“There’s ‘holy ground’ on the west edge of the village. We’ll take you there.” Then the man with the black mask laughed and added, “We’re ready any time. The hut’s already been assembled.”
“I’ll take that horse,” D said.
One of the black masks stepped forward, leading the Hunter’s cyborg horse behind him.
Putting Taki over his shoulder and climbing easily into the saddle, D then took the reins and said, “Lead the way.”
Although the others remained speechless, it wasn’t because the Hunter’s beauty and regal bearing didn’t have the slightest impact on them. To the contrary, there was an air of unmistakable admiration coming from the masked men.
“Come with us—it’s this way.”
The leader’s boots delivered a kick to his horse’s flanks, and the group galloped west in a thunder of hoofbeats.
When they reached their destination, the men seemed to be dyed with the blue of twilight. Ruins that appeared to be the remnants of buildings were scattered here and there in the desolate expanse of land. Eroded foundations, stone walls, a portion of a tower—although it wouldn’t have been unusual for the scene to look like a vision of haunted devastation in this bluish light, the air around this place was instead rather pure and refined.
On rare occasions there were places like this. In much the same way that there were accursed spots on which the Nobility had chosen to build many of their manors and fortresses, there were other places they would never dare approach—locations they could only ignore or gaze at in abhorrence. Tracing back through folklore, it became clear that these places housed the ruins of ancient religions. Apparently something had once existed in them that was diametrically opposed to the Nobility—something that had been held holy. We say “apparently” because almost all of them had been buried or destroyed by the Nobility, to the point where the number of places in the world with anything resembling such ruins could be counted on one hand. In their battle with the Nobility, it was these locations that the human race first thought to use, and the protective charms and icons they discovered there through their feverish excavations played such a vital role in getting a peace treaty with the Nobles that their true value could never be measured.
From the back of his mount, the leader pointed to a domed hut that appeared to be made of synthetic construction materials standing roughly in the center of the ruins. Its surface glistened a dull blue in the twilight.
“How will that do? It’s a ready-made unit we just hauled out here, but it should serve reasonably well.”
“You’re well prepared,” D said, letting a rare bit of admiration slip out as he advanced on his horse.
Leaving the masked men outside, D and Taki alone entered the hut. Inside, there was a smaller room for a caretaker furnished with a table, chair, and simple kitchen, while across from that was a cell ringed by steel bars. It could easily hold three people. There were no windows in the hut, for animate fog was among the pawns of the Nobility.
Laying Taki down on the caretaker’s bed, D put his left hand to the nape of her neck.
Stretching out a bit, Taki quickly opened her eyes. Even after her vacant gaze finally focused on D, it still took a while before it filled with unclouded will.
“D . . . That’s you, isn’t it, D?” Looking around at her surroundings, she added, “Where am I? And what about him?”
“I got you out of the manor. This is a hut for isolating victims.”
Taki’s expression instantly darkened.
“Then . . . I was . . . by a Noble.”
Reaching for the nape of her neck with one hand, she then stopped.
“You’ve received the kiss of the Nobility,” D said coolly. “But I’m going to dispose of the one responsible.”
“You—you’re going to save me?”
D nodded in reply to Taki’s desperately clinging tone. “Someone hired me for your sake. I have to honor that contract.”
“Who in the world would do that?”
“May.”
It was some time before Taki could open her mouth again.
“She did that . . . for me? But hiring you costs money, and—”
“Payment at a later date.”
As Taki stared up intently at D, a glistening something began to well up in her eyes.
“Help me, D—I beg of you!”
“I thought I told you I’d honor that contract.” Turning his gaze to the sky, D continued, “It’ll be the land of darkness soon. That’s when it all starts.”
His soft voice was underpinned by the strength of a warrior who’d slain each and every prince in the land.
A MAN NAMED LAGOON
CHAPTER 6
-
I
-
There was a man who had flames of hatred and longing burning in his eyes. Long hair covered half his face, yet he made no attempt to push it out of his field of view. The man was on a horse. Though his features could be described as handsome, all who passed him turned away with disgust on their faces due to his eerie paleness—the complexion of someone deathly ill. Glimpsed in the dark of night, the man was a veritable ghost. However, behind the man rode a boy who looked to be seven or eight-years-old and was the very picture of health, and the way he had his hands around the man’s waist would be enough to set people’s minds at ease.
Soon after entering the village of Krauhausen, the man went into the all-night bar in a hotel and asked the middle-aged bartender if he knew about a gorgeous young man visiting those parts recently. That was the quickest way to get information in a village you’d never visited before.
“I believe I do,” the nodding bartender replied without ever asking the young man his name. “Word is he drove a carriage into Lord Vlad’s manor, but met with violence. Rumor has it his corpse was thrown in the river; but, sad to say, Chlomo the Makeup Lover apparently pulled it out again.”
“Chlomo? What happened then?”
“That’ll cost you extra,” the bartender said, turning away in a snit.
“Hmm,” the pale man said, giving it some thought before adding, “If I were to, say, try and beat it out of you, I suppose your bodyguards would be all over me before I could leave the hotel, wouldn’t they?”
