“I am not the one who should be tasting your steel. You are. Take your sword and jab it into your throat,” said the professor as he held a roll of parchment open in front of his chest. The portrait of Glen he’d drawn in his own blood was so detailed, it looked as if someone could feel the heat of the swordsman’s skin or his very breathing just by touching the picture.
Fear lanced through Samon. “Stop, Glen! You mustn’t listen to what he says!”
But as Samon shouted, she saw Glen’s sword move from where he had it poised at eye level, slowly but steadily approaching his throat. Glen’s cheek twitched. Deep within him, a fierce psychic struggle was taking place.
The tip of the blade reached his throat. Then sank into his flesh.
Glen’s lips puckered. Would his deadly whistle be able to outdo the devilish whisper?
“Glen?!” Samon cried.
At the same time, a melody of unearthly beauty streamed from Glen’s lips—a melody, and then blood. The blade pierced the base of his throat in the front, and all but jutted out from the back of his neck. Crimson foam splattered against the floor, sending up a tiny spray.
Pursing his lips once more, Glen struggled to whistle. Out it came. But it was only a prolonged breath and a stream of blood.
“A neck wound won’t kill you, will it?” the professor said, smiling as if he’d just remembered that. There was no trace of the contemplative scholar in him now. “Stab yourself in the chest,” he said.
“Stop it!” Samon’s body became a bolt of lighting as she shot toward the professor.
The professor’s neck split open—and quickly closed again.
A second later, the blade Glen had pulled from his own throat sank deep into its owner’s heart like a pin being driven through an insect. As his knees buckled, one last sound sprang from his lips.
“D . . .”
For a brief instant, the swordsman’s eyes were flooded with a tragic persistence, but it was quickly replaced by nothingness.
Silence descended. And it was not that of death alone. It was formed from the soundless grief of one woman.
Before long, Samon said flatly, “This can’t be right! It can’t be!”
“You’ve seen for yourself,” the professor said as he pulled out another piece of vellum. “It only stands to reason, given the mere fraction of a Noble’s power someone in your position receives. I won’t kill you. A woman’s blood burns when she despises you, and that hot blood is something this new Noble looks forward to tasting. You should consider yourself honored.”
And then he began to whisper to a new piece of vellum—one that was etched with Samon’s face.
“Come. Into my arms.”
Though the woman was crazed with hatred and fear, those emotions drained swiftly from her eyes. As if in a dream, the woman began to walk toward the professor. Not only had he ensnared Glen, but now he had Samon as well. Just what sort of transformation had the professor been through?
It was at precisely that moment that the professor’s eyes made a rapid movement. He gnashed his pointed teeth with an ineffable malice and resentment. With that almost metallic sound, he spat, “An interloper at this of all times?”
And then the professor shoved Samon aside and headed to the door with powerful strides.
He went outside. A cyborg horse that’d been racing like the wind stopped right in front of him, and a figure in black got off it without a sound. His eyes were like the glittering darkness made solid as they coldly reflected the new Nobility.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” the professor said as his right hand slipped into the breast of his clothes. “How did you manage to follow me?”
“Is Su-In inside?” was the first thing D asked. His soft tone suited the night perfectly, but there must’ve been something else in it that forced the professor to respond.
“Yes, she’s here.” And saying that, the professor smiled with complete confidence. “However, you won’t be going inside. You must die right here. Die just as the other man did.”
D watched silently as the man unrolled the vellum he’d pulled out. The Hunter’s right hand went to his sword hilt with lightning speed, there was another flash, and the weapon fell in a perfectly straight line from the tip of the professor’s unprotected head down to his crotch. Anyone who knew of D’s skill with a blade could well imagine the professor dropping to either side like a split log while viscera flew everywhere.
The professor grinned. An inky black line remained in the same spot where the silvery flash had passed. He then ran one hand along it—no slice remained in his cloak, nor was there any scar on his skin. He lapped noisily at the blood that clung to the palm of his hand.
“How do you wish to die?” Professor Krolock asked through blood-stained lips. “Shall I have you do what the last man did and stab yourself in the throat before gouging yourself through the heart? No, I must see to it yours is a much more painful death, as punishment for interfering with my feeding. Now, take that sword and put it to your neck. You’re going to slowly saw into it. You’re not to stop even when you hit bone. Keep going until you’ve cut your own head off completely.”
Even before the professor underwent this eerie transformation in Meinster’s subterranean lab, his power had made Samon his plaything, and after the change he’d gone on to slay Glen. He gazed raptly at the bizarre canvas. A portrait of D the artist had drawn in his own blood lay there in all its glory.
“Exquisite,” said Professor Krolock. “What a lovely countenance. That’s why I had to labor underground until this morning to finish drawing you. I put my heart and soul into this masterpiece, and now there’s no escape for you. Cut away. Once you’ve finished taking your head off, I’ll preserve it in salt and keep it with me for all eternity.”
D’s sword went into action. The Hunter brought it to the nape of his own neck, exactly as the professor had instructed.
As the professor watched the silvery line move across the pale, nigh-translucent skin, his whole body trembled. Something red welled up at the point of contact. At the scent of fresh blood in the air on a summer night, Professor Krolock closed his eyes in rapture.
