Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two
Page 17
“Both.”
A daring smile skimmed across the baron’s lips.
“Although we haven’t discussed it, another problem remains. The young lady.”
He was referring to Taki.
“She said she was Lord Johann’s assistant. Is she friend or foe?”
“Foe,” D said, not an iota of ambiguity in his reply. Yet the fact that he’d left May in her care when he went off in search of the baron and Hugh showed that he had nerves of steel.
“As I feared,” was all the baron said, being equally reluctant to voice any more unsettling opinions.
He had been fully aware of the danger when he undertook this journey, and though this was tantamount to making off with a baby fire dragon while a rope tethered it to its mother’s neck, the Nobleman didn’t seem the least bit disquieted. Perhaps he was even grateful to have someone to baby-sit the children.
“I wonder how many foes remain,” the baron said absentmindedly.
And the Hunter immediately replied, “At least five, counting Lord Johann.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s the number I came up with by dividing the distance you have to travel by the number of times they’ve attacked. Each is given one attack—there may be slightly more, but I think that just about covers it.”
“Remarkable,” the baron said, and in his heart he was truly impressed. Though he didn’t know if that was the actual number, it agreed exactly with the figure he’d imagined. Although he’d hired this man because he’d heard he was the greatest Vampire Hunter in history, D’s power and abilities far exceeded even the baron’s conjecture—the young man was truly worthy of being dubbed a gorgeous demon prince.
On the other hand, there may have been some things about the young Nobleman D couldn’t fathom either.
In all their lengthy history, there were very few examples of the Nobility comprehending humanity, and that comprehension only extended as far as concrete measures such as reducing the humans’ labors or keeping them from being pillaged by other Nobles. The quintessential act of inhumanity—the drinking of blood—had never been done away with. Even Nobles who’d displayed boundless compassion for human beings while sated would sink their fangs into the throat of a girl whose head they’d patted lovingly should their hunger take root. There was no record of any Noble lasting three days alongside humans. In that sense, you could say that Baron Balazs deserved a place in history.
“Do you find it odd, D?” the Noble asked as if he’d read the Hunter’s mind, and D looked over at him in the driver’s seat.
“Do you know how to use telepathy?”
Long ago, the same ability had been a paranormal skill called “mind-reading.” It was probably that same talent that had allowed the baron to confer with D from the distant cover of a boulder.
“A little, you could say,” the baron responded. “To be honest, I can’t say I don’t feel a hopeless longing when I’m with the three of them. After sating my hunger with artificial blood, all the dreams I have in my coffin are of their pale throats. No doubt it’s the same with Miska. Come now, don’t give me that look! I’m still your employer, as it were. Rest assured. Even if you weren’t around, I could restrain myself until I reached my destination.”
D’s eyes gleamed as he asked, “Why is that?”
More than the question, it was unclear if the baron could fully comprehend the mindset of the one who posed it.
“My mother underwent a certain procedure while I was in her womb,” said the baron.
The wind snarled, and the wooden wheels broke the ground.
Perhaps the clouds that swirled in the darkened sky were calling up a storm. Lightning flashed.
D asked, “Who performed the procedure?”
The flash of light bleached both their faces, and then the thunder roared.
Due to its distance, the baron’s voice could still be heard distinctly as he replied, “The Sacred Ancestor.”
The Hunter’s horse galloped. The carriages raced along as well.
“Is that the reason you’re going to Krauhausen?”
“I suppose so,” the baron said, turning his eyes forward. “My mother pleaded with the Sacred Ancestor time and again not to do the procedure. But it was Vlad Balazs that insisted it continue.”
D said nothing.
“Do you know what the result was, D? Strangely enough, I get the feeling you’d understand.”
The baron raised his right hand. The back of his blue glove was covered by a piece of armor the same hue. When one of his five fingers made a sound like a motor, the armor plate slid back, glove and all, exposing the hand below, starting with the split finger.
__
There was a cry.
“What’s the matter?” Taki asked as she shook the girl awake.
May was terribly hot, her pink cheeks covered with tears and sweat. The girl’s eyelids seemed sewn shut as they trembled, and when they finally opened, her eyes were etched with a look of stark terror.
Looking up at Taki until her fear faded, May then buried her face against the woman’s chest.
“You’re okay now. You’re safe. Had a nightmare, did you?” Taki said as she stroked the girl’s shoulder, and the violence of the quaking she could feel made the young woman a captive of her mournful thoughts.
“It was Hugh . . . He was . . . His whole body just melted,” May cried as if her sobs had just been transformed into words. “It was scary . . . so scary . . . what happened to his body . . .”
“It was a dream. Just a bad dream,” Taki said as she stroked the girl’s hair gently. “I’m sure you’ll have better dreams now. Bad dreams don’t come true, you know.”
And then she softly shut her eyes and added in a tone May wouldn’t hear, “Neither do the good ones.”
VILLAGE OF DEATH
CHAPTER 2
I
__
Though they intended to go right through the ghost town, the group had been pelted by torrential downpours for an hour and a half, so D decided that they’d take shelter instead.
