When the girl opened her mouth as wide as it would go, the fangs revealed weren’t those of a Noble. They belonged to a carnivorous beast. And they seemed suited less for piercing skin and more for tearing through flesh and bone with a single bite.
However, Emily didn’t actually get to put her fangs to the test.
It was Beth who first noticed something. A figure in black suddenly loomed beside Emily—and though she couldn’t see the face, the rest of him was beautiful enough to enrapture her.
“D?!” Beth groaned in astonishment.
At that moment, Emily turned for a look. And as she turned, her right hand swung around. But not with the strength of a human being. She swung it with the strength and speed of a vampire. It should’ve taken off everything on D’s head above the temple.
D stood in the very same position, not budging an inch. His right hand went into action. A bloody mist sailed through the air.
Clutching her neck, Emily backed away. Fresh blood gushed from between her fingers.
Beth hurled her short spear. It went through D’s heart and stuck in the wall behind him, but the Hunter made another swipe of his blade. Shrieking, Beth jumped back ten feet, the air swirling in her wake as she dashed to the window and made an effortless jump out into the rain, where she vanished.
And Emily was only seconds behind her. However, a rough wooden needle struck her back, piercing her right through the lung. The arc of her leap thrown into disarray, Emily thudded to the ground, but quickly got to her feet again and dashed off.
Crying out with pain and fear, she ran and ran.
When the two women came to the base of the watchtower, they paused to catch their breath. Their stark faces seemed to say, Could that really be D?
However, another question seemed plastered over nine-tenths of those faces. Reaching a hand behind her, Emily pulled out the needle that was stuck in her back. Her other hand remained pressed to the wound on her neck. The cut on her neck stopped just shy of the vertebrae, and the needle had narrowly spared her heart, so neither wound had been fatal. However, D’s attacks rarely let anyone off that lightly. Emily should’ve been dead twice over.
“That really was D, wasn’t it?” Beth asked. From the top of her head all the way down to her forehead, the rain was pounding against her bloody, exposed brain. Ordinarily, that would’ve been a fatal wound.
“I’m sure of it. But there was something different about him.”
Beth nodded at Emily’s reply. Every move she made caused the blood seeping from the top of her head to stain her chest and the ground.
Emily continued, “All our attacks went right through him. And while his sword wounded us, it didn’t manage to destroy us. It was D, but at the same time it wasn’t D.”
“In which case—”
The two girls looked back the way they’d come—toward the farmhouse where Bligh and the others slumbered.
Turning then toward the east, Emily said, “We’ve got until it starts getting light over yonder. Just how long should that ‘sleep juice’ in your blood keep working?”
“A little over three hours,” Beth replied.
“That’s almost until daybreak. Should be a nice challenge,” Emily said, baring her stark fangs in a smile.
Both of them were covered in blood. Their breathing was ragged, too. In a manner of speaking, they were half dead from their wounds. However, when Emily smiled, there was no longer any fear of the gorgeous Vampire Hunter in her.
III
The fire that’d broken out somewhere in the facility and the resulting malfunctions were not major concerns for the duchess. All she’d need to do was to isolate that sector. The Nobility had such science at their disposal that, if they so wished, they could put out a fire as large as a Frontier sector with an extinguisher no larger than the tip of the duchess’s little finger. And yet, while the way they had nothing better here for battling the flames than the ancient standbys of water and antiquated foam extinguishers seemed to be taking their love of nostalgia entirely too far, the duchess herself didn’t feel that way. She, too, was a member of the Nobility.
“Well, now, I simply must make the Sacred Ancestor’s hopes a reality before those two manage to locate me.”
The duchess raised her right hand.
The image that appeared in midair was that of the warrior, Lyle Brennan. His eyes were closed. He was unconscious. Having remained behind despite his wife’s wishes, he’d been easy enough for the duchess to abduct.
Two more figures appeared. One was U-taker. The other, the prototype.
Grouping the figures together in midair, the duchess used one hand to carry them to the back of the room. A hitherto-unglimpsed laboratory lay there. The duchess tossed all three of them, and each landed at length on a table. At the same time, machinery that had lain dormant lit up, and innumerable tubes and cords plugged into the trio of bodies.
“The time has finally come to give my blessing to the new fruits of this research. For millennia, I have developed these techniques of reconstruction—nay, of creation—and now I shall use them to bring a new form of life into being.” And then the eyes of the fearsome Noblewoman grew dark. “However, my actions run counter to the Sacred Ancestor’s orders. That I cannot do. I realize you wish to become something stronger. So I leave the rest to the three of you.”
“One thing bothers me,” Greylancer said, halting as if he’d just remembered something. Looking back at D, he continued, “The research here always ended in failure. And it was because of that that the duchess descended into madness.”
Nothing from the Hunter.
“If it was impossible to succeed in a sane frame of mind, she had no choice but to plunge into the abyss of insanity. Only there would she find the clue that would give rise to a new form of life, she insisted.”
