Earth, wind, fire, and water—all four elements had been assembled. In less than three seconds the strange suction ended. It seemed to have some significance to D, as he then walked over to the rim of the crack in the earth. His horse whinnied and backed away. Arriving at the edge of the precipitous drop, D pulled out a knife with his left hand.
In his mind, something spoke to him and asked: Are you going to do it?
The Hunter drew his left hand back behind his head.
A gleaming sphere poked halfway out of Bingo’s mouth.
How I’ve waited for this day so very long. The whole reason I attacked you was because I thought you might put me to rest.
D stopped moving. The prismatic sphere leisurely approached his head.
“Why don’t you put yourself at rest?” the Hunter asked.
I tried, but I could not, even though it was what I wished. The temptation to rise again was simply too great. You must tell me, am I the only one who finds it so?
D bent back at the waist. The globe burst without a trace.
Tell me. Everyone wishes to be something else, don’t they? Even when they know that it would involve incredible pain and weariness.
D’s knife became a flash of light flying through the air.
Don’t they?
The flash of light disappeared, swallowed up by part of the crystal forest.
Without pause, D mounted his horse.
“Is that the end of it?” Bingo inquired in a vague tone.
Giving no reply, D began to slowly ride away. After his mount had taken three steps, what sounded like a sigh could be heard from the hole at his back. Seven steps and one part of the crystals gave off a pale glow. Ten steps and the glow became points of light that collapsed into the crystal with a serene sound. After this, nothing more could be heard. Perhaps that’s how ruin was. Thousands and then tens of thousands of cracks raced through the glittering mass. Countless fragments formed, and then collapsed.
The two figures slowly riding away didn’t flinch. Needless to say, they didn’t look back, either.
.
Two hours after Granny and Clay looked around in amazement at the suddenly abating sandstorm, D and Bingo returned.
“It’s finished, isn’t it?” Granny asked. “If it’s a regular desert now, we should have no problem. Another two days and we’ll be across it. It looks like we’ll somehow make our arrival date after all. Well, then, let’s get a move on!” the old woman cried, pulling on her reins. Her team of four cyborg horses began tearing up the ground.
“Somebody up there must like that guy,” Clay grumbled as he climbed on the horse behind his older brother. “Of course, since he had you with him, bro, there was never any question he’d be okay.” Only after he’d said it did he seem to realize the contradiction in that logic; he could do no more than don an odd expression.
D rode by the brothers and asked, “Why did you stop what you were doing back there?”
His question dwindled in the distance, but in the end, Bingo never replied.
.
Three days later, in the early morning, the party entered the town of Barnabas.
“Well, this is where we say our goodbyes. Really, the only reason we made it this far was thanks to all of you. I could thank you a million times. Hey, you come out here, too,” the absurdly jubilant Granny called back to Tae from the driver’s seat.
D rode on without saying a word. Right behind him was Bingo on his horse, and Clay—who, not surprisingly, had climbed down to the ground.
“What, you boys going already?” asked the old woman. “I was just about to go deliver the girl to her home. Say, before I do, why don’t we have ourselves a drink?”
Clay alone looked back at her. When he saw the figure that lingered by Granny’s side like a white bloom, his ferocious face was suffused by a wondrous peace.
Perhaps noticing him, Tae lowered her head a bit.
Cupping his hand by his mouth, Clay coarsely shouted, “Hey, missy! I’ll be seeing you! It was a fun trip. Oh, and Granny—I’ll be sure to pay you back for making him go rescue me that time.”
“Okay, but I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting on it,” Granny said, both her voice and form dwindling in the distance, as did the form of the girl by her side. No one noticed that the girl watched the back of that black long coat for ages, her eyes hinting that it was the most dazzling thing she’d ever seen.