“But as soon as the rain lets up, we move out again, even if it’s the middle of the night. Keep that in mind,” the Hunter told them all once they’d entered a brick building that seemed to be a meetinghouse almost at the center of town.
Aside from the dust and the thick fog of spider webs, the room had suffered almost no damage, and once the atomic lanterns had been lit, Taki and May used a leather sofa as a bed. Outside, the rain echoed like the beating of a war drum, and the girl anxiously fiddled with the front of her blouse.
“It’s really coming down,” Taki said with fear in her voice.
“There’s a river not far from the village, I believe. I wonder if there’s any danger of it overflowing?”
D responded to the baron’s query, saying, “I’ll go have a look.”
His black form was quickly swallowed by a darkness of the same hue.
Taki averted her gaze from the two Nobles out of instinctive fear and hatred.
“Scared?” Miska asked with a mocking laugh after a few minutes of naught but the sound of the rain. “Two Nobles and two humans—as numbers go, a perfect match. When you think of it, it would be strange if nothing happened.”
As the white figure got up off another sofa, something suddenly seemed to slice through the air. Before the little rock could hit the far wall, Miska saw that the one who’d thrown it—May—was fighting her way free of Taki’s grasp to stand up.
“So, my little pebble of an opponent uses a stone to throw the gauntlet, does she?”
Though the girl was even more reckless than her brother, her features hardened at the grim spectacle of the white fangs that peeked from those grinning vermilion lips, but May’s malice promptly came to the fore as she spat, “You think I’m scared of you? Sooner or later, we’ll destroy both of you. If I were frightened, your kind would still be running the show now. You’re an extinct breed, thrown out of our world and with no pla
ce else to go. Come on! I’ll take you out right now! I’ll make you pay for what happened to my mother and father!”
“Oh, now this is something I hadn’t heard before. Your father and mother fell into our hands?” the pale woman said, her eyes burning with a cruel delight that spilled over into her next remarks. “How fascinating! I’m sure they must’ve been overjoyed. Very well, I shall send you now to join them.”
May’s body trembled, but not from fear. She shook with a rage she couldn’t contain.
“Stop it!” the figure in blue said as he leapt out in front of Taki, who had taken up a position shielding the girl.
“You’re interfering,” Miska snapped angrily as she stared at the baron. “Why would you protect these wretched humans?”
“I made a promise to D.”
“A filthy half-breed like him—”
“He’s more important to my journey than anyone—even you,” the baron stated, his words carrying more than enough force to shake the bloodthirsty Noblewoman.
Taking advantage of the situation, the baron said, “A stroll on a rainy night might be nice, don’t you think?”
And with that, he reached out and took Miska by the hand.
The Noblewoman wasn’t the only one to have confusion rise on her face. Taki and May looked at each other with astonished expressions.
Water—particularly flowing water—could have fatal effects on the vampiric Nobility. The biorhythms of Nobles soaked by the rain dropped to the nadir, and in the process, their actions became unusually sluggish and their thoughts unfocused. And it was for this reason that even now a Noble’s grave was often soaked with hoses or buckets of water before it was pried open. There were a number of examples of travelers who’d been attacked but had saved themselves by running out into the rain, and many carried a pot of water with them when they took to the road.
Opening a case he’d unloaded from the carriage, the baron handed Taki a plasma rifle and told her, “In case of emergency. We’ll be right back.”
And then he stepped outside with Miska. The outlines of the pair turned white from the spray of the rain, and then even that faded away.
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Right in front of D, the black water raced by with a deafening roar. The Hunter’s eyes could see through the darkness as clearly as if it were broad daylight, and even in a torrential downpour, he could tell in an instant that fording this muddy flow anytime soon would be impossible. The waterway was a good hundred yards wide—some might even call it a major river. Once strong wooden bridges had spanned it, opening trade routes with other villages, but after the villagers left, they’d rotted and had been washed away, leaving the group no choice but to cross at a rope bridge much further upstream or use a ferry a great distance downstream. What’s more, perhaps due to the dark clouds hovering overhead, the black expanse of water grew as the Hunter watched, to the point where it was about to overflow its banks.
Just then, D did something strange as he watched the flow. He put the blade of the sword he’d drawn against the palm of his left hand.
“Not gonna be able to do it right away,” said a voice that mixed with the sound of the rain.
“When will you be back?” asked the Hunter.
“In an hour or two at the earliest. In the meantime, you’ll have to find another weapon. I’m sure you could cut down the average monster with this thing, but our foes this time are pretty tough—”
“Leave that to me,” D said as the water that’d already climbed the banks suddenly jumped from his ankles to his knees.
A second later, D’s body flew lightly into the air as he leapt back fifteen feet to an enormous tree and landed on a branch about the same distance from the ground. If not for the pounding rain, it would’ve been clear that neither the branch nor its leaves stirred in the slightest. However, descending from Noble blood or not, it was a rather exaggerated effort to flee from the running water.
The reason for his actions became clear from the way D concentrated his gaze on the muddy black flow.