And that was why he missed something crucial. He didn’t see the crimson flames burning in D’s eyes.
Even when the cold steel pierced his heart, the professor didn’t so much as scream.
Opening his eyes, he said, “How did you escape my power?”
The thin piece of animal hide dropped from his hand.
“It was a crappy picture,” a hoarse voice said with a scornful laugh. “The rougher the picture, the weaker the effect of your power. There’s no way you’d snag him with the likes of that.”
“Is that so? I guess you were just too beautiful after all,” the professor muttered pensively before taking a step back. The blade came out of him.
D didn’t give chase.
“Shall we try this again some other time?” Professor Krolock said as he slowly retreated.
“You have no tomorrow,” said D.
Watching the Hunter quietly sheathe his sword, the professor laughed scornfully. The wound on his chest had vanished without a trace. But a second later, a hellish agony seared through his heart. From the center of his chest—the same spot where the wound had vanished—black blood gushed from him and rained down noisily on the earth.
“Impossible!” the professor said as he gazed at D in utter disbelief. He realized something for the first time—the young man before him was an entirely different form of life from himself. “This . . . this just can’t be,” he stammered. “I used the Nobles’ secret . . . to make a new race . . .”
“You failed,” the voice said. “There’s only ever been one success.”
As the professor fell forward, D swung his blade at the man’s neck. The wizened head that flew into the air had a horribly wrinkled face. When it thudded back to earth, D then opened the door to the dilapidated house.
The first thing to greet the Hunter’s eyes was Glen’s c
orpse, which lay on the floor. But that’s all there was. There wasn’t a single person left in the room.
.
II
.
D went into one of the back chambers. The window on the far wall was open—that must’ve been how they’d fled. There was no sign of anyone still being there.
The Hunter went back to the front entrance.
A figure stood by the Hunter’s horse. He wore a brown shirt with blue stripes, and where the garment was open, bandages were visible on his chest. Regardless of the fact he said his heart was on the right side, he’d still punctured the lung on the opposite side, and it was incredible he’d been able to escape from the hospital.
“By the look on your face, I take it things didn’t go well,” Toto wheezed. “And after I nearly killed myself getting that info to you.”
When D had returned to the surface from the subterranean region below Meinster’s castle, it was the thief who’d informed him of the strange happening out at this shanty. Although his meeting with D had been a coincidence, his discovery of Samon and Su-In’s location had been quite intentional.
During his confrontation with Egbert on the cape, D had asked, “Aren’t you going to send in the other two?” One of the people to whom he was referring was Twin, while the other was Toto. Twin had trailed Egbert, while Toto had escaped from the hospital to follow along after D when he was called up to the cape. When the massive quake ensued and D was swallowed by the waves, the thief had then followed after Samon and the others. The temptress thus had two pursuers on her tail—Twin and Toto. While it was understandable that Samon might miss him, the reason even Twin didn’t notice Toto was because, even gravely wounded, he was still the greatest burglar in the northern Frontier.
Toto’s sole aim was still the bead. Although Professor Krolock had made off with it, he had a feeling that if he followed Samon and company, they were bound to come into contact with the professor sooner or later. In a manner of speaking, his hunch had proved correct. While keeping watch over the vampire pair in the ruined house, Toto was horribly surprised when he learned that the professor had come.
The tragedy that followed was like something out of a nightmare. Deciding that this was far more than he could handle, Toto could think of only one person with the skill to undertake the task, and he went back to the cape in search of D. And there, he’d met the Hunter. Giving D his own horse, Toto had continued on foot, arriving at the dilapidated house just now.
“Is Su-In okay?”
“Are you worried about her?” asked D.
“Well, sort of,” Toto replied nonchalantly.
“There’s no bead anymore. Time for you to exit the stage.”
“Do you expect me to just go, ‘Anything you say, sir!’?”
“Do as you like,” D said as he straddled his horse. With the darkness for a backdrop, his face alone seemed to glow.
“That’s my horse!” Toto exclaimed.
“It’s the hospital’s horse.”
“And you’d just leave an injured man stranded?”
“Su-In’s in mortal danger,” D replied.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the night’s just begun,” said Toto. “Tell me something—if the bead’s gone, why is everyone still so worked up about it?”
“I suppose they think they might get back whatever it is they lost.”
“In that case, folks would be better off not having anything they could lose in the first place. Well,” the thief added, “I suppose that wouldn’t work either. Humans sure are dumb, aren’t they?”
“The same is probably true of the Nobility.”
“They’re not dumb, but they are monsters. Which do you suppose would be worse?”
D said nothing, but wheeled his horse around.
He came to the road that led back to the village, then raised his left hand and said, “Not too long has passed yet.”
The wind groaned across the palm of D’s left hand. But anyone who felt it on their skin certainly would’ve bugged their eyes in surprise. A ferocious gale of over a hundred miles per hour was being sucked into a tiny yet unmistakably human mouth that’d opened in the palm of the Hunter’s hand.
“Well?” asked D.
