Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two

by Pale Fallen Angel (Parts 1

  “What have we here?”

  “There’s medicine inside it. Hugh and I put it on when we take a spill doing our acrobatics. I don’t know whether it’ll work on your wounds or not—but that’s all I have on me.”

  Silence descended.

  A short while later, Miska said, “Do you not hate the Nobility?”

  “Of course I do! My mother and father were both killed by your kind. It’s only natural that I would.”

  “That being the case, is this medicine a poison?”

  The Noblewoman’s jeering tone enraged the girl.

  “You’ll find out just as soon as you put some on! I’m not the sort who could let a hurt and crying human—er, person—no, that’s not right either . . . Anyway, I couldn’t just stand back doing nothing. When a Noble finds one of their own kind in pain, I suppose they run right over and drain them of blood. But human beings aren’t like that!”

  Her wrist was gripped so painfully tight it seemed her hand would be torn off. But before she could let out a scream, the pressure vanished, and May reflexively drew her right hand back.

  As if following it, the locket also slid across the floor.

  Anger made her forget all about her pain.

  “I’m only trying to help out, you stubborn goat! Just take it already,” the girl said as she slid it back through.

  It came right back.

  “I can’t believe this!” May said, and she slapped it through again.

  It was a bizarre game being played through the wall.

  “You’re a stubborn little snip of a girl, aren’t you?”

  This time, it was a laugh that came through rather than the pendant making yet another trip.

  “Hell, you’re a lot more pigheaded than I am.”

  “Then I think perhaps I shall simply discard it over on this side,” Miska said, her voice the very embodiment of cruelty.

  “Do whatever you like, you idiot!” the girl shouted in a vexed tone, turning her face away. “You’re wounded pretty badly. If you don’t do anything about it, I’m sure it’s gonna hurt, Noble or not. Why would you throw medicine away?” May said with a sudden sob as she wiped at her tears with one hand.

  Just then, there was the sound of approaching footsteps.

  Madly scrambling to put the brick back in place, the girl then leaned back against the wall and tried to look natural. And it was just in time, as several figures stood on the other side of the bars. The door was unlocked. Having heard the same sound from the next cell, May knew they must be calling on Miska as well.

  “Wh—what do you want?” the girl asked, instinctively bracing herself while before her, a pair of Galil’s froglike subordinates stepped to either side. The one on the right reached out to the left, the one on the left in turn reached out to the right, and a grayish membrane spread between their outstretched arms. Across its glistening wet surface crept a streak of watery fluid.

  “Don’t try anything funny with me. Just let me out of here!” the girl bellowed at them, though it seemed like even her words were going to be swallowed by the spreading grayness that approached her—but a split second before that could happen, the diminutive figure vaulted right over the thin membrane with unbelievable litheness. By the time the two subordinates had turned, she was already out through the cell door.

  May turned left. Even at this point, she was still thinking about saving Miska.

  A wall of black rose before her very eyes, and something came down with an intense strength on both the backpedaling girl’s shoulders, stopping her dead.

  “What a busy little heroine you are.”

  Looking up at the source of the words raining down on her, May felt all the strength drain from her body.

  “Be still for a while. We merely need to take a mold of the two of you,” Galil said calmly, the breath rasping noisily from his throat.

  __

  II

  __

  Glancing at the blades poised against the two women, D lashed out to the rear with his left hand.

  Pierced through the wrist and eye by needles of unfinished wood, the water warriors reeled backward. Even Miska had been run through the heart!

  “Have you lost your mind, Hunter?” Galil bellowed, his words like a curse, while May made a mad dash over to D. In her right hand she held a weapon that had belonged to their foes.

  “D!”

  Two streaks of light whizzed through the air, crossing paths.

  May was split from the head to the crotch. Naturally, the Vampire Hunter knew that her blade had been aimed right at his back.

  “How—how did you know?” Galil groaned as he retreated to the far side of the chamber.

  There was no reply. But if D had answered him, it probably would’ve gone something like this: No Noble still physically intact would ever stand there like a statue, even in the grip of a water warrior. The reason D had left May for later was because he had not been able to tell whether she was the real thing or not. But once his opponent had shown her true colors, sneak attack or not, she was no match for D with his sword already drawn.

  Galil’s scheme had failed miserably.

  “Come here, D!” Galil called out, his voice inviting the Hunter into the back room. “I have an opponent in here just for you.”

  The floor all around the Hunter was already covered by black water. The figure that leapt up from it to attack him was cut in half without so much as a sideward glance as D dashed along soundlessly.

  His senses alerted him to a strange reaction. His blood flow was swiftly stagnating, and his limbs were growing heavier. Bubbles were rising from his gorgeous lips. Although nothing had visibly changed, D’s surroundings had suddenly been transformed into water.

  In his swaying field of view, there writhed a whitish shape. Some might’ve called it a gigantic jellyfish. Beneath an essentially flat umbrella was a blob of a body, and from that, hundreds or even thousands of threadlike tentacles swayed and wriggled as if in search of something.