A number of figures had risen from the water that’d covered the banks. The shapes that showed through the semi-translucent gelatinous substance coating them from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes made it clear they were human. But who were they? There was only one thing that could bring them to the ghost town this rainy night—and from the way they’d made their appearance, getting shelter from the rain wasn’t their aim.
D did nothing, and as his silent vigil continued, the foremost form raised one hand to give a signal. The figures dove in one after another, the jelly around them turning the same color as the water before every bump and contour melted away in a mere foot or two of the flow and they drifted off.
“More assassins, you suppose?”
Without responding, D leapt to the next closest tree to the village.
“Hold up a second. I wanna see what they can do,” the hoarse voice said.
†
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When the rain wasn’t actually falling on them, the sound of it was a comforting melody. The baron and Miska stood under the eaves of a shrine a short distance from the meetinghouse.
“What was this?” Miska asked as she turned to look up at the shrine and its lofty tower.
“This was where the villagers worshiped their gods, I imagine.”
“Gods—what nonsense! We are the only gods the human race needed. I wonder if the administration bureau in this district did nothing to suppress these practices.”
“Even in the Capital they had their holy places. Force probably couldn’t do anything to change that. They believe in something greater.”
“You seem rather well informed regarding humans,” Miska said with a sarcastic smile. “I wonder if that might be the reason you let those children do whatever they wish.”
“Are you keeping yourself in check?”
The baron’s question shook Miska. It had just dawned on her that at some point, the desire to drink blood had completely left her.
“I got a slight sense of it from your attitude and the way you look at them—in which case, it’s a rather intriguing development,” the baron remarked.
“What is?”
“We may be the first Nobles to successfully control our urge to drink blood in the presence of humans.”
Miska stiffened as if a jolt of electricity had just passed through her, then quickly tilted her head back on her pale neck and laughed.
“Baron Balazs, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. The only reason I have left them alone is to honor your wishes. If you were but to give me your blessing, I would return posthaste and you should see me clamp onto their throats.”
The baron turned his thoughtful countenance in another direction. Black water was streaming down the street.
“Have the banks overflowed? The way it’s raining—” he muttered as the black current promptly covered the steps. From the way it was going, it only seemed a matter of time before the interior of the buildings would be flooded as well.
Tension filled the baron and Miska at essentially the same time the black blobs flew up out of the water.
“Ah!” Miska cried as she covered her face. A jet of black liquid had shot from the face of the shadowy figure to plaster her eyes.
The amphibious attacker croaked out a froglike laugh, but a heartbeat later, his face was split lengthwise. He probably couldn’t believe it, because the same viscous mass that’d robbed Miska of her vision had been launched at the baron as well. Just before he was reduced to a corpse and fell back into the black water, he’d seen that the baron had one hand up shielding his eyes . . . and the viscous mass clung to the back of the Nobleman’s hand.
“Are you okay?” the baron asked as he raced over to Miska.
“I can’t see,” she said in a composed tone.
“Does it hurt?”
“No. But it’s not coming off easily. Who could these characters be?”
“I have some idea,” the bar
on said gravely. “Let’s go back. The meetinghouse might be under attack.”
“Once again, thinking of the lowly humans.”
Though her voice was choked with malice, Miska had lost some of her forcefulness along with her sight, and the baron took her by the hand and began to walk away.
It was at just that moment that the earth sank. Was it the power of the muddy flow? No, insistent as that was, it didn’t have that sort of force. The houses here had also been built to withstand it.
To the rear of the unexpectedly reeling baron, a trio of figures leapt up from a depth of water that ordinarily never could’ve concealed anything their size.
His left hand still holding onto Miska’s, the baron latched onto a column supporting the porch with his right. Now he didn’t have use of either hand.
Behind him, sharp gleams came from the hands of his foes—metallic claws. They were eight inches long. Apparently believing their chances of victory good, the attackers pounced, bringing their claws down artlessly in midair at the backs of the Nobles.
At that instant, a single flash of light mowed through the torsos of the trio. They probably never even realized it’d come from under the baron’s cape.
The shadowy figures sprayed a liquid darker than the black waters as they fell, but the baron didn’t even bother to turn and look at them as he made a hard pull on his left hand. Wrapping his arm around Miska’s waist as she flew up easily, he then swung both feet upward. A black hole opened in the porch roof, a product of a mighty kick—or rather, the strength of the Noble’s legs. His feet kept going right through the hole, and through some maneuver or other, the baron’s body followed suit as he and Miska went out through the ceiling.
“Do you think this sinking is their doing?” Miska asked, easily maintaining her balance on the pitched roof.
“Without a doubt,” the baron said, handing Miska a handkerchief blue as the twilight and telling her to use it to shield herself from the rain.
The flash that had dispatched the trio of assassins had already returned to the interior of his cape. With such speed, power, and control, the baron’s secret weapon could cover him against attacks from all three hundred sixty degrees, and any opponent trying to take him by surprise would find themselves dead and buried before they even got off a single attack. Perhaps even D.