His voice was as gloomy as damp, stifling rain.
“That they would,” the bartender replied calmly, for they probably got a lot of this sort of customer in the hotel.
“And if that were to happen, I’d have to put up a fight. What do you think would happen then?”
“Good question.”
A wide blade jabbed the end of the bartender’s nose, making his features stiffen.
“Before you press your little alarm—watch this.”
And saying that, the man put the blade to the base of his own neck and made a powerful slash.
“What the—?!” the bartender gasped as his bulging eyes confirmed that not a single drop of blood fell from the gaping wound.
“Okay, take a good look,” the man said as he grabbed his own hair and pulled back, opening and closing the wound that cut half way through his neck like a mouth. “Now, how do you think your bodyguards would fare against a man who can do this?”
When he returned his head to the proper position, the wound swiftly closed, leaving a thin thread of a line that in turn vanished almost instantly.
“Don’t tell me . . . You’re that Vampire Hunter . . . Vince . . . aren’t you?”
Having finally realized who he faced, the bartender found his face colored by the resignation and fear of one whose fate had already been decided.
“There are those who call me that. So, what became of that pretty boy?”
The sweat dripping from the bartender made it clear he’d suddenly become completely honest.
“If Chlomo put makeup on him, he should be back at his place. It’s one of the abandoned warehouses on the west edge of town.”
“Thank you,” Vince said, clapping the bartender on the shoulder as his righ
t hand flashed out. The tip he’d laid down earlier was back in his hand.
“Hey! That’s a dirty thing to do.”
“The best thing a man can do is to make an honest living. You’re the kind that preys on the poor and gullible, aren’t you?”
Grinning like a ghost, Vince exited the bar. As he walked toward where he’d left the boy sitting on his horse, he heard footsteps echoing behind him. Walking along undeterred, a pair of figures circled around in front of him. Two more were behind him.
“You guys bodyguards?” Vince asked as he halted.
“You had a lot of nerve pulling that in front of us,” said one of the men to his rear—a guy with a beard. He kept opening and closing his right hand, which clenched something that resembled a big hairball. “But if we just sit back and let you leave, come tomorrow, we ain’t gonna be drawing a salary anymore. So you’ve got your choice of either trotting back in there and apologizing, or throwing down with us.”
Patrons and employees that’d followed them out of the bar had already formed a circle around them.
Vince chose a third option. He walked toward his horse.
Perhaps that figured into their plans, because the two ahead of him drew their longswords and started closing on him without a word. They didn’t even have to think about what would come next. Slicing through the wind from either side, the blades should’ve cut diagonal paths through Vince’s body. Their swords did, in fact, go right through him. The two of them stumbled in their respective locations. Having met so little resistance, the swings left them off balance.
On finally reaching his horse, Vince grabbed the old gunpowder rifle strapped to his saddle. The deafening reports left the spectators unsure of which way to run, while the two bodyguards hit the ground with half of each man’s head missing.
Before Vince could bring the muzzle to bear on the other two, what seemed to be a fine net drifted down from the heavens and enveloped him completely. There was an explosion of light. Caught in the pale electromagnetic waves, his body looked like a rag doll as it blazed in the darkness.
“Half a million volts. That’d lay out even a fire dragon,” the head bodyguard said, still gripping one edge of the net as he bared his yellowed teeth in a smile. Both the ultra-high-energy generator and discharge device were strapped to his right wrist.
Once Vince’s body fell with bluish smoke rising from it, the man swung his right arm around. The daunting electric net quickly became a single ball again in his hand.
“Clean that mess up,” he ordered the other bodyguard, and he was just starting back toward the bar when he noticed the expressions on the faces of the spectators. It was as he was turning around that something impossibly cold ran down his spine.
Vince was standing there. Though bluish smoke still rose from him, his skin had the pallor of a corpse, not blackened in the least.
“S—sonuvabitch . . .”
The rifle put a piece of hot lead right through the forehead of the paralyzed man.
Vince told the other immobilized bodyguard, “Clean that up,” before mounting his horse and riding off to the west.
When the people finally began to gather around the corpses, one man still stood by the door to the bar, his gaze trained in the same direction in which the horse had ridden off.
“So, we’ve got another weirdo on our hands, do we? Looks like things are gonna get shaken up in town for the first time in ages.”
These remarks were muttered by a figure in a dapper suit who was not only the owner of the bar, but the most prominent villager—Fisher Lagoon.
-
It took less than twenty minutes to reach the cluster of warehouses. Tethering the horse that carried the boy to a tree a short distance away, Vince began to walk between rows of half-fallen structures. He immediately recognized his goal. Several serviceable warehouses still remained, and a light burned in one of them.
After dashing over to the door without making a sound, he said, “Chlomo the Makeup Lover? That’s an odd name.”
The door wasn’t locked. This wasn’t a sign of carelessness, but rather it made manifest the owner’s confidence that no one would come out there. The air that gusted out with that faint light had such a ghastliness to it, it actually sent chills through the invincible Vince.
