
“But . . .”
“I’ll carry him,” Bligh said, looking back at them.
“He’ll just slow us down.”
“Shut your trap, hired gun. I got saved myself once already. I’ll be damned if I won’t even the score.”
“Do what you like, then, weirdo.”
“Someone’s coming!” Josette shouted, looking out the window.
A stark figure was coming from the direction of the vanished house with a wobbly, uncertain gait. Apparently, his clothes were white—that was all they could tell. On reaching the house next to theirs, he didn’t seem to do anything, yet there was the same explosive sound as before, and that farmhouse, too, vanished. It exploded from the inside out—or so it appeared, but it was utterly reduced to a dustlike substance.
“What the hell was that? The whole house just vanished!”
Bligh’s cry prompted Brennan to say in a badly frayed tone, “What is he, some kind of walking bulldozer? I hear a dozer went out of control and beat the hell out of an entire village in the eastern Frontier.”
“It’d be more accurate to say it crushed the hell out of the place,” Josette interrupted. “But he just made it disappear, without lifting a finger. It’s completely different. Even if we leave, I’m not sure we could get away from him . . .”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll go out quietly,” Bligh snarled, baring his teeth. He didn’t lack fighting spirit. “Hey, lady. Give that thing a blast with your peashooter. Maybe you can punch his ticket.”
“Roger that.”
“You’re out of your mind. And you—what are you trying to get my wife to do? We’re falling back! Josette, get ready to move out.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, just a minute. You gotta do everything hubby says?! I thought I’d run across a woman of quality for a change, so don’t go disappointing me. You sure the two of you ain’t out to get D?”
“Shut up. Let’s go!”
Dragging the baggage behind him, Brennan headed for the back door. The cyborg horses were tethered out there.
Putting her saddlebags over her shoulder, Josette looked at Bligh and told him, “You’d better pull out, too.”
“That’s what I had in mind, but now I’ve reconsidered. The village’s too small to run far. They’ll find us right away. On top of that, there’s something strange about that character just now. Hurry up and go. Your hubby’s gonna blow his top.”
As the woman gave him a mournful look and lowered her head, Bligh gave her a light clap on the shoulder and told her, “Staying alive’s the most important thing. Your hubby’s right. Get going already.”
Pressing her lips closed tight, Josette stared back at the rough man. It wasn’t the kind of look you gave a stranger. Not saying a word, the warrior woman turned and vanished through the doorway.
With a weary expression flitting across his face for just a heartbeat, Bligh reached for the weapon through the back of his belt, then tightened his grip on the short spear.
“But now that I’m on my own, I do feel kinda helpless. Hey, say something.”
He was talking to D.
There was another bang. The color swiftly drained from the man, who got a desperate look on his face and mustered his strength.
“We’re gonna be in real trouble soon, I think. But I’ll be damned if I’ll stay cowering here so we get taken out with the whole house. I’ll take the fight outside. You stay here, okay?” he said, looking down at D, but then he suddenly thought of something.
“That might just be our chance. My head’s still good for something after all.”
Taking a knee on the floor by D, Bligh raised his
right hand.
“Namu Amida, amen, grazie—wake up, D!”
There was a thud against D’s chest. Once more raising the fist he’d hammered against the Hunter, Bligh swung it down again. He repeated the brutal CPR nearly a dozen times.
D didn’t move a muscle.
“Shit, was that too much to ask? Well, this time it’s really goodbye. Godspeed till your left hand gets back, stud.”
And leaving the Hunter with that, Bligh headed for the front hall.
“What the hell?!”
The thing was out in front of the house—standing not ten feet away.
“You’re a little early,” he said to the opponent who bared his teeth, someone garbed in white, top and bottom. While not as gorgeous as D, he was still stunningly handsome. The only thing that kept Bligh from losing himself in that beauty was the fact he’d been looking at D all this time.
“I’m the one you want. Okay, come at me,” the man blustered out in the downpour, brimming with fight, but it didn’t seem he had a chance in the world of winning. Rain streamed into his eyes, bringing with it his already-soaked hair.
This couldn’t get any worse, Bligh thought, and he wanted to cry.
“It would seem the Sacred Ancestor saw some possibilities in the OSB.”
Duchess Heldarling put her hand on the OSB’s left arm and wrenched it off with the monstrous strength of the Nobility. Blood the same hue as its skin spouted wildly, soaking the floor. The duchess raised the limb high, catching what dripped from it in her mouth—ostensibly, blood—before shuddering in a way most unbecoming a Noble and spitting it out again.
“I never tasted it before, but the rumors are true. Sulfuric acid or molten lava would be preferable to this. However, it carries within it all of the civilization that allowed them to cross the untold vastness of space and attack this world. Both the Sacred Ancestor and I thought so. We believed that mixing their blood with that of the Nobility could give birth to new possibilities. The Sacred Ancestor built this experimental facility from scratch while ‘The Great Battle’ yet raged. No small number of test subjects were produced. Most were gravely wounded patients. Perhaps it was on account of that, but all of the results were lacking. And so, about a millennium after the conclusion of the OSB hostilities, this facility was abandoned.”
“So, why’s it back up, then?” the left hand asked, getting right to the heart of the matter.
“Yesterday, one of the humans we later abducted—a woman—was bleeding. Her blood permeated the ground, where the core sensors took note of it. How great is the power of the Sacred Ancestor! A few drops of blood were enough to revive this facility. And myself, and our sturdy friend.”
The duchess shot a quick look back at Greylancer, an ironic grin rising on her lips that he wouldn’t see from that angle.
“Hmm, I see,” the left hand replied. It continued, “To be frank, you’re making trouble for folks up there. What’d you plan on doing?”
