More dazzling than the snowfields, the one he referred to kept his silence.
“They may be a little on the slow side, but those claws move ten times faster than a man. And there he was, taking out five at a time, six swipes of his sword to finish the lot without taking even a scratch. I’m not sure which one’s the monster. I’d never seen what a dhampir could do before.”
As they walked side by side, Lilia asked D, “So, Mr. Dhampir, mind if I put a question to you?”
“That depends.”
Furrowing her brow at the hoarse tone, she said, “What were you doing outside? Don’t tell me you noticed the two of them had gone and went after them.”
“That’s the ticket,” the hoarse voice croaked.
Lilia said nothing at that.
“Truth be told, I’m a big softy. Sweet natured—oh, it’s a beautiful thing, heh heh heh!” The chortling ended in a choked cry of pain.
His left hand still balled in a fist, D said, “I was surveying the area.”
“I expected as much. No way a man like you’d be worried about anyone else. After all, you’re a little prince descended from the blood of the Nobility.”
There was a stark flash before her eyes. A clang rang out, accompanied by sparks. D’s blade was stopped right in front of Lilia’s nose by her dagger. It quickly came away.
While D sheathed his blade as if nothing had happened and started to walk away in silence, she called out after him, “Was that supposed to be some sort of threat? Sorry, but I’m a pro, too. Still, it was pretty good. I didn’t even have time to draw my longsword. You’ll get your payback when this job is finished.”
“Let it go.”
“What?” With that angry question, Lilia turned and found Dust, who was also about to walk away. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Without halting, he said in a grave tone, “I’m surprised he let you live. Treated you like a lady, I guess. He’s a softy, that much is for sure. But a softy to be feared.”
“Take that back. I stopped his sword,” Lilia retorted, unable to restrain herself. Her pride as a Hunter was at stake.
“Because he cut you in a way that would allow you to stop him.”
“Allow me to stop him? And what’s this about cutting me?”
Lowering his left hand, Dust rubbed the tip of her nose with his index finger. “Get that taken care of. It’ll spoil your looks.”
“Just a—” she shouted to him as he walked away with the child strapped to his back, but then the Huntress noticed something out of the ordinary. Feeling an itch, she touched her index finger to her face, then held it out in front of her eyes.
“It can’t be,” she groaned in a low voice. It was a tone she’d never heard herself use, full of surprise, fear, and despair.
Her fingertip was damp with red. It was Lilia’s own lifeblood, trickling from the wound D’s blade had dealt her.
II
It was an hour later that the whole group set out. Once they’d partaken of some of the emergency rations the refuge was stocked with for humans, it only took thirty seconds to pack up the refuge. On seeing how the structure folded up into something the size of a slim music player with one press of a switch, Crey whistled.
“That was a hell of a thing for ’em to make. Were the Nobles into mountain climbing in the snow, too? You know, because it was there? I bet they enjoyed skiing in winter.” Clutching his belly, Crey laughed. “What do you think, D? Picture it: pretty boys with fangs in black capes and women in evening dresses getting in a little night skiing. Laugh it up. C’mon! Give us a smile.”
Naturally, D didn’t reply; he just walked on ahead of the rest.
“Hey, wait up!” Lilia was about to chase after him when a hand reached for her shoulder, but the woman’s form spurted forward as if driven by a gust of air.
Crey was grinning. That was probably par for the course with him. “A long time ago, I went to this island nation that’d half sunk into the sea. They had this weird phenomenon, a kind of mirage they called ‘the fleeing water.’ Just when you were about to touch it, it’d be off in the distance again. You’re ‘the fleeing woman.’ ”
“In that case, try touching me,” Lilia said, twisting her body provocatively.
“Maybe when you’re a little more my type,” he replied. “That reminds me—is D alive?”
“What?” Lilia looked at the outlaw as if he’d lost his mind. Then a spiteful look rose on her face, and she replied, “Only half, I suppose.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
Crey tossed his chin in the direction of the snow. “Pretty as a picture. Not a track on it.”
