“But then it took a rest. And that must’ve been when we came along. Why has it awakened again, D?”
“Miska knows the answer.”
“Perhaps the Destroyer was awakened by the aura of another of its kind. D—was it you?”
The Hunter said nothing.
“That was probably horrendously rude of me.”
“Next time, don’t start talking in your sleep until you’re actually sleeping,” D said, diverting his gaze to the fortification’s exit. “There’s no indication that it went outside. It’s still in here.”
“There are other structures out back.”
“Stay here,” D said, turning around.
Just then, there was the rattle of wooden wheels out beyond the massive gates. A sound that only D and the baron would hear came to a halt in front, and soon the echoes of someone hammering on the doors reached their ears.
“It’s a stagecoach,” said the baron.
It was probably the coach the children had been waiting for. Running nearly a half day late wasn’t an uncommon occurrence on the Frontier. The frantic pounding seemed like a call for help, and the reason for this soon became apparent. The sound of other hooves was drawing closer. As the pair listened to clomping that by all rights they shouldn’t have been able to hear, their ears were easily able to tell there were a great many mounts involved.
“I wonder if it’s bandits? What should we do?” asked the baron.
“You’re the boss. Do as you wish.”
“Well, it’s hell out there . . . and hell in here, too,” the baron muttered as he dashed off toward the colossal gates.
Not waiting for D to get there, he reached out for the controls that opened and closed the doors. While the controls outside were another matter, the ones inside weren’t broken.
As soon as the gates opened wide enough, a coach drawn by a team of four raced madly into the fortress.
Once more, the baron’s hand touched the controls.
And at that very moment a woman’s scream shot up to the darkened heavens. D and the baron weren’t the only ones it affected—the foaming team of horses with bloodshot eyes that drew the coach also froze in its tracks.
The scream had come from Miska, but she wasn’t outside. In the safest of all places—in her coffin loaded into her carriage—what could’ve frightened her so?
D saw.
The baron saw it, too.
The battlements that ran from the main gates turned to the right at the edge of the front garden, but a tall figure had casually ducked out from behind that corner. The gigantic figure was ten feet tall—a fitting size for a bed—but even wearing a warrior’s helm and breastplate, greaves and gauntlets, he looked much too thin. What the reflections of the scant moonlight made clear was that his armor wasn’t made of metal but of synthetic leather, and only the fifteen-foot-long throwing spear in his right hand had the glint of steel. A longsword also dangled from his right hip.
The earth shook.
He opened his hitherto shut eyelids just a crack. His nose and lips looked like halfhearted additions to his face, but his rough countenance underwent a change. As a warm red light began to spill from his eyes, they caught sight of the group of pale, semi-translucent riders rushing through the gates.
The mob was comprised of some of the most vicious and fearsome of all the demonic creatures and foul beasts that inhabited the Frontier—the ghost knights. A few of them had a human form, but there were others who were no more than bleached bones clad in ragged garments. There were beings with two heads, or covered with eyes, or with dozens of squirming arms and legs—and each and every one of them was half-transparent and gave off a white phosphorescence, just like their mounts. It was easy enough to spot them from a great distance, and while it seemed that potential targets would be able to flee before they were victimized, the reason that this wasn’t the case soon became clear.
The horses pulling the coach reared up once more. The giant had moved. Not only the coach’s team, but the knights’ horses backed away as well, though the only one to fall to the ground with a scream was the coach’s driver.
“H-h-help me!” he stammered as he spun around in a full circle. He didn’t have the faintest idea from whom he should seek help.
A blue light shot out.
A silvery flash crossed it.
Although D’s blade moved with unholy skill, the blue light pierced his blade and stabbed through the driver’s right eye, going through his goggles and into his brain.
A strange sound shot up to the heavens. The giant had howled. And Miska’s scream had been intertwined with it.
Apparently the phantoms had decided that he was their most immediate threat.
Given this gap in the action, D opened the door of the coach and scooped up the brother and sister within. However, hadn’t one of the phantom’s attacks gone through the Hunter’s blade as if his steel were no more than a mirage? Would even D be able to get back with the children when his sword couldn’t parry these attacks?
His path was barred by a pair of horsemen. Another pair went for the baron, and the rest charged at the giant. Carrying both children under his left arm, D leapt forward.
Blue darts struck the body of the carriage and ricocheted off.
Twisting his body as he sailed headfirst, D slashed through the forefeet of both steeds. His blade cut thin air. A split second before he was going to slam into the ground, D put down his left elbow and used it to spring back up and take a huge leap back. A blue arrow sped to where he’d been, and it too rebounded.
D’s eyes were invested with a crimson glow. It was as if they’d solved the mystery.
“D!” the baron’s voice cried out. “Your attacks—you must see they have no effect!”
Blue lights took flight.
D’s blade didn’t move at all. The streaks that connected with D’s neck and the middle of his forehead bounced off him easily and fell to the ground.
