Vampire Hunter D: Dark Nocturne (9 page)

Without even trying to get him back up, the girl spun around and was embraced. Even before she felt the terrific force of the arms that wrapped around her waist, the nape of her neck was ripped open. As her hand clawed out in agony, it caught hold of an apple on one of the larger boughs. And when the fruit shattered in her wildly clutching fingers, sure enough, it was black to the core.

__

“It's started!”

That's what old Helga went into the barn to tell D around noon the next day, when she came back from town.

“Gall the carpenter's daughter and the Sarayas' only son have been killed. They were found lying in an apple orchard in the eastern part of town this morning by the orchard owner. From what Doc Harmon says, it seems it happened sometime between two and five last night.”

“Didn't their families go out to look for them?”

“Well, no one noticed that they'd slipped out of their bedrooms. Anyway, it's perfectly natural to go somewhere and chat with someone on a fall night.”

Fall—the season when quiet loves were spoken.

“Did you take an impression of the throat wounds?”

“I sure did.”

Picking up the piece of fast-setting clay the old woman produced from her basket, D stared at it intently.

“If their blood hadn't been sucked, you'd never know from this it was the work of a Noble, would you? Must be one hell of a crude Noble, though. You reckon it was a servant of the Nobility or something?”

“It was a Noble,” D asserted softly. “However, there's something odd about this.”

“How's that?”

“This wound is rather strange. I get no sense of the life force of the one who bit them from it.”

“Huh?” the crone said, her eyes bulging in their sockets. “You mean to tell me there's life in the Nobility?”

“Perhaps ‘unlife' is the word for it,” D replied, his fingers playing across the surface of the clay like a physician searching for an injury.

“In that case, could it be a robot or something that bit them?”

“No, that's not it, either. I've never felt a ‘presence' like this before.”

“Damn,” said Helga. “And here I was thinking it was going to be the Nobility. Now don't you think for a single minute about letting this thing get away.”

“I only do what I'm paid for.”

The crone struggled for words, finally saying, “I was positive it'd be the Nobility, but now we've got one hell of a surprise on our hands, don't we?”

“Where are their corpses?”

“At this point, they'd be in storage—but in another hour, they'll be off to the crematorium. By sundown, they'll be ashes.”

And once she'd finished speaking, the crone backed away as if she'd received a terrible fright. D had just stood up.

“All that kindling . . . You didn't chop that for me, did you?” the old woman said as she pointed to the pile. “Look how neat it's split. Fact is, you sliced it, didn't you? Practicing for a fight with the Nobility.”

The wind that blew in through the doorway made the Hunter's long hair dance like the shadows.

The old woman realized she'd been mistaken. She'd thought things had started with the discovery of the first two victims. But that wasn't the case. Now that this gorgeous youth was ready to make a stand, everything would begin. Nobility versus humanity—this was a matter of life and death the likes of which could be seen nowhere but in the schematics of battle.

__

D got off his horse in front of the morgue. In general, that would be adjacent to the sheriff's office or the hospital, and in the case of Shirley's Door, it was the former.

The sheriff happened to be in his office at that time, and at first he responded in a guarded manner. But on hearing D's name, his demeanor quickly became warmer.

“So you're D, are you? Never thought I'd meet the real deal. To be honest, we're in a bona fide bind. Well, go on and look all you want. Of course, there are already a couple of folks in there ahead of you. They just got here, but they'll be going soon.”

Leaving the sheriff's office, D slipped in through the doors to the stone building that housed the morgue. An old man who seemed to be a deputy took one look at his face and bugged his eyes.

On opening the steel door at the end of the hall, he was greeted by a desolate space. Three of the walls had windows to let in the light, but aside from that, there was nothing in the room save the wooden tables directly ahead of him that held the corpses.

Before those tables, a pair of faces turned in D's direction.