Wasting no time, D rode down one of the main streets and dismounted in front of a three-story building five blocks away. There was no sign of the Bullow Brothers; the town of Barnabas had a population of twenty-five hundred. As far as the buildings went, most were made of wood. Only after D had disappeared through a doorway did the first hopeless sighs escape from the dazed women who stood paralyzed in various parts of the street.
Just inside the door was a staircase, and to the right of the stairs hung a brass plaque engraved with the names of tenants.
Room 202: Thornton Law Offices. A black-gloved hand rapped on the door in question, and it opened right away. A young lady—apparently the secretary—froze there with her lipstick-rimmed mouth agape.
“Oh, don’t mind her—c’mon in!” a voice the Hunter had heard before called from beyond the entryway.
Gently pushing the woman aside, D slipped through the waiting room and opened the door.
The room was of moderate size. Behind the desk by the window sat Thornton, a sullen look on his face. “Welcome. Right on time. But what else should I expect from Vampire Hunter D?” The lawyer offered his hand, but then reconsidered and withdrew it. Many Hunters avoided shaking hands. It was a precaution against being caught off-guard.
“Tell me what I want to hear,” D said softly.
Thornton’s condition had been that he cross the desert and reach this location by a designated time—which was this morning. Now it was time to collect on the other half of the bargain.
“You aren’t going to ask how I was able to get here before you?” asked Thornton.
“No,” the Hunter replied, “Although there aren’t many who can operate a flyer.”
The lawyer nodded, saying, “I happen to be one of them, though. So, how was your trip?”
“Where did you meet him?” asked D.
“You should ask him that yourself.”
For the first time a hue of emotion surfaced on D’s face. “Where is he?”
“He’s in a certain run-down house on the southern edge of town. A long time ago, it was a Noble’s mansion. It’s all overgrown with weeds, but it seems he chooses his lodging based less on present appearances, and more on past glories. He should be sleeping at this hour.”
D turned around.
“Wait. I was merely conveying a message for him. Nobility or not, he is my client, you know. Why did he have you cross the desert?” Thornton asked, but his words merely crumbled as they met D’s back.
As the secretary watched him go, her mouth dropped open once more.
Thirty minutes later, the Vampire Hunter showed up at the dilapidated mansion. Across from the entrance, where even the bronze had crumbled with age, lay a hall as vast as the sea.
“Watch yourself,” his left hand said. “He’s here. I can feel him.”
And, almost as if to overshadow that remark, a solemn voice said, So glad you could make it.
The source of that comment was clear. Halfway up the grand staircase that curved into the feeble darkness from the far end of the hall there stood a ghostly figure.
Crossing that desert was to be a trial for you. Not one of combat. What you witnessed was the end of something.
There was a flash from D’s left hand, and three streaks of white light zipped through the black figure. As the rough wooden needles were swallowed by the darkness behind him, the figure smiled silently.
What did you see? What did you think? What of your own future? Do you still intend to subject yourself to day after merciless day of this? Do you not yearn for a life of peace?
D ran without making a sound. The rotten boards couldn’t take the impact of a pebble, but as D dashed across them he didn’t leave a single footprint. The Hunter cleared the first twenty stairs in just two bounds. He sprang—then slashed.
As the blade came straight down from above, the figure made no attempt to dodge it, but simply let it come. The blow passed through him without meeting any resistance.
This is your answer, then? Very well. That is what makes you my only success. But so long as you embrace that fate, death will ever cast its shadow over you.
Once again, D’s blade shot up from below, slicing the steel banister in two.
“It’s no use,” the voice in his left hand said. “This is just some residual image from the past. Quit it already.”
The shadowy figure leisurely receded up the staircase.
About to follow him, D was suddenly struck by a strange sensation—like he had just awoken from a dream. A single bound took him down the staircase, and the world grew hazy. Now D was in a dream. If the dreamer awoke, it would all disappear. The power to manipulate dreams was truly incredible.
D’s left hand stretched out before him. A black line shot out toward the door. Even that rectangular region was distorted, but the instant it burst open to reveal blue sky, the door returned to reality.
