However, the fray came to a hasty conclusion. D and Gilzen had both turned to look in the same direction Lourié had initially come from.
“That voice—he’s been finished, I suppose.”
Gilzen made a light leap. D’s blade flew after him. All it cut was a piece of his cape, and by that point Gilzen had reached the door.
“I’m going on ahead. I shall be back. But, D, what would’ve happened if I wasn’t here right now, but rather was standing behind you?”
Before the Hunter knew it, the door had opened, and now it closed behind Gilzen.
“That bastard’s gained the power to teleport! The Nobility’s scientists couldn’t make that a reality for all their trying, but it looks like the aliens had the technology to do it. Anyway, I do wonder what would’ve happened.”
Despite the needling tone, D kept his silence, but his eyes suddenly shot toward Lourié. The diminutive figure was just being swallowed up by a pit that’d opened without warning. A black dagger whistled from D’s right hand, sinking halfway into the gap between the closing floor sections. Walking over like a shadow, D grabbed the dagger’s hilt with his left hand, and in an instant had twisted it in an impossible direction. Far off to the right something heavy moved. Beyond a concealed door loomed the entrance to a passageway wide enough for two adults to walk abreast.
“Looks like things aren’t going your way, eh? D, are you gonna look for the kid? Or—”
“The search for Gilzen comes first,” D informed the hoarse voice in a low, clipped tone before walking toward the passageway.
–
The woman had a hole in her chest that you could see clean through.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
To Vera’s query, the Huntress Lilia replied, “A little. I’m sure for the real Nobility, something like this would be a walk in the park, but for the half-baked version like me it’s not quite so easy.” Looking at the door to the back of the room, Lilia said, “Forget me; how’s she doing?”
“She” was the owner of the room they were in—Jeanne. The two of them were in an artlessly appointed living room with just a table and a few rough chairs, while the owner of the room lay in bed in the back bedroom now that her injury had been tended to.
“The wound’s no great problem, but the pain won’t subside. Unless Duke Gilzen lifts his curse, there’s nothing that can be done.”
“So that formless man is here to comfort her, then? He must be her beau.”
As Lilia extended her thumb, the gesture for boyfriend in some regions, the doctor applied a sterile pad to her naked back.
“Stop moving around. And I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Vera said reprovingly. But as she leveled that reproach, she couldn’t help but admit to herself that the woman who sat there with her thumb up was the only reason she and Jeanne were still alive.
It had been a horrifying split second—the faceless creature’s gun had pierced Lilia’s heart, and ignoring her as she staggered, it had drawn the longsword from its hip as it bore down on them. Vera had felt the wings of death brush her. But their foe was knocked thirty feet down the corridor, where it slammed into a stone pillar. Look as she might, Vera had seen no one there but the other two women.
III
“Get into her room,” a masculine voice from midair had urged them. “Hurry. I’m going to reorganize the area.”
And before their very eyes a stone wall the width of the corridor lowered from the ceiling, cutting the faceless figure off from the three women.
Thirty minutes had passed since they’d followed those directions, and nothing had happened. Apparently the faceless figure had left.
Securing her ample bosom once more in a bra and donning her beloved combat gear, Lilia stretched her shoulders. The bones creaked.
“I’m fine now. Doctor, that was an interesting experience, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” she had to confess.
Naturally, Vera had never treated a Noble or a pseudo-Noble—one who’d been bitten but not turned—before. Even though the Huntress’s heart had narrowly escaped injury, what seemed to be a kind of heat ray had blasted right through the woman—yet to the doctor’s amazement, the Huntress was still breathing normally. And Vera could hardly believe that Lilia’s wound had half closed by the time she put her clothes back on. If this was what a pseudo-Noble was like, she couldn’t begin to imagine the regenerative abilities of the Nobility. That a primitive thing like a wooden stake could destroy them was like something out of a nightmare.