Once through the door, there were seven-foot-high panels directly ahead lined up to form a partition and hide the depths of the warehouse from any visitors. In one spot alone a space wide enough for a single person to fit through had been left open, and the glow of an atomic lamp trickled out through it.
From where Vince was, he couldn’t see anything. Keeping his footsteps muted as he approached the panels, Vince cautiously poked his head through the space and squinted.
In the room oddly filled by a glow close to natural light, more people than he could count lay on the floor or slumped against the walls, some alone, others stacked on top of one another, so that it looked like this was some sort of farmer’s market where human beings were for sale. That alone would’ve been an unsettling sight, but what left Vince shaken was that every person’s face had been covered with makeup. And each to a horrendous degree. Thick eyebrows sloping up, eyes ablaze—some burning with malice, others with lust—yet no one so much as moved a muscle.
From the midst of these motionless people, something like humming could be heard. Vince had already noticed the pair of figures seated on chairs in the center of the room. One of them—the rougher one—was running some sort of brush across the face of the other, who had a powerful and attractive build.
The Makeup Lover—Vince’s eyes lit up. He began to walk forward, forgetting to keep himself hidden. Though he did continue to at least keep his footsteps muted, his behavior was to be expected from someone with supreme confidence that there was nothing his opponent might do to slay him.
The made-up people didn’t move an inch.
When he finally stood in a spot where he could discern the face that’d been coated with the black of shadows, Vince gasped. Although he’d never seen the man applying the cosmetics, the one on the receiving end was—
“Baron Balazs . . .”
The same gorgeous prey he and the others had pursued for so long. However, while his clothes remained the same, his features had changed markedly. Bluish shadows had been painted on his skin, and the black circles that delineated his eyes gave them the dismal glow of a wraith, while his lips alone remained as red as some poisonous herb. At first glance, even those who’d been well-acquainted with the baron wouldn’t have recognized him.
Though he stood there dumbstruck, Vince quickly sensed a mysterious phenomenon beginning to unfold in his heart. It was the cruel beauty of the baron’s features—as Vince concentrated his gaze on them, he realized that the shocking impression the makeup had left was fading away. Just as those who stayed to watch an unsightly philosopher deliver his oratory for some time were left unable to deny the noble spirit within him, so the baron’s heaven-sent beauty swiftly pierced the repulsive mask he’d been given, allowing him to shine once more.
The humming stopped.
Halting the hand that held the brush, the stern-looking man let his shoulders drop disappointedly.
“Ruined again. Lord Vlad, your son is someone to be feared.”
Knowing nothing of the horrifying nature of this man’s ability, Vince had a little grin on his lips as he said to him, “Are you Chlomo?”
Surely he’d been entirely focused on the baron’s makeup, body and soul. The man turned and looked in amazement. Every bit as rough as his build, his face didn’t look at all suited to someone in a field that demanded as much skill and refinement as cosmetics.
“Who are you?”
“Vince. I’m a Hunter. You’re Chlomo the Makeup Lover, aren’t you?”
“What do you want?” Chlomo inquired, his confidence now fully reclaimed.
“Him—we’ve been hunting that man. I’ll take him from you.”
After a quick glance at the
baron, Chlomo said, “You went after someone I can’t even put makeup on? Then it comes as no surprise you failed to run him down.”
As the makeup lover smirked, his eyes reflected Vince’s expression, which instantly became that of the devil himself.
-
II
-
“Oh, that’s an interesting look you’re giving me,” Chlomo said as he stuck out his jaw. “My makeup would be simply perfect on someone with such a wicked expression. I can hardly wait.”
Vince said nothing as he closed the distance between them. Though he didn’t know what sort of ability his foe had, Vince had regenerating cells that could deal with any kind of wound, and this opponent shouldn’t be able to deal a lethal blow to him. If this guy had such a keen interest in makeup, then the Hunter would rip his limbs off to get him all fixed up for a trip straight to hell.
Vince tightened his grip on the dagger he wore at his breast. It was a heartbeat later that movements became perceptible all around him. Keeping a fair portion of his attention focused on Chlomo as he spun around, Vince knit his brow. From the floor and wall, people in makeup were rising and slowly but determinedly heading toward him. There was no intellect in their vacant gazes. That in itself was extremely disturbing.
“Die!” Chlomo cried, and his voice was their signal.
The men closed on Vince with strangely stiff movements before piercing his neck and abdomen with longswords. Paying no attention to that the wounds, Vince slashed open the men’s throats with the dagger in his right hand—and was shocked. The blood gushing from their carotid arteries didn’t splatter across the floor, but rather it hung like a vermilion fog around him. It certainly was beautiful arterial spray. The color instantly drained from the men’s complexions, but instead of falling, they leapt at Vince.
“Shit!”
Slipping through their hands and getting his back against the wall, Vince finally realized the gravity of the situation. He was invincible. But at the same time, so were they.
“You son of a bitch. You can do the ‘deathless makeup.’”
Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four Page 12