“Oh, you?” Lyle said with a touch of nostalgia while Cecile promptly felt a flush of crimson rise in her cheeks. “Fancy meeting you here. I didn't think you were any ordinary customer, but, uh—you're not a Vampire Hunter by any chance, are you?”

“Call me D.”

For an instant Lyle's mind went blank, but he quickly reeled back with surprise. By the time he'd returned to his original position, his eyes were ablaze with adoration.

Nudging Cecile's elbow, he said to her, “Hey, you hear that—he said he's D. We've got the Frontier's greatest Vampire Hunter right here! Now you'll be safe as money in the bank.”

Cecile's gaze clinging to him all the while, D went over to the corpses. Their rubber bags had been unzipped to the waist. Bloodless, the young man and woman's bodies looked like puppets. Rigor mortis had already begun to set in. Even the suture that ran in a straight line lent them an air of the surreal.

As D touched his fingers to the horrid wounds of the dead, the living couple watched him. When D quickly stepped away from them again, the boy asked him what he was doing but received no reply, the figure in black heading straight for the steel door as if he'd forgotten all about the other pair.

“Hold up a second,” a flustered Lyle called out to him. “Would you just let me talk to you for a second? I'm sure it must be fate that's brought us together like this. We need your help.”

“We're begging you,” Cecile added, her head bowed.

D stopped and turned to the pair.

“I've heard that in this village, they'll put out a sacrifice if this is the work of the Nobility. Are you it?”

As the Hunter asked that of the girl beside him, Lyle's eyes went wide. “How on earth did you know that?” he asked.

“A minute ago, you told her she'd be safe as money in the bank.”

“I suppose I did, at that. So long as we've got you here, this can all be settled without Cecile having to be sacrificed. The bastards here in the village are a bunch of weasels. Every time there's trouble, they leave it to one girl to bail them out and then decide to keep quiet about it later. Ha! Like they know for sure that's gonna make the Nobility behave themselves or move on to another area.”

“When were you selected?” asked D.

“Not long ago—maybe an hour back.”

The mayor and all the other influential members of the community had come to her house and given her the news, the boy said. This very evening, Cecile would be left out in the place where the Nobility had the greatest chance of appearing, and she'd have to spend the whole night there.

“Would that be the swamp?”

“Sure enough,” Lyle replied. “And I'm gonna keep her company.”

“You mean this sacrifice isn't sent out there all alone?”

“The village's second mayor was a good enough person. He allowed the girls to have a single escort. And Cecile is an orphan, you see. She's got no one to look out for her but me.”

The young man actually looked rather proud as D quietly gazed at him.

“We don't know for sure whether or not the Nobility were actually responsible for this,” said the Hunter.

“You mean there's a chance they weren't?”

The boy and girl looked at each other.

“I've heard there are demonic creatures in the lands to the west that rip open throats and drink the blood. Why don't you try telling that to the mayor?”

“It's no use. He and all the rest of those pigs are already dead-sure this is the work of the Nobility. They won't listen to anything anyone has to say.”

“Why don't the two of you leave the village together?”

The pair exchanged looks of astonishment—they'd never even considered it an option. There was such solidarity in communities out in this cruel environment, no one could even think of leaving. A hue of hope tinged their faces, but it rapidly faded again.

“That won't work.”

“I can't,” Cecile said as she stared at D.

Though there was sadness in her eyes, they lacked the kind of baseness that would've clung to him for succor. Her limited stores of self-restraint were doing a remarkable job of keeping her fear at bay.

“My adopted mother and father still have to live here. If I were to run off instead of playing my part, the wrath of the whole village would come down on the two of them.”

“In short, the one responsible has to either be caught or killed,” Lyle said, slapping his hands together. “Come on, we're begging you. Help us out here. We don't have a lot of money, but we'll do what we can to repay you.”

“I already have another employer,” D said, turning toward the steel door.