“Even if we’d left it alone it would’ve healed, but you have my thanks anyway, Doctor.”
Lilia smiled at her, seeming no different than she’d been before—or, if anything, far more cheerful.
She’s been bitten by a Noble? The only things that kept Vera from questioning that were the ferocity of the unearthly aura she’d seen earlier when Lilia had faced the featureless opponent and the white scarf wound around Lilia’s neck.
“What’ll become of you?” Vera said, giving voice to the question that had arisen while she was looking at the Huntress. It was a question that’d been posed by the families, friends, and lovers of countless victims of the Nobility.
Lilia smiled thinly. “It’s a little late to be asking that, isn’t it. You know full well.”
“You don’t have a problem with becoming a Noble?” Vera asked, unwilling to let the issue rest.
“There’s nothing I can do about it. Oh, Doctor, in the interest of medical science, I’ll tell you all about what it’s like being a victim of the Nobility. Think of it as my last bit of humanity, if you will. First, for the physical stuff—well, it’s a strange feeling. You feel lethargic, and yet it’s like you’re in prime shape—like a really powerful motor that’s not firing on all cylinders, if you can understand that.”
“More or less, I suppose.”
Lilia’s smile broadened. Incisors peeked disturbingly from the corners of her vermilion lips. A chill raced down Vera’s spine.
“Great,” Lilia said with an impassive nod. “Next, for the psychological effects: well, first of all, there’s this respect and fear toward the one who bit you. Like the sort of feelings a servant has toward the master of the house.”
In her heart, Vera sighed with grief.
“But is that your will? It’s not the Noble forcing his consciousness onto you?”
“It’s completely me. Come on, don’t make that face. I’m not sad about it at all. I’m filled with so much more power than before, I tremble at the thought of it.”
“Oh, Lilia—you’ll go on to attack humans!”
“Stop it!” Lilia exclaimed, but her words were no more than meaningless sound waves to Vera. This woman professed joy at being made a servant of the Nobility—and she had given medical aid to such a creature. If she could, right on this very spot, she’d see to it that—
“Doctor, don’t get any funny ideas, okay?”
“Huh?” Vera thought the woman had her pegged.
“Doctor,” Lilia said, her eyes burning red. Making no effort to disguise her naked supernatural aura, she took Vera’s hand. The Huntress’s grip was so cold that the doctor felt numbness before she experienced any pain.
“Stop. I didn’t do anything.”
“The victim of a victim becomes just like them,” Lilia said, her breath brushing the doctor’s throat.
“Don’t!”
The lady doctor was paralyzed by the greatest fear known to mankind. Becoming a Noble—that meant devolving into a demon that roamed the night in search of living human blood. This was no nightmare. It was reality, and less than two inches from her.
“Doctor . . .”
Something hard touched the nape of her neck. It slowly poked into her. In two spots.
“Stop!”
Vera shook from head to toe.
A tiny scream rose near her ear—and moved off.
“What happened?” asked a masculine voice. It was that of the man without form.
/>
“I don’t know—look,” said Lilia.
“But that’s—” The man’s voice was tense. “Your right hand exploded. Who did that to you? Never mind. I know.”
Know what?
Vera’s shaking didn’t seem likely to stop. She trembled with a speed so far beyond the normal range it had injured the Huntress, but she hadn’t even noticed.
“Calm down,” the man’s voice said. “You’re an incredibly dangerous woman, it seems. There’s still work that we would have you do. We won’t harm you.”
Vera felt her tremors abating. She opened her eyes.
Lilia was slumped against the wall, gazing at her. Her left hand held her right arm, which was missing its hand from the wrist down. No blood flowed from it. The stub was charred black. Gazing at Vera, she gave her a look that seemed to say, Not too shabby. Hers wasn’t a very grave injury.
“What—what did I do?”
“I’ll tell you later. In the meantime, you can continue your doctoring.”
Vera shook her head. She was terribly weary. “I’ve already done all I can for her.”