Leaping out into the overgrown garden, D looked over his shoulder. The house behind him suddenly vanished, and a few prismatic orbs of light drifted toward him. Dreams. The orbs themselves were purely dreams. Anything they touched turned to dreams and faded away.
The black thread snagged a globe of light in midair. A second later, D drove his blade into the stain spreading across the surface of the globe, and the substance of the dream shattered to pieces.
“Outstanding!” a sleepy voice could be heard to say from the overgrown grass. As the swaying figure got to his feet, his legs wobbled unsteadily.
“Where’s your brother?” asked D.
“In a saloon.”
“Who put you up to this?”
“Didn’t you know already?” Bingo said drowsily.
His body was pierced by a needle that scorched through the air, and then vanished as it still jutted from his flesh.
“When I dream, I am a dream,” Bingo told the Hunter, laughing in his sleep.
Being real, D couldn’t carve up a dream; at that moment Bingo was essentially immortal.
“I put a hole in your dream,” D said softly.
Thin flakes of dark red fell like dust from his opponent’s chest. The black lines that had flown from the Hunter’s left hand were thin trails of blood.
“Shall we do this another day?” Bingo said calmly. As he slept, his serenity only seemed natural. “You can name the time.”
“I’ll leave that to you,” D replied.
“Okay. Early tomorrow morning, then. Dawn is at four o’clock. So, right here at three-thirty.”
“Why don’t you make it during the day?” the Hunter inquired.
“Why don’t you cut me down right here and now?”
The guard on D’s longsword clicked home as the Hunter sheathed his weapon.
Pointing a slowly swaying hand in the direction of town, Bingo said, “I’ll be in a bar called El Capitan all day long. Stop by if you like.”
.
Night came. The wind that had been blowing out into the desert changed directions, carrying the grains of sand back to town. As they struck the windows and wooden fences, they made a lonesome hum. It was a melancholy sound both for those it saw off on departure and those it welcomed back on arrival.
It was late that night that Granny Viper called on D as he slept in the overgrown garden of a mansion. He ended up there after the hotel had refused to give him a room.
“Tae didn’t come by, did she?”
Those were the very first words out of the old woman’s mouth, after she’d called out to D in a shrill voice and followed his voice back to him.
“If she didn’t come with you, then she’s not here.”
Granny sighed dejectedly. “A fine mess this is. Running off the very same day she gets here, the little fool.” The old woman took a seat on the ground. Her shoes were white with dust. There was no light save that of the moon.
“What happened?”
According to what Granny told D in answer to his question, when the girl called on her brother and his wife, things didn’t go so well. Her sister-in-law heaped abuse on her, determined from the very start to drive her away. You’re the Nobility’s plaything, she’d sneered. Why couldn’t you have just died somewhere along the way? It was my mother-in-law and father-in-law that asked them to look for you, not me. If you hang around, they’ll burn our house down. Tae’s older brother said nothing as he simply watched his sister walk away.
“There’s no reason to be so upset,” D told the crone. “You must’ve imagined this would happen. Besides, your job is done when you deliver someone.”
“That’s true,” Granny said, shrugging her shoulders. “But, you see, even I worry about what becomes of my merchandise from time to time. Why, I even swung by the saloon and asked those boys if they’d seen her. Well, I don’t know about the older one, but the younger one ran out like I’d lit a fire under him. He’s probably still looking for her now.”
“If she comes by, I’ll contact you. You’re at the hotel?”
Granny mumbled something once again about the girl’s stupidity, how she couldn’t restrain herself for even a single day. Compared to how tough she’d have it trying to make it on her own with a dhampir baby to look after, a little verbal abuse should be music to her ears. Saying she was heading out to look for the girl again, Granny took off.
“A dhampir baby? Yeah, a dhampir . . .” she muttered, the words growing fainter and fainter until they were like a whisper through the trees.
A short while later, someone called out, “D!”