There was no reply.
Those behind him—the doctor and her protector with the burdensome boy—also looked down at the pristine snow, then turned their eyes toward D with unsettled looks on their faces.
Did the sunlight of this fair day wish to conspire with him? Or was it that the endless silvery expanse would expel him, eternally cursed as he was? Whatever the case, no trace of the figure in black could be seen any longer.
“Heeeeeeeeey!”
The shout was in a man’s voice. D halted, started to turn around, and then halted again.
“What is it?” asked the hoarse voice from the vicinity of his left hand.
“If I turn around, my head will fly.”
“What?”
“I’m walking on the course.”
“The course? Damn, I didn’t know that was there. You’ve got to get off to one side.”
“It’s no use. Once you’re on this route, you could walk forever. We’ve got to somehow find the exit.”
“Hmm. I hadn’t even noticed. When in the blazes did we . . .”
“You’re useless,” D said, his tone colder than ice and snow.
“Shit. The cold air’s dulled my senses. What’ll we do?”
“All we can do is go on.”
“Is their sword faster than yours?”
“It’d be close. But if my head were cut off, I’d need to be brought back to life. Could you manage that?”
The hoarse voice hesitated. What came next was a distressed groan. “To be honest, my eyelids are feeling pretty heavy. I’d appreciate it if you could pull through this on your own.”
“Useless.” D’s tone was cold, but there was no blame in it. Even without his left hand and the hoarse voice, the young man could go it alone. However, the path passed by a rocky ridge. Would it lead to death before he reached it?
“What’ll you do?” the hoarse voice asked, even hoarser than usual.
D walked on without replying. Features gorgeous enough to shame the white snow showed no change, nor did his stride alter. It was only three more yards to the ridge. Two yards. One. Now, just a few more—
The wind whistled behind him. The sound raced toward D’s neck. A flash of light met it. Fresh blood sailed into the air, tingeing the snow. D’s blood. He pressed his left hand to the right side of his neck. Blood poured from his wrist, and from there it sailed up into the air, scattering red spots six or seven feet ahead of him. The gleam returned to D’s hand. A dazzling sword blade.
Down on the snow, groans of pain rang out. If they’d known they issued from the Hunter’s severed left hand, whoever was behind him would’ve lost their nerve.
D moved swiftly, pressing the stump at the end of his arm to the wrist where it stuck out of the snow. He raised the limb. All five fingers worked normally. He then pressed it to the wound on his neck. Although D had brought his left hand up to shield his neck, the blade of his unseen foe had still cut him. But the lifeblood spouting from it stopped dead. His left hand came away. Only a thin red line remained there.
“You did it!” exclaimed the hoarse voice from his left hand. “You wiped it out without ever seeing it or knowing what it was. It’s stuff like this that makes me not wanna be around you in the mountains, at the sea, or anywhere. Still, it was a hell of a mountain beast
to be a match for you in speed. And the way you closed on it like you didn’t give a . . .”
The voice petered out.
Quickly, its tone became angry. “I don’t care how badly you wanted to keep your head from getting lopped off, you’re an idiot for using me as a shield. Thanks to you, I’m in a world of pain! Hey, where are you going?”
D had begun walking back across the snow the way he’d come.
“It wasn’t destroyed.”
“What?”
“I cut it in a vital spot, but it’ll take a moment for it to succumb to the wound. That moment is the problem.”
“Oh, you can’t be serious. They’re coming!”
D was walking right toward them. He hadn’t been walking for five minutes when five figures came into view on the snowfield before him. Even the boy was walking again.
“Can you sense its presence?” asked D.
“Nope.”
At that frank reply, D quickened his pace.
“Oh!” the hoarse voice exclaimed, sounding both surprised and impressed.
Though Crey and Lilia looked for all the world to be casually ambling along, they’d leapt to either side in unison. An instant later, they had knife and longsword in hand. No one had even seen them draw. Their movements were like a jump in a spliced piece of film. But something unseen sent a cry of pain into the air.