“This is another case. Come with me,” said the man’s voice.
“But I can’t even see you!”
“You can hear me, though.”
Ultimately, Vera had no choice but to comply. Following the voice’s directions, she left Jeanne’s quarters and advanced down the corridor. Her terror of running into that faceless creature was beyond the pale, but fortunately she didn’t encounter it in her travels. She asked what it was, but got no reply.
“Here.”
She stood before a stone door. She didn’t have long to wait before it opened. The smell of disinfectant struck her. Stepping into a room the color of a cloudy day, Vera gasped out loud and froze in her tracks.
–
Lourié was at the bottom of the hole, surveying his surroundings. It felt like he’d fallen more than a thousand yards, but he couldn’t be sure. Halfway down it’d become too much trouble to keep track of the distance. As he fell, he wondered what kind of scientific technology the castle was equipped with. For instance, the pit that he was falling into obviously had to be some mode of transportation. But it was so primitive. Yet the way the mountain had been transformed into a castle in the blink of an eye seemed a feat that would be impossible without otherworldly technology. There was a tremendous gap between the two—and try as he might, the boy could find no way to bridge it.
I’ve slowed down all of a sudden, he thought, and at that moment there was a light impact on the soles of his shoes, then his body rose slowly. He realized he’d sunk into something soft, and was now rising from the recoil.
“How primitive,” he said, in spite of himself.
It was the same principle as dropping something onto a sack of feathers. The thought of the bottom half of the pit—a thousand yards’ worth of feathers—nearly made Lourié laugh. The boy’s heart didn’t lack for courage.
When he stopped rising, he found an iron door set in the wall before him. He pushed against it, and it opened easily. Stone corridors just like the others continued on the other side. All he could do was press forward. He was worried about his father—and Vera, Lilia, and Dust. Dr. Vera was kind. Lilia talked tough, but she wasn’t a bad person. There was something about Dust that reminded him of his father. And he wouldn’t abandon any of them. Don’t turn your back on what needs to be done. That was the one principle his father had impressed upon him.
“What’s this?”
He was nearly out of breath when he halted.
A change had come over the smooth walls, floor, and ceiling of the corridor. Horrible cracks that took the boy’s breath away ran through everything, leaving the rock beneath exposed and tilting the floor up ahead of him. He climbed a fairly steep ascent to the top of a rise.
“Did an earthquake do this?”
But Lourié quickly realized it hadn’t been that. At the bottom of a great cone-shaped subsidence the far side of which he couldn’t make out, an enormous dome-like tent of what could’ve been vinyl or metal had come into view.
“What in the world is that?”
Terror wrapped around his heart, threatening to stop it. Still, his hands and feet didn’t halt. The protrusions and cracks in the rock proved useful for hand- and footholds. He descended a good five hundred yards.
At last he understood the scale of the tent. It was roughly the size of a small pyramid. Standing fifty yards high, it was over a hundred yards long. The material looked like metal.
He arrived at the bottom. All the while checking his surroundings for any sound or sign of anyone else, Lourié went over to the tent. There was no way in or out of it. Reaching for the bottom edge of the metal covering, he tried to pull it up. It lifted without any resistance. A dazzling light illuminated the boy’s legs below the knees. Bending over, he squeezed through. There was no hesitation.
Light enveloped him from head to toe. Countless lights supported by iron frames were brightly illuminating an object sunk in the stone floor about ten yards up ahead. Its overall outline resembled the planet Saturn stretched out horizontally. Only it wasn’t a ring that surrounded the elliptical craft; it was a disk. Both the craft and the disk were twisted at the point of some long-ago impact, crumpled and looking like the slightest push would make them squeal like an accordion. With one glance Lourié noticed that the crumpled portion of the top of the craft gaped open.
