Vampire Hunter D 16: Tyrant's Stars

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  The little face looked down at Jessup on the ground and scolded him with relish, saying, “What, you didn’t think we could figure out the pattern after you screwed up three times, you dolt?”

  Although Jessup’s “dark-cloud chop” seemed to cut his opponents when he swung his blade in the wrong direction, his swings were not entirely haphazard. If that were the case, no one could ever beat him.

  Having been cut twice, D had let his left hand be severed by the third blow in order to discover the relationship between where

  Jessup struck with his ax and where the cuts appeared. The second wound had been dealt to him when he was entirely off guard, but he used the ones before and after it to learn to read the pattern, twisting in midair so that his leg was dealt no more than a shallow cut. And the reason he’d drawn the beheader’s attention to his left hand was because he needed his right to wield his sword.

  The slice in the peculiar material of his coat had long since closed, and it seemed that D himself had also made a full physical recovery.

  “That’s one down—what, six to go? We’ve got a long haul ahead of us,” said the face in his left hand. Its tone was far from light. Based on the one who’d just been slain and the other who’d escaped, it could tell with great certainty just how fearsome the remaining five would be.

  “I wonder where that woman disappeared to. She’s probably hiding behind something, waiting for a crack at us.”

  Bending down, D picked up a stone off the ground and threw it into the air. The parabola it traced was intersected by another line that cut through it at an angle. The stone dropped to the ground.

  “You’re still under the effects of Callas’s song, eh? You got off lightly. Anyone else probably would’ve killed himself a hundred times over. You’d better slay Callas before it comes to that.”

  “Fix me up.”

  Picking up Jessup’s body, D hurled it toward the wooden fence at the southwest side of the square. The enormous corpse looked to weigh in excess of two hundred pounds, but it whizzed through the air like a fastball to fall in a thicket far beyond the fence. The Hunter didn’t have the least bit of regard for the remains. His coldblooded demeanor was that of someone who didn’t consider it even an empty husk.

  “I’m already on it. The problem’s your spinal column. This is gonna take a little while.”

  Not replying to this, D started to walk back the way he’d come. The movements of this man who’d been chopped through the backbone were so elegant, they could’ve made the moon itself swoon.

  III

  When he returned to Mubbe’s house, the owner just happened to be poking his head out of the back room.

  “I’ve done it,” he said.

  Perhaps due to the materials he worked with day in and day out, his fingernails were melted and the joints on his right hand were swollen, but in it he gripped a single blue candle.

  “Genuine Time-Bewitching Incense! It was a rush job, so it might not be a hundred percent effective, but it should work for your purposes. Not that I have any idea what those purposes would be.” The toxin specialist wore the smile of satisfaction of an artist who’s put his whole body and soul into his work. D stared at him and said, “Try lighting it.”

  “Excuse me?” Mubbe’s mouth fell open. Shaking his head, he said, “Hey, it’s night right now. If I were to light this thing ...”

  Night would become day. As a dhampir, D wouldn’t experience the same hellish agony that a Noble might, but it would still be a rather painful ordeal.

  “Light it,” D said, a steely ring of intimidation to his voice. Gazing stupidly at the Hunter’s handsome face, Mubbe finally shrugged and replied, “Okay. Just don’t come crying to me about how bright it gets.”

  Taking one of his homemade matches off the table and striking it, Mubbe brought the pale blue flame to the candle’s wick. The instant a small light sparked, a great shudder passed through D. Though he had human blood in his veins, the sudden change from night to day wasn’t one the Hunter could withstand effortlessly. His blood reversed its flow, and his metabolism was thrown into disarray. Noble blood couldn’t escape its fate. More than a few dhampirs had been driven mad by as much.

  Several streaks of sweat rolled down D’s paraffin-pale cheeks. As his body trembled weakly, the organs within it screamed and squirmed with white-hot agony.

  “Damn—I’ll put it out!”