  “No matter how outstanding a Hunter you may be, being part Nobility, your offensive and defensive capabilities will come down a notch underwater,” Galil’s voice laughed aloud, though the man was nowhere to be seen. “This synthetic creature is able to alter any environment into the one that suits it best—water! You would do well to remember the name of the Kenlark. Say, if you don’t hurry to the surface, you’ll drown. This creature was originally developed with the baron in mind, but it would seem equally useful against dhampirs.”

  The tentacles reached out. Blue streaks ran through the creature’s white, semitransparent core. Veins or nerves, dozens of them floated up like threads as they were severed by D’s blade.

  Through a painfully slow process, D finally worked his way under the Kenlark. The tentacles were roughly forty-five feet long, with the entire creature measuring over sixty feet in all.

  The Hunter kicked off the floor hard. As he rose, it was just like he was floating to the surface.

  Without warning, the resistance from the water vanished. The Kenlark had turned the area around D alone back into normal space.

  Stopping for a second, D began to fall, but his hand caught hold of a tentacle.

  “That’s not good!” the same hand shouted.

  In the blink of an eye, the hand let go.

  The fall back to the floor should’ve been graceful, but his whole body twisted into a strange shape. Or rather, it was compacted. D got right back up again, but his proportions were strangely off.

  “Can you keep hold of it?” he asked his left hand, but it wasn’t clear exactly what he meant.

  “Oh yeah,” it replied, but before the reply had even finished, D jerked down with his left hand.

  “Oh yeah!” the hand exclaimed once more, this time with astonishment.

  Above D’s head, the monster was pale and quivering like a veritable full moon beneath the sea, but its tentacles dropped off its torso with a rubbery snap.

  Avoiding the falling tentacles wi
thout seeming to dodge them at all, D then heard someone call his name. Turning, he saw a tiny face peering down at him from the top of a lengthy spiral staircase.

  “Up here! Come this way!”

  A number of shadowy figures leapt at May from the black water, but struck by the rough wooden needles flying from D’s left hand, they fell back into the depths from which they’d come.

  Hurrying to the foot of the stairs, D raced up to where May was.

  The Kenlark’s head and torso were vanishing into the upper part of the chamber.

  “Mr. D!” the girl cried, trying to give him a warm hug before he stopped her.

  “Where’s Miska?” he asked in a strangely heavy tone.

  “Over there!” the girl replied, her cute little finger indicating one of the towers that hung in space like some sort of gourd or melon. “She’s been burned and melted all over. Save her!”

  “You’d better come with me,” said the Hunter.

  The two of them reached Miska’s prison without any of their foes giving chase.

  The door to May’s cell was ajar.

  “How did you get it open?” D inquired. This was rare for him.

  “Earlier, when they were taking some weird kind of mold of me, I pretended to put up a struggle and lifted the keys off the guy that had them,” May told him, her chest puffed with pride.

  Though the keys were used to open the cell doors, they automatically locked again when closed. So it stood to reason that as they were leaving, her captors never even noticed the keys had been stolen.

  “Oh, that’s right. I got wrapped up in this odd membrane thingy. When I finally freed myself, there was a perfect impression of me left inside it. I don’t know what they’re gonna use it for, but be careful.”

  The copies of May and Miska created from that membrane had already fallen to D’s blade.

  D put his left hand to the iron bars—this prison was intended to hold humans. Miska had been put in it because Galil reasoned the horrible torture had left her with neither the physical strength nor the will to escape, and they must’ve planned on moving her to some other prison or destroying her later. As soon as the Hunter pulled with his left hand, the door flew off. The flying screws hit a distant wall, making a number of melodious sounds.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said D.

  Miska had her back to them, but she quickly got to her feet. She covered her face from the nose down with the sleeve of her dress. Even with the regenerative powers of the Nobility, her recovery would take a long time.

  “Let’s go!” May said, taking hold of her wrist.

  The Noblewoman’s hand was melted and misshapen with keloid-like scarring.

  Miska batted away the girl’s hand, snarling, “Unhand me, you filthy little beast!”

  “Okay, you pigheaded jerk! I’ll never bother saving you again.” Face swollen indignantly, May then turned to D and said, “Let’s go.”

  With D leading the way, the trio ran toward the stairs. It was only a second later that a roar echoed up below their feet.

  Taking a peek out the door, D gauged the situation. The lower sections of the massive spiral staircase had broken off and fallen into the black water. The twisted wreckage was reminiscent of a gargantuan skeleton.

  “Up!” D said, placing one foot on the remaining portion of the staircase. It was sixty feet down to the bottom. That wasn’t too far to climb back down carrying two women. Not for D, anyway.

  May shrieked, her cry flowing downward.

  The floor of the prison undulated like a liquid, and the girl’s legs sunk into it up to the knees.

  Reaching out with his left hand to grab the girl’s arm and pull her back up, the Hunter told her, “We’ve got to hurry.”

  D started to dash up the stairs. Although it was unclear just how old this staircase was, it ran up through the cavernous chamber in the tree, hanging from ceilings and walls, and with skinny passageways and rope bridges running off it.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” May said, slumping back against the handrail after they’d climbed about three hundred feet.

