After a look at his throat to confirm there were no marks there, Meg called out to the little boy, who woke up immediately. Telling him not to say anything, she woke the other villagers. There were twenty of them. They were all that remained. All the rest had stained D’s blade.
Resisting the urge to crumble, Meg led the people outside. She planned to hide them in the forest for the time being, and get them on the move again with the coming of daybreak. Fleeing through the night would be akin to running into the Nobility’s arms, but Meg also didn’t know whether or not she herself would be able to act once the sun came up. It seemed highly unlikely. At any rate, she’d get them away from there, and once they’re reached somewhere the Nobles wouldn’t find them, she’d have them split up and make a break for the bay, each on their own.
As the girl was leading the villagers toward the exit, her charges still half dazed since waking, she got the feeling something cold had hit her back, so she halted.
The villagers were all staring at her. It wasn’t the sort of look they’d give a compatriot who’d come to rescue them.
It can’t be . . . Not again, Meg thought, turning around slowly.
Red lights were blinking in darkness. She didn’t need to count them to know exactly how many there were.
“I’m too late, right?” Meg murmured. Something in her heart crumbled.
“When we become like the Nobility, the marks on our throats disappear,” Togill’s son said. “It happened with all of us. You can be one of us, too, miss.”
Meg sensed the throng suddenly closing in. Hard hands latched onto her arms.
“Old Man Ong . . .” the girl said in a worn, threadbare voice.
“Age before beauty, as they say. Would you let me have a mouthful? Of your warm blood, that is.”
A number of hands touched her shoulders, pulled at the cuffs of her sleeves. Everyone wanted it. They all asked for a share, even if it were just a little. Everyone was famished.
Meg knew it was too late now.
“Miss,” the little boy said to her urgently.
Meg gazed sadly at the fangs that poked from his mouth.
“Well, okay. That is, if you don’t mind the same blood all the rest of you have,” Meg laughed. There was nothing to do but laugh. That was the quickest way to settle the matter.
Meg felt her fangs come out. Astonished groans swept through the shadowy figures like a wave. They backed away without another word.
“Good-bye,” Meg told them, and then she slipped out the door.
Her eyes were drawn to the figure who stood a short distance away. Duke Daios Dandorian’s cape and bandages fluttered in the night wind.
“Danae is destroyed,” he said.
Somewhere in Meg’s heart, ripples of pointlessness spread. That was all.
“Come with me,” the duke said.
Meg nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Take me wherever you’re going.”
At that time, Meg was fully aware that she was still in her right mind.
Countless figures were coming and going at the dome. Night was the Nobility’s world. The solemn splendor of their fancy balls and many other forms of nightlife had been gorgeously preserved in paintings and written accounts. However, this wasn’t the clustered palaces of the Capital, and the shadowy figures who navigated the fairly opulent corridors and staircases in the company of the fog were all androids. Both the light fixtures and the glow of the moon spilling in through enormous windows cast long shadows behind them that would’ve been unthinkable from Nobles. Even in this research facility on an island at the ends of the earth, the Nobles couldn’t help but build a place of misleading beauty. The chilling solitude of such places had been both pointed out and analyzed by numerous scholars.
There were also maintenance personnel, of course. When analytic systems tripped by sensors determined D was a foe, said personnel stood ready with dimensional cannons, but each and every one of them shut down after being bathed in blue light. That glow came from D’s pendant.
After a short journey—actually, just a walk—D reached his destination. He knew that there he would find the person he sought.
II
When D entered through doors so colossal it seemed it would take dozens of men to open them, the woman lay on a golden bed gazing at him. Though moonlight and milky fog filled the room, the two of them could see each other as clearly as if they were in broad daylight. The full breasts peeking from the décolletage of her crimson dress and the pale legs revealed by its daring slit gave not so much a sense of enticement and flirtation as one of ennui and surpassing loneliness. But that abruptly vanished.