  Unable to stand it any longer, Mubbe reached over. No sooner had he felt a gust of wind like a cold breath skim by the end of his nose than the fire was extinguished. His body’s senses told him it was night again.

  Turning to look at D, Mubbe saw the left hand the Hunter had raised to the candle open to take it in its grip. Though he got the impression he’d glimpsed something like a human face in the palm of D’s hand, he soon forgot about it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked D.

  “I’ll manage,” the Hunter replied coolly, not a mote of discomfort in his tone. “Karim Mubbe, you’ve certainly done your job.”

  Taking a coin from his coat pocket, D laid it on the table.

  Mubbe was puzzled. For something like Time -Bewitching Incense, the going rate would be fifty golden Mircalla coins. But the sight of the slightly larger and thicker coin triggered something in his brain. His eyes opened wide.

  Murmuring, “It can’t be,” Mubbe slowly picked it up. His hand was shaking. As he held the coin in his palm and stared at it intently, the shaking spread to the rest of his body.

  “This . . . this is a Sacred Ancestor coin ...,’’ he said in a tone choked with wonder and fear. Faint as his words were, they hung in the air for a long time.

  “They were minted in the Capital to commemorate the ten thousandth anniversary of the Sacred Ancestor’s birth. As I recall, only fifty were made—a real treasure among treasures. Anyone who got one—even a human—had something so valuable it was as good as being dubbed a Noble. D—where the hell did you get this? Hell, even if you wanted to get one, you couldn’t. Unless you had it from the very start, that is. D, just who are you?”

  “I’ve given you your reward,” D said, taking hold of the candle and getting up.

  A short time after the unearthly beauty of that darkness in human form had gone and the door had closed, Mubbe’s wife appeared in the doorway to the back room.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  Shaking her head, his wife said in a tone that was practically a song, “No. I was out anyway.”

  “What about the little ones?”

  “They’re asleep,” she replied, and then she smiled. “No, that’s not true. Don’t you remember? We don’t have any kids.”

  Amazed and numb, Mubbe shook his head.

  That’s impossible. But she’s right. We never had any kids in the first place . . . Has the little woman always been this sexy? She’s supposed to be squat and tough, with the smell of dirt and sweat about her ... Wait a minute. Come to think of it, she took ill during that epidemic six years back, and then—

  “Everyone’s dead,” Mubbe mumbled, convincing himself.

  “That’s right. No one’s left here to keep you company. Can you stand being all alone? No? Then take your own life,” said the woman who until a moment ago had been Mubbe’s wife, bringing her lips to his right ear.

  A low, gentle melody flowed between her lips and his ear. A song.

  “This song calls for your own death ... even if it didn’t work on D.”

  Before long, the woman pulled away from him and gave him a seductive smile. There could be no mistaking Callas the Diva.

  Mubbe got up and stepped through the door to his workshop on rubbery legs. Going over to the row of gas cylinders by the wall, he reached for a valve. It contained the most powerful poisonous gas imaginable, a colorless and odorless mixture of toxins extracted from three thousand varieties of plants.

  Shortly thereafter, there was the hiss of escaping gas and the sound of a body falling. Once she’d heard that, the lovely and wicked diva slip
ped through the doorway and into the darkness as if seeking fresh applause.

  A morose air drifted through the dilapidated boarding house.

  “Jessup was slain, was he?” the missionary Courbet practically groaned.

  The elegant woman who responded with a quiet nod was the fiendish diva Callas. She’d just finished recounting the events that had transpired in the village of Janos.

  “And D definitely got his hands on the Time -Bewitching Incense— is that right, Callas?”

  Four faces turned to the source of that question—Curio. His tone was cool, composed, and genial, as if trying to aggravate the woman in her bleak yet explosive mood.

  “Indeed,” the diva said with a nod. The beautiful woman responded as if he’d struck a nerve. Even in ordinary conversation, it almost sounded like she was singing. “However, I disposed of the one who made it.”