  “She’s little more than a burden. I say leave her here, unless you fancy carrying her on your back,” Miska spat.

  Ordinarily, that’s what D would’ve done. Instead, he asked her, “Can you stand?”

  “Let me rest a bit. All I need is a minute,” May replied, her answer broken by heavy breaths.

  Looking down, Miska said, “Everything is rapidly turning into water. At this rate, we shall only have another thirty seconds.”

  She sounded amused. After all, she was indestructible.

  “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

  May stepped away from the railing—and stumbled. D was right by her side. She reached out for him, but as her hand touched his hip, it sank all the way into his solar plexus.

  “Huh?!” May exclaimed, pulling her hand back a bit too forcefully. Once again she fell back against the handrail, but then there was the loud crash of something breaking, and her body suddenly sank.

  That section of the antiquated handrail hadn’t been able to bear the impact.

  A cry rose from her—and was quickly cut short.

  Grabbing the girl’s belt to hoist her back up, D set her back down on the stairs.

  “This is intriguing. It would appear you’ve been turned into water,” Miska commented as she stared at D with blazing eyes.

  So, the gorgeous Hunter’s battle with the Kenlark had had fearsome consequences. Perhaps the secret of how the Kenlark could transform its surroundings into water lay in the tentacles D had seized. Surely the only thing that allowed D to retain his human shape was the Noble blood that flowed in his veins.

  “But you were able to carry that brat with your left hand. Why is that?”

  Ignoring Miska as she knit her delicate brow, D turned to May and gave a toss of his chin in the direction of the staircase leading upward.

  Swaying weakly all the while, the girl began to climb the stairs. Although it had only been a brief rest, her steps were steadier than would be expected due to the way her acrobatic training had strengthened her heart and lungs. However, her feet had already turned to lead, and her heart was forgetting to beat. Before May had climbed another sixty feet, she threw in the towel.

  “Oh . . . I can’t do this anymore. Leave me . . . and go.”

  True to form, D neither replied to that nor offered her any encouragement, but he looked from the girl at his feet to a nearby catwalk.

  At the other end of the walkway was a three-story building that jutted from the interior wall of the tree. So weathered that it seemed to have become part of the wall, the wooden door had a sign above it written in what appeared to be ancient symbols.

  “We’ll go in there,” D said, making not only May’s eyes go wide, but Miska’s as well.

  “What, are you kidding?!” the girl began to say, but the figure in black had already started across the catwalk.

  Crafted of thin planks laid across a collection of logs, the walkway creaked disturbingly. Something that was either dust or sand rained from the bottom of it.

  Halfway across, D turned to the women and said, “All three of us can’t do this together. Once I’m across, you two can come.”

  And with that he took another step, but at that very instant there was the snap of a board breaking.

  “Ah!” May gasped, but it was unclear whether it was a cry of disappointment at the way the walkway had broken in two, or one of admiration at the way the gorgeous figure had flown to the building’s entrance like a black wind.

  Breaking the door in with his left hand, D called out, “Head up, and I’ll be right behind you,” before he vanished into the darkness.

  “You worthless cretin—saving your own skin,” Miska snarled, her body quaking with rage.

  “He wouldn’t do that. Let’s get going,” May said as she looked up at the giant spiral that continued above them.

  D must’ve found some definite form of sal
vation for them in that building. If not, he’d risk his own life defending them. When the catwalk gave way, he’d have undoubtedly sprung back to them instead of over to the building.

  Unexpectedly grabbed about the waist, May found herself hoisted into the air.

  “What are you—”

  “What a nuisance you are! By rights, I should probably drop you to your death right now.”

  With the girl’s face reflected in eyes ablaze with hate all the while, Miska began to climb the vast staircase with the light step of a Noble. And the stair her feet had just left collapsed into a shapeless mass.

  __

  III

  __

  Once D had left, the Nobleman had relocated as per his instructions, and another ten minutes after that, Taki had regained consciousness. The baron had taken a sound-dampening fluid from his carriage and squirted it into her ears, as the sounds of the water harp continued.

  “I was just—what happened to me?” Taki asked as she lay on a blanket that’d also come from the blue carriage.

  The baron explained to her about the water harp and where D was. He then added, “It was me that our foes sought. I’m sure they’ll come again. And I don’t imagine merely changing our location will be enough to give them the slip.”

  “Are you talking about the same enemies that’ve been after you all along?”

  “Yes. Assassins sent by my father.”

  “Your own father?!” Taki said, the breath knocked out of her. “How could he do such a thing?”

  “Because I’m on my way to kill him.”

  Taki was at a loss for words.

  “Get some rest. If there’s any problem, give this a squeeze,” the baron said as he handed her a cylindrical ultrasonic transmitter, and then he headed out of the room.

  The second he closed the door, ultrasonic waves pierced his eardrums like a needle. Flying into the room in amazement, he found Taki standing bolt upright in front of the bed.

  Eyeing the transmitter in her hand, he said, “Triggered it by mistake, did you?” and was about to leave again.

  “No,” Taki told him in a brooding tone.

  The baron turned around.

  “Then you did it on purpose?”