“You’ve finally come, D,” the woman said, eyes gleaming, vitality overflowing from every inch of her body. Love had brought the dead back to life. No matter how futile that love might be.
At the doors, D drew a needle of rough wood from his coat. He didn’t harbor so much as a sliver of emotion regarding the woman reflected in his deep, dark eyes.
Her visitor was void even of murderous intent as he came closer, but the woman said to him in what was almost a whisper, “Please tell me one thing.”
D halted.
“How did you know of our revival?”
A blue light even stronger than that of D’s pendant flowed between the two of them.
“I had a dream,” D said.
“A dream?”
“Or maybe it was real. It doesn’t matter either way. In the dream, he told me. He said he’d brought the island back again.”
“And you came to bring destruction, did you not? To destroy everything again. Even me.”
D stepped forward.
“It was I who asked the Great One to resurrect the island a moment before my destruction,” the woman said. “My husband pierced me through the heart because of my love for you. Such a truly sad thing it is to be reduced to dust all alone. The only person I wanted by my side was nowhere to be found. And his heart wasn’t even mine. Even knowing my feelings for you, you thought of me as naught but another opponent to be destroyed. When you succumbed to sunlight syndrome and fell into my husband’s hands, I saved your life. And you knew it, too. Yet when I asked you to flee with me, you sent me away without so much as arching an eyebrow. Still, I hid you in a safe place when you couldn’t move a muscle, and as a result I tasted my husband’s blade. All because I continued to deny him when he asked me your location.”
Tears glistened in the eyes of the woman—Duchess Mizuki Dandorian. In the moonlight, they glistened red. They were tears of blood.
“It took a long time from when I was stabbed until I was destroyed,” she continued. “My husband stabbed me that way intentionally. I wanted to die, but could not. I wished to see you once again. No matter what death I might meet. But I wanted you to nurse me back to health. And so, when the Great One appeared in the moment before my consciousness was sealed away in the darkness, I thought it a boon from Satan. And I made an entreaty. I asked him to please let me rise again. In order that I might meet you.”
Wasn’t that just heading down the road to destruction once more? Without a doubt, it was the duchess’s love that had brought the island back to life. However, when he’d squared off against the Hunter, her husband had informed his foe that his own resurrection had come from his hatred of D. That which is lost will never return. But someone had bent that rule. Had it been paid for in love, or in hate?
D stood before the bed.
“I’m glad I got to see you,” Mizuki said. “My wish has been granted. My second destruction is by your hand.”
The duchess closed her eyes. Her expression was one of such happiness it would’ve driven anyone who saw it mad with envy. It lasted for about a second.
Feeling the resolve that blustered toward her like an unearthly aura, the duchess opened her eyes.
D had turned his back to the Noblewoman and was facing the new arrival who stood at the doors.
“Dearest husband,” the duchess said, her voice like that of the dead.
&
nbsp; Duke Dandorian’s bloodshot eyes bored through D’s heart as he said, “So, you’ve come, as expected. It would appear adulterers have a talent for sniffing out the location of the lady of the house. Oh, have you lost your left hand? Well, tonight I have something special on hand!”
Meg was right beside him, and he clamped one hand on her shoulder and shook her before pressing the longsword in his right hand against her throat.
“I don’t expect this to have any effect on you,” Dandorian continued. “To you, this girl is a complete stranger—nothing more. However, she loves you. As humans are wont to do.”
Meg shot a quick glance at the duke.
“My wife was a Noble,” he said to the Hunter. “To you, she was no more than another to be destroyed. There’s no point in blaming my wife for her foolishness. Such are women. But can even you stand idly by and watch as a human lass—one who loves you—is subjected to the fangs of the Nobility?”
“You still don’t know?” D replied.
“Know what?”
“All you received was the power to defeat me?”
“It sure looks that way,” Meg said.
The duke turned a bewildered look toward the human lass.
“Not that it matters either way now,” Meg continued, pushing away the blade at her throat.