“Since the facility is back, there’s naught to do save work until I accomplish the task for which it was created. It was toward that end that I captured them.”
Though the duchess didn’t move, four humans appeared to her right stuck in semitranslucent material that seemed to serve as containers—Jan, Emily, Beth, and Arbuckle.
“They still alive?”
“We wouldn’t kill them without cause,” Lord Greylancer replied.
“Indeed. At the moment, they are being examined. As advanced as our medical knowledge is, even now there are things about human beings we don’t understand.”
The duchess made an easy wave of her right hand. The four captives vanished from sight.
“Don’t intend on letting ’em go, do you?” the left hand inquired.
“They are vital experimental subjects. However, I might consider exchanging them for D.”
“Oh-ho, you wanna use him in your experiments, too?” the left hand exclaimed in surprise. That was followed by a chuckle. “You think we’d go for that deal?”
It was Greylancer who answered, saying, “I’ll see that you do. We desire D most urgently, so that we might fulfill the aims of this facility.”
“At the start, you tried using Brennan to nail D. Change your plans?”
This time it was the duchess who replied. “I still intend to kill him. It was only Lord Greylancer’s proposal that stayed my hand.”
“Why experiment on D?” the left hand asked, its words directed at the tall man.
A strange tension and cries short of actual words rained down from the air.
Changing its position, the left hand turned its palm in that direction. A tiny face arose on its surface.
Those who stood in midair staring in the hand’s direction had to have numbered at least ten thousand strong. All of them were misshapen.
The Sacred Ancestor's Plan
chapter 5
I
This was the Sacred Ancestor’s plan?” the left hand inquired, not sounding the least bit surprised.
“As I thought—you knew of it, didn’t you?” Greylancer said, a thin smile on his lips. “Though I recall hearing fragmented legends of D and his partner, I never imagined I would find myself in their presence here and now—and I should truly thank my stars.”
The left hand’s manner suddenly grew easy. It had sensed the truth in the giant’s words. What billowed from him was a limitlessly deep sense of nobility.
However, the duchess spoke of how this facility had awakened from a long sleep. One that Greylancer had undoubtedly shared. How did a man who’d lived three millennia ago know about D and his left hand?
“Well, don’t expect him to be impressed when he wakes up,” the left hand said.
“I understand that. And that is the way the D I know must remain. It is precisely because he is such a man that I wish him to be brought here.”
“With all the systems you’ve got here, why take such a sneaky approach? It’d be a piece of cake for you to grab him, house and all.”
“This gentleman desires that D come of his own volition. He says he doesn’t wish to force him. I don’t really understand it,” the duchess said with a touch of sarcasm.
“Is that a fact?” the left hand replied in a powerful tone. “In that case, you’d best give up and set the lot of us free—meaning, let us out of the village.”
“And would that be the end of it?” the duchess inquired.
“Huh?”
“We took hostile actions toward D. If we set you free and asked him to forget it ever happened—do you think him the sort to forgive and forget?”
“Nope. He wouldn’t leave here until he’d smashed all your systems and put an end to every last one of you.”
“Then we, too, must take steps to respond. It is for that very reason that Lord Greylancer was summoned.”
“Summoned—oh,” the hoarse voice said, but whether that was from admiration or understanding was unclear.
“And there you have it,” the giant said with a nod. There was a strange gleam in his eye. It wasn’t merely the will to fight, now that it was clear he’d been called here to do battle with D. There was the sense like a boulder that could tip over at the next gust of wind—a feeling of desolation.
The left hand sounded exhausted as it said, “You know, coming here might be for the best for him, too. But there’s nothing I can do at this point. He’ll put all of you to death—that’s all I know.”
“If so—then we really have no choice but to dispose of him?” the duchess said, an air of menace beginning to pervade her surroundings. Looking down at the left hand, she said, “You should see this. Watch D do battle with the berserker we sent after him.”
“You’re not going to use the warrior you’ve got right here?”
“I believe this one to be more vicious, cunning, and a superior fighter—”
Suddenly, the duchess’s upper body doubled backward.
“Wh-wh-what?!”
To the accompaniment of the left han
d’s cries, the blood-hued tip of a spear appeared from the Noblewoman’s chest. Fresh blood sprayed across the floor. Apparently not even the left hand had imagined the duchess would be hefted ten feet into the air.
“Oh dear!” the left hand exclaimed, but even though it backed away, both the back of it and its fingers were mercilessly drenched by blood splashing off the floor.
“Do you understand why it’s come to this, Duchess Heldarling?” Greylancer said, now with a completely different eldritch aura bedecking him like invisible flames.
“You’ll regret this . . . Greylancer . . .”
“It’s Lord Greylancer. I care not whether you call me Grey or Lancer, but forgetting the Lord is unpardonable. Furthermore, there’s your offense of having dispatched a warrior without consulting me.”
“You’ll regret this . . . Lord . . . Greylancer.”
“And you have no time to waste on regrets. How does it feel to be destroyed the day after rising again?”
“Stop this. Let me down.”
“You were going to go on to say how you believe your warrior surpassed me, Duchess? That assumes me to be the loser. Tell me now whether or not your assessment was correct.”
“I was mistaken. Please forgive me.”
“Fine.”
An instant later, the duchess’s body sailed through the air like a small ball, slamming into the corridor wall and bouncing off it again. She’d flown over fifty yards. The sound of her impact had been distinctly mixed with that of breaking bones.
Showing not the slightest concern, as if he’d just disposed of a piece of trash, Greylancer raised his right hand into the air. A number of the village’s farmhouses appeared in midair. It was an aerial view of the area surrounding the house D and the others had holed up in.
Vampire Hunter D Volume 27 Page 8