“They did it,” the left hand groaned from the vicinity of D’s waist. “Seems you’re not the only one here good enough to lay into something that can’t be seen or sensed. And there’s two of ’em, at that.”
“Hey, did you see that, stud?” Crey called out, hand cupped beside his mouth.
The group came running over. The boy was at the fore.
“You must’ve seen that just now, right? One jab of my knife!”
“Oh my, that was nice work,” the left hand replied. “But the goddess here apparently begs to differ.”
Alone, Lilia walked over magnanimously, but when she finally joined them, she glared at Crey. “I’m sure you aren’t claiming all the credit, or are you?”
“You’re a fine one to be making claims to the contrary. It was my knife that did the trick. You know, kid, that thing was going for you. And your good buddy Crey saved your bacon. I hope you appreciate that.”
“How would the kid know? You’re the lowest of the low, stacking one lie on top of the next. Scum!”
“Oh, you’ve got some nerve, saying that. You trying to tell me it was that little trinket of yours that saved the kid?”
“Well, it was faster than that butter knife of yours, at least.”
“Perfect!” Crey grinned, taking his hand off Lourié’s head. “I haven’t liked you from the get-go. I’ll show you what a woman’s place is!”
“Oh, that sounds like a fun proposal. I was just thinking how a certain talentless, brainless man needed to learn his place.”
The Huntress and the outlaw, two people who could never have been expected to understand each other, were enveloped in the air that suited them best—the lust for blood. Lourié was frozen in his tracks, but the doctor wrapped her arms around him from behind. The wind that blustered by carried the chill of the ice fields. Even colder than that was the murderous intent that seemed to freeze even the form of the Hunter of unearthly beauty.
III
“Hey,” the hoarse voice asked in a low tone, “are you sure you don’t wanna stop this? Now, I’m well aware you didn’t come back because you were worried about them. You came to take care of that wounded monster, right? Still, this is getting serious. Why don’t you stop ’em?”
From D—silence.
After that, the hoarse voice continued in a disgusted tone, “Don’t tell me you wanna see what the two of ’em can do. One’s gonna end up dead! Hell, if things go badly, maybe both of ’em.”
Not so much as an eyebrow raised in that heavenly visage as it gazed at the man and woman squaring off. So beautiful, and so cold. Is that what you are, D?
However, the truth was made an eternal mystery by the sound of something slashing through the air. And not just one thing. It was the light whistle of innumerable things closing from above. A gleam danced out. Sparks flew, and a metallic clang traveled across the ice fields. All around the group, steel arrows struck the ground. There had to be at least fifty of them.
“Who the hell is it?” Crey said, looking ahead and to the right.
“The mountain folk, I’d say.” Lilia was facing in the same direction.
“Set up the refuge,” D instructed her.
“No, they’ll ruin it. It cost me a fortune!”
As Lilia turned away in a snit, Vera shouted, “We’ve got a child here!”
At the same time there was the report of a rifle, and something hot scraped past the Huntress’s cheek. Everyone but D dove to the ground.
“That does it!” Lilia reached for the folded refuge tucked through her belt. There was no other option.
D’s right hand came up. In the same direction Lilia and Crey had looked, a succession of cries D alone could hear rang out. He’d thrown his rough wooden needles. More than a hundred yards away, a number of red splotches spread on the snow.
“Not too shabby,” Crey said, and when he turned there was a gleam in his eye. Had he known the weapons that’d flown over a hundred yards were light, slim needles of wood, he might’ve wet himself. A fresh gunshot made him turn his head once more. “Sons of bitches! They’ve got rifles.”
“I can’t see them.”
“That’s what the mountain folk around here are known for. They wear chameleon suits.” Vera’s words explained the mystery.