The pale figure appeared between the trees in the distance. By the time the figure reached the Hunter, he could see that it was Tae.
“Granny told me what happened.”
“I . . . I really was going to put up with them,” the girl stammered. “No matter what they said about me. But . . . when they called the baby inside me a vampire . . .”
“It’s a dhampir.”
“It’s the same thing to everyone else!” The tracks of tears remained on Tae’s cheeks, but no sparkling beads could be seen. She’d run dry. Held captive by the Nobility for eight long years, when she finally returned home she couldn’t stay even one day . . .
“What will you do?”
“Let me rest here just for tonight,” Tae said, her tone firm for the first time. Her single-minded gaze met D’s eyes. “Come tomorrow, I’ll manage something on my own. Just until then. Please, just let me stay with you.”
“Do as you like.”
Tae seated herself by D’s side. He dropped a blanket in her lap.
“But this is yours . . .” said the girl.
“It’s not for you.”
Tae gazed at the blanket and then back up at D. A tear fell from her cheek, splattering against the back of the hand that held the edge of the blanket. Her supply of mournful tears had nearly been exhausted.
“Okay,” Tae said as she pulled up the blanket.
“You said you’d manage something on your own, didn’t you?” D asked as he gazed straight ahead.
“Yes.”
“Well, there’ll be two of you soon.”
Tae didn’t know what to say.
“It seems dhampir children are quite considerate, although there are exceptions.”
While the young man seemed as cold as ice, a faint hint of a smile skimmed across his lips. Tae watched with utter disbelief and then sheepishly touched D’s chest with her pale hand. D didn’t move.
“I . . . I’ll try to be brave,” Tae mumbled, bringing her cheek to rest next to her hand. “Good,” she said after a little while. “I can hear the sound of your heart. When
I was a little girl, Papa told me something. He said dhampirs didn’t breathe. And so their hearts didn’t beat. I honestly believed him. That the Nobility had hearts of gold and veins of crystal, and that dhampirs did, too. Now I know that’s not true, though after seeing you, I sort of thought it still might be.”
D said nothing.
“But I’m glad it’s not. A dhampir’s heart beats just like ours. Your blood is warm, too. I’m glad. My baby will be just like you, won’t it?” Tae said. She was crying. And she went on crying. Her voice was full of joy. Without knowing why, Tae thought that somehow she’d get by now.
At some point the girl lapsed into the quiet breath of sleep, and D had a puzzling look in his eye as he gazed down at her. A lock of hair had fallen across her forehead. His left hand reached out and stroked it back into place. Then he raised his face and stared off into the darkness before him.
A trio of silhouettes suddenly appeared. It was Granny and the Bullow Brothers.
“I’ll look after her tonight,” D said.
Granny twisted her lips at that, and Clay snapped in a deep voice, “You’ve gotta be shitting me! Would anybody leave a girl alone with a sex fiend like you in the dead of night? Behind that iron mask of yours, you’re just looking for some fast action, you bastard!”
Her eyes shifting from the girl to D, Granny said, “It just occurred to me—isn’t this going to wake her up?”
D’s left hand came to rest of the back of Tae’s head, and then came away again quickly.
“That won’t be a problem now,” the Hunter told her.
“I see,” Granny said with a nod. But it was unlike the nod she always gave. “I think that rather than having the two of them live in misery, it’d be better for one of them to lead a regular life. You know what the best thing to do would be,” Granny said, her right hand going for the jar on her hip. “You know, my sand paintings can even picture the insides of a person. I’m going to do this,” the crone said, her voice trembling. But the quavering only served to make the strength of her resolve all the more apparent.
Gently setting Tae down on the ground, the Hunter in black slowly straightened up again. “Leave her alone,” he said. Though his tone didn’t hold so much as a hint of a threat, it froze not only Granny, but the Frontier’s greatest warriors as well. D’s eyes were glowing deep red—the color of blood.
Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane Page 16