Perhaps it could be said that the phantom’s attacks were entirely mental. In the midst of battle, a combatant would have to either dodge blows or parry them. If they parried and their foe’s attack wasn’t too strong for them, it would be deflected. That was simply common sense where physics was concerned, and the person blocking the blows would certainly think so. Or rather than actually think it, they’d simply believe it subconsciously.
The phantoms’ attacks were a reversal of that faith. Arrows that should’ve been deflected pierced the parrying blade, penetrating armor or iron plate. And as long as one held to the premise that by cutting their foe they would destroy them, they would simply guarantee that their blows wouldn’t cut the enemy at all. But if one could see through that, it seemed victory would be easy enough. In other words, attack without thinking you’d cut them, parry without thinking you’d block them—that was all there was to it. But to do so required a change to firmly rooted common sense at a subconscious level. Only a belief that bordered on preoccupation—a faith of unrivaled might—could turn this weakness into a strength and return things to the way they were supposed to be.
If anyone but D had heard the baron’s cry, they probably would’ve instantly met with death without any resistance.
As D bounded, his sword went into action.
A phantom’s head was effortlessly removed from its torso, and both it and its horse were reduced to thousands of scattering flecks of phosphorescence that soon disappeared from view.
However, there was another battle taking place within the fortress that bore watching. Blue light flew from the hands of the phantoms surrounding the giant, leaving his massive form looking like a porcupine. The giant howled, but his voice was replaced by the arc of his lengthy spear as he whirled it like a massive water wheel and mowed through the phantoms. Not a single one of them fell, neither rider nor horse, and the pale figures made the giant shudder with fresh arrows of light.
“They’re beating the hell out of him,” D muttered.
“Not quite,” the
baron countered.
It was an instant later that their field of view was stained crimson by the glow from the giant’s eyes.
The phantoms were also dyed the color of blood. Though their pale phosphorescence seemed to glow more intensely, it was only for a moment, and then they were blown away like a thin fog in the face of a mighty gale. The giant had blasted them with a powerful “death light.” It slammed into the gigantic gates directly ahead of him, making the fifty tons of metal buckle almost instantaneously.
When the giant unleashed the blast, his mental state had probably been completely unfocused. Three riders who’d been off the path still remained.
The crimson light was challenged by a bluish hue—the glow of the three riders. The red eyes that turned toward them swiftly lost their light. Perhaps it was merely a question of speed, but the unearthly gaze of the trio was swifter than the giant’s death light, and it left him reeling. As the arrows of blue light came to bear on him, the giant began to back away.
The mounted phantoms each extended one arm. One’s hand was only bone. And then they beckoned to their foe.
The giant halted. Amazingly enough, he started to head back toward the trio of grim reapers. Their deadly arrows assailed him with their blue glow. Finally, the giant fell to his knees. Slumping to the ground, he looked as awkward as a stuffed animal.
The three riders wheeled their horses around. Perhaps the loathsome wraiths were surprised. In order to guard against the paralyzing effects of their hypnotic gaze, people used dark goggles in areas where they were known to appear. In place of that, the quiet Noble who stood before them like the deep blue sea had both eyes shut tight.
In keeping with the shaken state of the riders, the blue arrows of death were a little late in being launched.
A band of white light spread out further and further, and as if making the most of its freedom as it zipped between them, it decapitated all three.
“Good thing you figured out their weakness,” D said to the baron as he lowered the boy and girl to the ground. It was pleasure more than fear that now filled the children’s faces. After all, they’d been able to see D again.
“I fought them once, long ago,” the baron replied as the children filled his field of view. Their little throats trembled as they swallowed involuntarily. No human could ever mistake the sight of a Noble.
“But you must’ve realized what it was, too. There’s no way they’d get the better of the man the whole Frontier knows as D. Now, about him,” the baron said, his gaze directed at the fallen form of the giant. The arrows of blue light had vanished.
Telling the boy and girl, “Wait here,” D walked off after the baron.
The giant had given up the ghost.
“Is this what was sealed in the sanctum?” the baron asked, his voice wavering with a somewhat dissatisfied ring.
“Yes, though it’s hard to believe. The sensation I felt when he first appeared seemed the same as that in the factory and the sanctum.”
The baron had understood that much. But was this the final fate of the Destroyer feared so greatly by its very creators? Was this the end of the “weapon” that had tunneled a mile and a quarter to walk the earth again? Believing in this was like trying to dream by the light of dawn.
“And you think it was Miska that released him?”
“Odds are,” D responded. “And it might still survive.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to examine her, won’t we?” the baron said as he approached the white carriage.
BEAUTY AND THE MONSTROUS CLOUD
CHAPTER 5
I
__
Clear weather spread almost magnanimously across the blue vault of the heavens, but after looking up at it for a while, it seemed to loom over them, so the brother and sister sitting up in the driver’s seat quickly turned their eyes forward. For a split second, their vacant gazes rested on the handsome young man in black at the reins of the cyborg horse riding along just to the right of their seat.