Chameleon suits were clothing that mimicked certain animals’ ability to make their bodies blend in with the coloring of their surroundings. Just as black clothes let one meld with the darkness, these suits would make the wearer suddenly disappear from view. Moreover, they took away the perception of depth, making it impossible to spot them. In the endless expanse of white, a foe like this could close on their prey more easily than a snow panther, then strike with their weapons. It was said that if they could maintain a certain distance, the outcome of the battle was one hundred percent clear.
“Hey, get down!” Dust shouted to the Hunter.
“Leave him be,” said Crey.
“He’s a dhampir!” Lilia added.
Apparently this was something that the two of them could agree upon. This exchange exposed the natures of the three people.
When D bent down, shots zinged over his head. Three of them.
“Six, all told,” the hoarse voice whispered.
“A scouting party,” said Lilia. “Leave this to me.”
“Quit it. You’d just piss yourself!”
A look burning with fierce flames of loathing speared Crey. “You’re going to regret saying that soon!”
“Sorry, but the only thing I regret is being born into this sorry world.”
“Knock it off!” Dust growled in a low voice, and then Lilia stood up.
“What?” someone gasped—Lilia herself.
One step ahead of her, the figure in black dashed by, his right hand swinging around behind him, filling not only his own field of view with white but Lilia’s too. That slash of D’s blade had thrown up a cloud of snow. While it allowed the hot lead to pass, the snow closed on the gunshots like a storm. No doubt the marksmen had underestimated D’s group. After all, it seemed impossible to pinpoint the shooters’ location by the sound of their gunshots alone. D’s needles had already slain four of them. And gunshots had rung out since.
A white whirlwind arose in one section of the snowfield. Suddenly it changed to crimson, and two red figures fell without a word and writhed in the snow.
“Oh!” The hoarse voice was directed at Lilia, who was beside D and had just made a swipe with her longsword. Fresh blood spattered across the snow.
“I won’t have you grabbing all the glory!”
Perhaps the hoarse voice’s cry was a reaction t
o her smile. At last she had an opportunity to display her skill—her smile said as much. And this woman, too, was a gorgeous warrior.
“Well? Ready to admit I’m every bit as good as you are?”
“Idiot.”
Lilia turned around indignantly. She was greeted by Crey’s sarcastic smirk.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Crey gave a wordless jerk of his chin toward D, who was stripping a coat from a man’s bloodied corpse.
“See? He struck his opponents in the head, so that the chameleon suits could be used. You, on the other hand, had to be the showboat and cut them open from the base of the neck down to the lungs. A coat we could’ve used, down the shitter. That’s the kind of dumb move I’d expect from a woman.”
“Now you’ve done it, you cheap little thug!”
A vortex of hatred radiated from every inch of Lilia. And Crey held a gleaming knife in his right hand.
However, the showdown between the incompatible compatriots was unavoidably interrupted by a grave masculine voice. “Stop. When the scouting party doesn’t return, it won’t be long before more mountain folk come. This is no time for squabbling among ourselves—look!”
Their eyes nearly popped out of their heads as they followed Dust’s gaze, colored first by amazement—and then anger.
Carrying an essentially undamaged chameleon suit and a rifle over one shoulder, D had started walking toward the ridge.
“That bastard’s just doing his own thing.” Crey’s tone was neutral, his anger having passed.
“Let’s go,” Dust called to Vera and Lourié, stepping forward with solemn strides.
“Oh, hell. Next time, then,” Crey spat, following after them.
“Damn it all,” Lilia said, and she was just about to press forward when Dust and Vera turned to face her.
“There’s another set of gear.”
“Oh—the refuge,” she said.
Lilia halted, and with seeming trepidation she began to turn her face to the left. The black dome of the refuge she’d set up at D and Vera’s request loomed on the snowfield. Folding it up was quick enough. With a glum expression, Lilia followed the group with her gaze, watching as they walked away without a backward glance, and then, with resignation, bending over the corpse of a fallen bandit.
Vampire Hunter D Volume 22 Page 7