The look of suspicion in the duke’s eye grew stronger. The girl who’d obeyed him like a puppet all the way there had suddenly become a different person. However, he quickly realized the truth.
“Ah . . . So that’s what she is. This comes as some surprise,” Dandorian confessed. “Well, I have no more use for her, then.”
As he said that, Meg arched backward. The duke’s blade had gone through her back, piercing her heart. Pulling it from her with one mighty yank, the duke stepped forward.
“The time has come at last.”
Dandorian’s bandages spread in all directions, trembling like claws about to catch hold of something.
“So long I have waited, D! I shall cut you to pieces in front of the whore who betrayed me out of a mad love for you. D, you cannot win. Not with the power I now possess, and certainly not empty handed.”
The longsword limned a silvery arc as it sped toward D’s neck.
III
D raised his right hand. Sparks sprayed. Blade had bitten into blade.
Meg’s eyes went wide.
D’s right hand gripped a short sword. However, that was only for the second blow. For the first deadly slash, D had moved a fraction of an inch, and that was enough to leave Dandorian’s sword cleaving empty space. Even the swordsmanship of the newly resurrected duke was no match for D.
The duke bounded. His bandages left lengthy trails behind him.
Just as the duke prepared to swipe at him from midair, D, still poised to parry the blow, staggered. The bandages had crept across the ground, wrapped around the Hunter’s legs, and pulled them out from under him.
The Noble’s blade split D’s right shoulder. The bloody spray spurting out momentarily filled both the Hunter’s field of view and that of the duke. In that span, D hurled his short sword at his foe’s location. However, bandages wrapped around it in midair, then discarded the weapon behind the duke.
A stark needle flew. It merely pierced another bandage before hanging in the air uselessly. The bandages flowed to either side of the Nobleman, defending him from D’s attacks as if they possessed a will of their own.
“My fortress of cloth,” the duke laughed. “And you have nothing. Will you try to stop my blade with naught but your right arm?”
The duke charged closer. A bloody grin hung on his lips. His blade swept right, toward D’s neck.
The duke ran. The blade swept.
D leapt back, still tearing bandages.
“You still lack a weapon!”
As the duke regained his posture, he spun himself around in preparation for unleashing another attack. His eyes caught something. A stark gleam of light in D’s hands, flowing right toward him.
The sound of severed vertebrae echoed far and wide, and the duke’s head sailed through the air. Meg gasped. Her shout was overlaid by a cry of pain.
Still poised as it’d been for the throw that’d just put Dandorian’s sword through his wife’s chest, the duke’s torso was split in two lengthwise. That was from D’s second blow.
Taking his eyes from the decapitated body that thudded to the floor, D turned toward the door.
A man in servant garb bowed reverently to him. In his hands he held an empty scabbard. Its contents were in D’s hand.
“Zangleson . . . You have my thanks,” said the duchess, stained vermilion atop her bed.
When D faced the duke empty handed, she had contacted her faithful servant via communicator and ordered him to bring a longsword that he would then give to D.
Zangleson went over to the duchess and knelt before her.
“So kind of you to see me off, Zangleson,” she said in a thread-thin voice that sounded like it could break at any second.
The duchess extended a pale hand to the steward. Clasping it between both of his, Zangleson said, “You honor me.”
“Twice I’ve been destroyed by my husband. However, this time there are two of you to see me off.”
Meg wore a look of discontent.
“D, it came to this in the end, as expected,” Mizuki continued, lips drained of color forming a smile. “But I was resurrected so I might be destroyed. My wish was granted. Please leave the island within the hour. Zangleson has been ordered to destroy the antiproton reactor. Everything within a six-mile radius of the island will cease to be.”
“Thank you.”
And saying that, D turned right around.
“D, at the very least . . .” Mizuki said, her hand slowly rising, “. . . take . . .”
The pale hand was turning the purplish hue of rot and corruption.