It was near noon the next day. The wide central road ran across the major artery to the Capital about twelve miles ahead. And it was there that D and the children would part company.
“Say, mister,” the girl said to D.
When the Hunter turned just a bit in her direction, she continued in a low voice, “Those other two—they’re Nobility, right? What in the world are you guarding them for?”
It came as little surprise that her tone was both slightly unsettled and somewhat accusatory. To any boy or girl raised on the Frontier, the Nobility were no more than blood-crazed fiends.
“The pay is good,” D replied.
Though his response was the sort of thing that would crush a child’s dreams, the girl didn’t seem to bear him any ill will. For as long as she could remember, she’d known in the marrow of her bones that people did whatever they had to do to survive. She also sensed a bit of humor in D’s reply. Apparently he behaved a bit differently than usual when dealing with children.
“You mean to say you’ll do anything as long as there’s money to be made?” she asked with delight while a flicker of emotion played on D’s lips.
“That’s right.”
“In that case, would you take us as far as the Capital?”
“I’m headed in a different direction.”
“We’ll wait for you at an inn on the thoroughfare. We’d wait there forever for you if need be—wouldn’t we?”
“You said it!” the boy added with an enthusiastic nod. “Anyway, Sis and I have our act. We can make some money there while we wait. So you can go take all the time you need to earn your wages without worrying about us.”
“Maybe I will,” D replied. Though what emotions were in his heart as he spoke remained a mystery.
“But you know something, Sis? I don’t hate that fella in the blue.”
“Don’t you go calling a Noble ‘fella’ now!”
“But he’s been kind to us, hasn’t he? He went and let you and me ride in his carriage. Ordinarily, he’d have just drunk all our blood!”
“Well, he didn’t do that because he’s around,” the girl said, her pudgy cheeks inflating even more as she gazed at D in infatuation.
“You might have something there . . .”
“How about the woman then?” the girl snapped.
“Oh, I’m none too keen on her.”
They were referring, of course, to Miska.
No matter what D made of the pair’s discussion, his expression was devoid of any hint of emotion, as always.
After the giant was slain, the baron and D had gone to check out Miska. They both suspected that one of the many possessing spirits that frequented the Frontier might’ve taken hold of the Noblewoman. In comparison to his supposed power, the giant had proved incredibly frail in the end. They had to wonder if perhaps the giant had merely been a vessel and that the true form—the spirit—had transferred over to Miska when she opened the wall and set him free. Her mysterious weakening, the mad scream she unleashed when the giant appeared—these might be clues. It was quite plausible that the only reason she’d been unharmed was because something like that had taken place.
Though Miska hadn’t fully recovered yet, they took her from her coffin and conducted tests as to her physical and mental state using extremely sensitive equipment carried by the baron’s carriage. However, the tests revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The testing equipment wasn’t malfunctioning.
“She seems to be okay,” said the baron.
“Is that what you think?” D inquired.
“Not quite. This equipment can measure anything down to a quadrillionth of the level of a normal psyche. It’s conceivable that this could be something below that.”
D was slumped back against a carriage wheel, looking down at Miska. The test had taken place outside.
“What do you say to disposing of her?”
“Occasionally I get the feeling I never should’ve hired you. Is human blood so cruel?”
&
nbsp; “It’s not limited to humans.”
“Though Nobles may have their differences with their fellow Nobility, the bonds of friendship and respect are usually maintained. I firmly believe that. Your Noble blood couldn’t possibly allow you to say such a heartless thing about this young lady.”
“It may be that human blood is kinder.”
“Preposterous. I pride myself on being something of a student of the human race. I’m fully versed in both their virtues and their vices. And you would be hard pressed to shake my faith in the belief their kind is inferior to us.”
“It’s a matter of fact, not faith. Had you been more observant in your studies, you might’ve reached a different conclusion.”
The Noble in blue and the Hunter in black—for the first time, something dangerous flowed between them.
“Enough already,” Miska said, her pained voice dispelling the tension. “Do not speak of the human race before me . . . At any rate . . . are you satisfied now?”
The baron nodded.
“In that case, would you be a dear . . . and dispose of those filthy swine?”
Her trembling finger was pointing at the brother and sister.
“I can’t do that.”
“Why ever not?” Miska asked as the eyes in her haggard face became lakes of malice.
“Human or not, we can’t just leave these children to shift for themselves. We shall drop them off tomorrow in someplace convenient.”
“You mustn’t . . . Though you’ve sworn not to touch them . . . they can’t come with us . . . If I were in your position . . . I would leave them right in this very spot.”
“Kindly return her to her coffin,” the baron told D.
Although Miska’s whole body trembled with resistance until the black arms lifted her up, she lost consciousness before D started over to the white carriage.
When D returned, the baron was standing beside the children. Turning and seeing the Hunter, he furrowed his refined brow.
D’s coat had black smoke billowing from it.
Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two Page 10