About sixty feet up, the saucer was connected to the ground by what looked to be a simple elevator. When the boy approached it, the stench of oil struck him. Apparently it used an old gasoline-powered motor. At the very least, when this craft crashed here, the Nobility’s civilization could manage no more than this. Locating an operating lever on the side of the greasy motor, he gave it a pull. It began to whine. It performed just as it had ten thousand years earlier. In light of the restoration that had taken place in the castle, fixing up one small motor probably hadn’t been a problem.
Getting into a box with an iron-mesh bottom, Lourié pushed a button set in the wall. With a rasping sound the elevator began to climb. Moving at considerable speed, it soon reached the top.
From the elevator door to the crumpled front of the craft, iron plates had been laid out. More than the thought of how much effort that had entailed, it was the thickness of the saucer skin Lourié saw during his ascent that made his eyes bug in their sockets. It was like gold leaf. It was less than four hundredths of an inch thick. Forget what would happen if it collided with something; it seemed as if the approach of a candle would be enough to melt it like lead. Yet it felt overwhelmingly strong beneath his feet.
The damaged portion had a hole in it large enough for two adults to pass through side by side. Halting, Lourié fought to control his breathing. Fear of the unknown and unmistakable excitement burned in his chest.
Sufficient light filled the damaged section of the interior. Apparently the crew’s sense of sight didn’t differ greatly from that of human beings. Judging from the form of the foe he’d encountered in the great hall above, he thought the craft wouldn’t be much different from one built for humans, and things were pretty much as he expected. The passageway and walls were made of the same material as the saucer, which didn’t seem incongruous. However, the tilt of the craft was steep, and Lourié quickly abandoned plans to climb up higher. As there were no handrails, he kept both feet planted firmly and followed the passageway lower—descending into the nose of the craft.
Something strange happened after the boy had gone a few yards. It felt as if his body was being pushed against the floor—and the instant he realized the truth, the mystery of it was solved.
It’s creating artificial gravity, Lourié thought, standing up straight. His body was at an angle, but it stood perpendicular to the floor. Even after ten thousand long years, this thing still worked! The computer that ran the craft had begun to create a comfortable environment for the new “crewman” that’d boarded it.
It c
ame as no surprise there were signs of terrible destruction where it sank into the ground, with the walls cracked or utterly crumpled. It seemed unlikely Lourié would be able to advance any farther. On the right wall of the corridor he spied what appeared to be an elevator. There was a switch to the right of it. Though he pressed the up button, nothing happened. Down. That one lit up with red. Another door into the unknown opened.
The boy’s body trembled. His eyes were agleam.
There was no switch inside. The walls and ceiling were made of a material that might’ve been either glass or plastic. He touched it in a number of places, but there was no response. Thinking for a moment, he said, “The lower deck.”
The ceiling gleamed and the door closed.
“It understands what I say,” Lourié remarked, but he had no time at all for surprise before the door opened.
He thought it must’ve been an error, but the scene outside was different. He’d arrived without even the slightest sensation of moving.
Oddly enough, the lower deck was less damaged than the front portion. The elevator was at the center of two intersecting corridors, and there was a door to either side of it.
Standing before the closer one, he commanded, “Open.”
It opened.
Taking a cautious peek inside, Lourié gasped. Something hot bubbled up beneath his feet, and his body quaked violently.
Death Within, Death Without
chapter 3
I
The room was stocked with what looked to be weapons. There were row upon row of them, some looking like rifles and pistols; others looking like tubes resembling mortars, long spears, and swords that appeared for all the world to be made of bronze and iron; and others that seemed to be crystals fused together into weapons the use of which was unclear. Dozens of each kind sat on the racks, gleaming. All were probably ready for immediate use.
Lourié’s eye was caught by a small handgun. While swords and spears were commonplace on the Frontier, the much rarer firearms and laser blasters were the object of many a child’s adoration. Keeping his senses keen for signs of anyone else, the boy went over to the rack near the back and reached out for the gun—
Vampire Hunter D Volume 22 Page 16