“And did she find it?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, I’m not even sure whether she returned to her senses, or if even now she wanders a dark world of fears.” The Nobleman extended a single finger that was long and thick, yet still seemed gorgeous. “If she can produce some new normal form of life with the secret she obtained, that’s no problem. But if it’s some twisted, insane thing befitting a world of madness she found, the creatures she creates with it are bound to be misshapen monstrosities. The sort of creatures that would curse the world that gave them life, scorn it, lay waste to it without any regrets.”
“Like something out of myth?” D said, his voice flowing across the ground, seeping into it.
“Yes. We must find where she is as soon as possible, so that her experiments—” Greylancer stopped there.
D picked up the thread, saying, “Can you stop her?”
A pained look contorted the giant’s features. He immediately gave a vehement shake of his head, saying, “No, I can’t.”
“Then there’s no point in me working with you any longer. Let’s go our separate ways.”
“You say that so easily,” Greylancer replied with a wry grin. “But can you reach her without me to guide you?”
“If this place was constructed at the Sacred Ancestor’s bidding, I should manage.”
Greylancer studied D’s gorgeous features with gleaming eyes, quickly nodded, then said, “Yes, you probably could, at that. Very well then, D. We shall do as you suggest and part company here. Farewell.”
The Nobleman then bowed, and promptly walked off in the direction they’d come.
After watching him go, D started walking in the opposite direction at a brisk pace. Going about thirty feet, he turned and looked back.
The huge figure who was back where he’d started quickly ducked behind a corner. As the Hunter remained looking that way, the giant poked his head out again. When his eyes met D’s, he ducked back again, then came out sheepishly. Apparently the Nobleman had intended to trail along behind him.
The Hunter had no more time to spend with him. This time D started forward at an even faster pace. He immediately came to an elevator.
Halting there, he began thinking about something. He didn’t have his left hand.
D closed his eyes. The silent contemplation written on his lovely visage suggested he was listening to the voices of the night winds, or else reflecting on some fathomless cosmic philosophy.
The color suddenly drained from D’s face. Not out of fright. Rather, it was the result of terribly intense concentration. His skin quickly became nearly as clear as glass.
Some forty feet down the corridor, Greylancer poked his head around the corner.
“What’s he up to? Just what in the world is he?”
As the Nobleman murmured that, D went into action.
“What’s this?!”
The Hunter put his right hand against the elevator doors. They opened effortlessly.
“Wait! I’m getting on!” Greylancer shouted, dashing down the corridor.
The instant the giant form had piled in, the doors shut and the elevator began to move.
D remained standing there like a wrathful deity, his eyes closed. There was no murderous intent about him. However, that was far more unsettling than the instant he drew his sword to square off against someone might’ve been. Greylancer had probably never had such an uncomfortable ride. But it was over in just five seconds.
Greylancer watched in silence as D stepped out ahead of him. Following after the Hunter and exiting the elevator, the Nobleman unconsciously let a question slip out.
“Where are we?”
And the Nobleman was serious. Though he should’ve been well acquainted with this bizarre facility, he didn’t recognize the spot where they now stood. While in the elevator, his Noble sense of direction—far superior to that of human beings—had told him that they were racing right, then zooming left, then rising and falling diagonally over and over without rhyme or reason until ultimately, and impossibly, spinning in circles.
“Even the duchess doesn’t know about this. This is one very, very dangerous individual,” Greylancer murmured to himself. The way he then grinned was truly in character for the Nobleman.
Just six feet up ahead, D turned right at the corner. When the Nobleman followed suit just a few seconds later, crimson flashes shot by him on all sides. Particle beams. One of them bored through Greylancer’s chest.
Not showing a hint of pain, he raised his long spear up over his head. The beams all converged on the lengthy head of the weapon.
In a few seconds, the firing stopped.
“This is what put the ‘lance’ in ‘Greylancer’—now watch what it can do.”
He struck his long spear against the floor. Dozens of streaks of light shot from the head of it, tracing in reverse the paths they’d previously taken, headed back toward the launchers. Fireballs erupted from the walls and ceiling, spreading with ferocious speed as Greylancer followed after D. For the gorgeous young man had walked away without a baptism of crimson beams.
The Nobleman came to a spot where the corridor branched off in five directions.
“Now, which way should I go?”
The indications of a violent conflict came from the farthest of the corridors.
“This seems promising.”
Muttering to himself that he hoped there’d be no further beam attacks, Greylancer dashed on.
Turning the corner, he found D matching steel with multiple foes a dozen yards away. They were probably the peacekeeping forces for this sector. The men wore green uniforms the likes of which even Greylancer had never seen before, and were armed with spears and shields. Their movements were strangely sharp and quick, and they seemed to be giving D trouble.
However, the noted Noble warrior was left bugging his eyes. Every time D’s sword flashed out, members of the peacekeeping force were slain. Nine of them encircled the Hunter completely, spinning their spears to distract D and attacking at staggered intervals in an attempt to drive him into a corner. Given the length of their spears compared to his sword, their attacks left them at a definite advantage, and from what Greylancer saw, they were quite skilled.