As the lovers watched, the door shut again. But at that very moment, the two of them could've sworn they heard a hoarse voice around D's hip say, “Well, you sure ain't the most accommodating guy in the world.”

__

At the fork in the road, D bore left. His destination was the former site of the Nobility's mansion—the present swamp. The reason he'd gone to the morgue was so that he might examine the wounds left by the Nobility in person. But his fingertips had found nothing but failure. The bizarre information related by the clay cast was an accurate representation of the real thing. That being the case, there was nothing left to do but wait for his foe to appear.

Regardless of his situation, he'd be able to make the first move so long as it was still daylight. And so the white horse and its inky black rider followed the road down a hill to reach a gloomy region shrouded in a drifting miasma.

Covering roughly six square miles, the swamp was dotted with nearly twenty bodies of water of various sizes. Despite the local climate, bacteria in the water kept it from ever dipping below seventy degrees, and the toxin-laden murk not only killed any animal that approached, but also gave rise to freaks immune to its poison. Aside from those villagers who collected such monstrous beasts for a living, no one ever ventured there, even by daylight.

Leaving the path he'd visited the previous day, D dismounted by the shore of a small pond near the center of the swamp. Between the various bodies of water there were narrow roads and iron bridges that appeared to be from ancient times, but many of them had taken on a weird coloration or were hidden by thickets of trees.

On the left-hand side, D sensed an intense presence—a darkness that he alone would've felt.

“Damn it all!” cursed a voice he'd heard before.

“It's that guy. Looks like he followed you. You intend to just abandon him?”

Not replying to the hoarse voice, D went back to his steed and brought it to a gallop. After racing along for five minutes, he could see Lyle struggling by the water's edge. Spray was flying everywhere. The bluish-black hue of the water was no doubt due to the algae in it.

Lyle's opponent was a creature that resembled an octopus. Nearly a dozen sucker-covered tentacles were wrapped around the boy's limbs, and the creature was trying to pull him into the depths. Lyle was armed with a steel harpoon. Though he attempted to stab at the creature's bulbous head, the blindingly quick movements of its tentacles always interfered and the boy had all he could do just to keep the weapon from being taken from him.

As D halted his horse, Lyle turned and looked at him. Even locked in this deadly struggle, he'd apparently had enough presence of mind to notice the sound of the approaching hooves.

“Stay back!” he shouted. “I don't want this freshwater octopus getting anyone else on top of me. Just stay back and watch.”

“That guy's a real scrapper,” said a voice that sounded thoroughly impressed as it came from the vicinity of D's left hand.

D went down to the water's edge.

“I told you to stay back!”

“You're at a distinct disadvantage,” D noted in an uninflected tone.

“Not a chance. I'm just about to declare victory—oof!”

As his leg kicked into the air with a watery spray, there was a tentacle coiled around it.

Toward the bottom of the head, a pair of unblinking eyes glared at its prey.

“Damn! Hey, don't even think of helping me,” the boy told the Hunter.

“If you drown, you'll leave Cecile all alone.”

“Help me!”

D didn't go into the water, but there was a flash from his right hand.

A tentacle was severed—the same tentacle that was wrapped around the harpoon. The head of the octopus quivered. Its high-pitched squeals became a clear cry of pain when the steel harpoon landed right between its eyes.

Pulling his weapon from the octopus's head while the creature's spasms continued and it sank into the pond, Lyle fell back into the water for some time and simply tried to catch his breath. But the one who'd been about to die in the depths soon wanted to get back on dry land. Apparently his heart was also made of steel. When he glanced up quickly, D was just getting back on his horse.

“Wait—wait just a second there. Hey! You trying to tell me you didn't come out here to help us?”

Not answering the boy, D gave a kick to his mount's flanks. At the same time, his left hand went into action. To the ordinary eye, it would've looked like a pair of arrows had suddenly materialized in his fist. But D had easily plucked these missiles flying with enough force to penetrate stone right out of the air with his bare hand.