“. . . my hand.”
As her hand dropped limply, D gazed at it with a weary expression. Zangleson heaved a long sigh. That alone was their requiem for the Noblewoman who’d twice died for love.
With fog and blue light clinging to him, D started to walk away.
“Not yet, D,” the remaining female said to him. “Before you got that sword, it was me that got you out of that trap!”
Meg raised her left hand to shoulder level and turned her palm toward the Hunter. A black eye was staring at D.
“At some point it just ended up on my hand,” said the girl, “I don’t know when. It seems this eye’s absorbed everything about you. Originally it was the duke’s, but it was torn from him when he was unaware, too. The person who put it on my hand is the same one who tore it from his!”
“It was him?” D said. It was neither a question nor an acknowledgement.
“Since I’ve got it stuck on me, I’ve got to fight you. You’ll do it, won’t you, D?”
D quietly turned to face Meg.
Could D destroy a second woman who loved him?
It was almost an hour later that one of the Nobility’s ships set off from the fog-shrouded bay for the dark, predawn seas. When the ship was exactly ten miles away, the island suddenly vanished. Though the nuclear reaction from protons colliding with antiprotons was extremely small scale, within a six-mile radius the sea was vaporized to that same depth, and the water that rushed into that void caused high seas that plunged the oceans of the world and communities near them into chaos.
It was said that an abnormally small amount of damage was actually suffered thanks to the communication centers closest to the coast having received word of the rough seas to come. Furthermore, that was a miracle, as such a notification was said to be impossible without the use of the Nobility’s equipment.
As the ship slid down surges with a sheer thousand-yard drop and slipped between massive whirlpools, D said to the figure at the wheel, “You’ve had practice at this, haven’t you?”
“When we get near land, I’ll lower a dinghy,” the figure replied. In a woma
n’s voice. “That’s where we part company. Thanks for everything.”
“It’ll be dawn soon.”
“There’s this island I know, and with this ship I can reach it in three days. If sometime before you die you happen to think back on me, come on by. Whatever island you land on, that’s where I’ll be.”
“Godspeed,” said the hoarse voice.
“Same to you.”
Lightning split the dark sky, and the wind ripped at waves the size of mountains. And through all that, the ship headed east. In the direction that would soon be colored by the light of dawn.
THE END
Postscript
(from the original Japanese edition)
When you hear of a solitary island, you think there must be “something” there. In the case of the movie King Kong, that “something” is dinosaurs; in the L.P. Hartley short story “Podolo” it’s a black bakeneko cat monster (of sorts); and in the manga “Higanjima,” it’s vampires. Since the majority of islands belong to someone, when uninformed people (or even informed ones) come ashore on one, we can’t really expect things to go well for them. Though it’s said there’s no longer anywhere on Earth for strange creatures to inhabit, that’s clearly a lie. The world still has its Terra incognita. And if there weren’t such “parts unknown,” we’d make some. That’s what writers do.
That’s why this Vampire Hunter D story has sort of an interesting set-up. As the title suggests, he and the heroine go to an island where—well, you’ll just have to read it for yourself. Readers’ cries of rage will carry all the way to my house, I imagine. However, for all that, someone more than makes up for it with their efforts. They work so hard, readers are sure to be left speechless, and this person might grab more of the spotlight than D. And there’s another angle. What happens when you fall in love with D? Well, I suppose most of you can imagine, but this time . . . In other words, there’s a whole lot of D going on. I hope you enjoy it.
What’s more, at the end of June, I attended Anime Expo in America with Ms. Takaki, who’s handling the Vampire Hunter D comic adaptation. I’ve never taken part in that sort of event in Japan, so I really can’t compare, but I think the fans were very excited. The two signings in particular were so popular they quickly went over the two hundred person limits. In addition to the D series, other books will be published in America, including a possible translation of another big title. And there’s also the associated merchandise. I’ll talk more about that at a later date. At any rate, three cheers for America!
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