“I’m barely getting something. I don’t know what they’re doing, but somehow they’re keeping the blood scent to a bare minimum. Another minute and it’d be so faint even I couldn’t catch it. Go straight down this road. But . . .”
“But what?” asked the Hunter.
“I’m sure you’ve already noticed. The air is strangely cold. Looks like it’s going to be a hell of a summer.”
D gave a kick to his horse’s flanks.
After galloping along for about a minute, a horizontal ribbon of silver could be seen ahead and the sound of water was audible. A river. A little bridge of logs and packed earth spanned it. On it stood a figure bathed in moonlight. It was Twin. Surely he was there to buy time for Samon to escape.
Rather than pull back on the reins, D charged forward.
Twin didn’t move.
As he galloped by the stock-still man on the right side, D swung his sword at him. Twin made no move to protect himself. Most likely, he’d never had any intention of doing so. The young villain’s head sailed into the air.
But at just that instant, the Hunter’s mount came to a sudden stop—or rather, it got stuck. The horse found itself in the most unnatural of poses, as if all four of its legs had suddenly sunk into deep holes.
Not surprisingly, D couldn’t help but go tumbling forward. Flying off at a speed and angle that would’ve undoubtedly been bone-shattering for an ordinary person, D would be able to give an easy twist and land gracefully. But he didn’t. He hit the ground shoulder-first, sending a dull rumble into the air. Still, he quickly tried to get up again, but then staggered in a strange manner.
A semitransparent gelatinous substance clung to D’s arms and legs. Although D realized that it had gushed from Twin’s gaping neck wound, he couldn’t be sure exactly what it was. Like the substance Twin had produced before, it was supple as jelly when it gushed from him, but mere seconds later it congealed with the strength of steel. This same substance that restrained D’s muscles had been spread across the road to snare the legs of the cyborg horse, had sealed the windows and doors at Su-In’s house, and had clung to the Hunter’s blade during his first duel with Glen. What’s more, it’d become obvious that the substance became hard as steel or a sticky slime in accordance with its master’s will. The unyielding nature of the substance was made clear by the portion that’d spilled into the river—it’d formed a solid sheet that blocked the flow of the water.
“This stuff is a pain—give me a second,” the voice said.
All five fingers were open on D’s left hand. As the Hunter moved it along his leg from the knee to the thigh, the hardened substance began giving off a whitish smoke and dissolving.
It was two minutes later that D got to his feet.
“This jelly stuff looks disgusting, but it’s pretty tasty. Wonder if I should keep some aside in my belly for later? Anyhow, that was a tough break.”
Not reacting to the voice that sounded both blasé and disappointed at the same time, D turned around.
In the middle of the road sat Twin’s severed head. The thoroughly corpse-like lips moved, and he said, “I have Su-In.” The sound of his voice was enough to make anyone want to plug their ears. “But don’t worry,” the head continued. “In accordance with Glen’s wishes, I won’t do a thing to her. Tomorrow evening, come to the beach in front of Su-In’s house at 11:00 Night. But if you try to find us before then or if you fail to show up, I’ll feed the woman to the fish.”
Once Twin had finished speaking, his features twisted into an unsettling death smile and his head fell over.
“It’s that woman, isn’t it?” the left hand said in an appreciative tone. “We’ve got no choice but to wait another day. That’s our
deadline for destroying the Noble, right?”
D was gazing in the direction of the village.
The distant melody played on eternally. Young men and women danced, trampling the shadows they cast by the moonlight. Tin goblets clanked together in toasts, and fireworks exploded in all the colors of the rainbow. Summer would never end.
.
Before the night gave way to dawn, people noticed that something had changed. The wind was cold. Unlike the bitter sting of winter, it felt like a gentle summer breeze on their skin. Anyone who wasn’t from the village probably would’ve said it was too cool. But it was cold—and not merely in regard to the sense of touch.
When the very first gust raced through the woods and village, the people stopped in their tracks, dazed—as if something breathing deep within them had suddenly stopped. On realizing that their blissful days were a mere dream, the adults were sadder than the children, but they also recovered more quickly than the little ones. Before long, people started walking around and talking again, or stepping in time to the music. Though the wind remained just as cold, they acted as if it couldn’t touch them.
That night, there were more victims. A young man who’d been standing watch on the beach and his girlfriend. Guard duty was done in groups of five. If they spotted a Noble, they were supposed to blow the whistle they carried. The young man had vanished behind the nearby rocks with his girlfriend when she brought him a snack. It was just before daybreak that the two of them were found with bloody blossoms left on the napes of their pallid necks.
A messenger from the mayor was dispatched to Su-In’s house in total secrecy.
D had returned. After hearing news of the victims, he’d first sped to the scene of the crime with the messenger, and after looking into the situation, he’d then called on the mayor.
“May I remind you, you only have until tomorrow to destroy the Noble,” the mayor said as a wind that carried the same message gusted from his gloomy eyes.
“I know,” was all D said.
“Is Su-In doing all right?”
“Are you worried about her?”
“I’ve known her since she was a toddler,” the mayor replied.
Mysterious Journey to the North Sea, Part 2 Page 22