D disregarded all of them. They didn’t even bother him. D didn’t move a single step from where he was—or even a fraction of an inch, for that matter, and he seemed to be swinging his blade without any particular plan.
This shouldn’t have been happening. The spearmen were supposedly striking from beyond the reach of the Hunter’s sword. And yet they were slain, one after another. Those who charged in, those who leapt into the air—naturally they would be cut down, but when those out at a safe distance were laid low in fresh blood, Greylancer thought it had to be some sort of miracle caused by a kind of magic unknown even to the Nobleman.
“H-he can cut down foes beyond the reach of his blade?!” Greylancer cried out in amazement.
Perhaps overhearing him, three of the surviving members turned toward the Nobleman. All the laser beams fired from the devices on their chests were absorbed by Greylancer’s long spear. One of the peacekeepers raced forward and hurled his spear. It was traveling faster than sound.. Faster than a bullet. With a light swing of his long spear, Greylancer sent it flying back.
Following the exact same course, the spear pierced the heart of the one who’d first hurled it. He was knocked back thirty feet, where he fell to the floor. His whole body turned into liquid, spreading out in all directions. He was an artificial human.
In the seconds that battle took, the other two charged to attack. Spears struck at his chest and face simultaneously, but Greylancer countered them with his speed. Parrying both at once, he arced his long spear around at the same time. Or rather, he spun it like a vortex. Though his two foes tried to release their spears, the weapons wouldn’t leave their hands.
The vortex spun at speeds more intense than living flesh could bear. Before even a full rotation was complete, the peacekeepers’ bodies had been broken down into bizarre flesh and organs. The parts spun with the vortex, and when Greylancer stopped his long spear, they hit the floor with tremendous force.
Gazing with disgust at the liquid spreading across the floor, Greylancer turned then to look over at D. The Hunter was already walking away. All that remained at the site of his battle were puddles.
“The way he’s going, it doesn’t look like I’ll ever be a match for him,” the Nobleman said, whipping his cape around and following after the Hunter.
The duchess was bound to have better defenses than this. What other manner of foes would stand in their way? Curiosity and excitement about those unknown challenges made the Greater Nobleman feverish from head to toe.
A dozen yards ahead of Greylancer, D continued his advance. Without warning, his footing gave way. The passageway beneath his feet had sunk. D fell.
Not only that, but the gigantic form of Greylancer also fell through the air. He’d watched as the walls and ceiling had crumbled like spun glass. Below, he could see water baring its white fangs.
Is that the sea?
Since ancient times, the tales had been spread: vampires feared running water, and, once in it, they wouldn’t surface again. And now hunter and hunted plummeted like rocks toward the eddying waters of that impossible, distant sea.
The Birth of a New Species
chapter 8
I
In the living room of the farmhouse, the tension was congealing into a jet-black mass. The sound of the driving rain seemed to send a miasma into the air.
“Two hours to go,” Arbuckle said, putting his pocket watch away and beginning to use his knife to sharpen a wooden stake he’d scrounged somewhere. “What about Jan’s corpse?” he asked. He wasn’t talking about its location.
“I went and had a look at him,” Josette replied from the back door, which she’d just come through. “No problem there. There’s never been a case of a vampire run through the heart coming back to life.”
“Now, we don’t know about that,” Arbuckle countered, brushing off the wood shavings that’d collected in his lap. “The monsters here in this village are somehow different from the ones we all kno
w. Who’s to say the servants of the Nobility are exceptions to that?”
“I really don’t like the sound of that,” Bligh said, abandoning his surveillance from the window and getting to his feet. “Think I’ll have a peek at him, too.”
Once he’d vanished through the doorway, Josette glared at Arbuckle and then, after hesitating for a moment, followed after Bligh.
Jan’s corpse lay in the middle of the floor. Checking him for a pulse and making sure he wasn’t breathing, Bligh gave a stiff smile and said, “Looks like we’re okay here.”
Pulling a crumpled paper package from his pocket, Bligh took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Those aren’t very good for your health.”
“What are you, a schoolmarm?”
Expelling smoke, Bligh stared at the warrior’s wife. Josette didn’t avert her gaze. She stared right back at Bligh until he became uncomfortable, then asked, “So, where were you headed?”
“A village not far from here. It’s called Angyoh. Know it?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Why? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“I know somebody there. Have something to deliver.”
“You don’t say.”
“Ain’t you worried about your hubby?” Bligh asked, his query mainly intended to try to take her off edge.
“Even if I were, it wouldn’t matter, would it?”
“Lady, you’re a lousy liar.”
The woman arched an eyebrow quizzically.
“You’re so worried about him you can barely stand it,” he continued. “Hell, it’s written all over your face. But it’s about time you gave up on him.”
“I know. So kindly drop it, will you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bligh replied, taking another drag on his cigarette.
“We’d better not let our guard down,” said the woman. “The two of them out there have the strength and cunning of the Nobility.”
“Yeah, I know that. But we’ve done all we can do, too. Mock Nobility or not, they won’t be so quick to come at us.”
Vampire Hunter D Volume 27 Page 14