  “It sounds like you really enjoyed yourself,” another voice remarked, and all the rest looked at each other. They’d expected her to put in an appearance. The source of the voice then drew the gaze of them all, just as Curio had done.

  It came from just above the ground, from the ceramic water pitcher. A woman’s face rose above the lip of the container like a disembodied head. It was the water witch, Lucienne.

  Drilling Callas with her eyes, she said, “It sounds like Jessup died protecting you. Shouldn’t you be more distraught over his loss than any of us?”

  “Regardless of what you may think, my heart is filled to bursting with sadness,” Callas said. It looked like a grin was rising to her lips; it sounded like she was singing a song.

  “Surely you all heard her. And the look on her face every time she mentions D—it’s as if she were speaking about the love of her life! Are you sure you haven’t been won over by his looks?”

  “Everything you say is correct, Lucienne. He’s a gorgeous man. So cold, but with such sorrowful eyes, a nose more perfectly sculpted than that of Adonis, and lips like icy roses that make one pine for even a drop of blood. I’m not the sort of woman who’s so inured to beauty I could ignore such things. But this I swear to you: I can’t allow so exquisite a man to live. I, Callas the Diva, will slay D—with my song.”

  Her declaration was so soft yet forceful that Lucienne’s disembodied head couldn’t speak for a moment.

  The next remark came from the ceiling.

  “Hey! A swift horse approaches from the village of Janos. It just broke through my thread and entered the boundaries of Marthias.”

  This time, it was Speeny who drew the eyes of all.

  “Is it a man or a woman?” Curio inquired.

  “Well, my thread tells me it was a man.”

  “The part about coming from Janos worries me.” After a moment’s contemplation Curio continued, “I think I’ll go have a look,” and headed for the door.

  A rumble went through the rest of them. Even his allies were frightened by the prospect of this man heading out.

  “Curio, sir—do you have a horse?” asked Courbet.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “But he’s so fast—you’ll never catch up to him,” Speeny added from the ceiling.

  “There’s no need for you to worry, either.”

  The figure in the vermilion robe pushed the door open.

  Once outside, he slowly started walking down the highway. Any Frontier person might’ve frantically called out to him to ask if he’d lost his mind, but no one would’ve ever left his house to check. The darkness of night on the Frontier was composed of nothing save pure danger.

  After going about sixty feet from the lodging house for workers in the abandoned farming community, Curio heard the ferocious beating of wings overhead.

  “My mount is here.”

  He looked up, but instead of stars, his eyes beheld an enormous shape spreading out to attack him. A split second later, he was flying through the air. Sharp claws dug into his shoulders, and the nocturnal giant hawk with a thirty-foot wingspan flapped its wings, ready to carry its unprepared prey off to its nest in the north. But it almost immediately pointed south—swinging around in the direction of the village of Marthias.

  Was this what Curio considered a mount?

  Like an obedient steed the giant hawk did indeed carry Curio to his destination. As Curio was borne up to the heavens, his prayerlike words were only heard by the enormous bird.

  Would there really be that much difference between racing across the ground and soaring across the sky? In less than a minute, Curio spotted the horse and rider advancing down the highway that stretched like a thread in the moonlight. Pointing at his target, he said in a monotone, “Crush his head.”

  Stranger than that remark was the fact that it seemed to be an instruction for the giant hawk. The bird instantly went into a dive. It beat its wings once to change direction and then merely glided. When it next flapped its wings to pull up again, the rider would be missing his head.

  Due to their great speed, Curio's face warped from the air pressure. With thirty feet to go, they were closing on the rider, who was bent low over his steed and riding as fast as he could.

  At that second a long spear zipped through the air. Severely bowed, its curve had been taken into consideration and it landed right on target, piercing the great hawk’s abdomen. The rider turned at the sound of the creature’s death screeches, and the giant hawk went into a tailspin as it fell, slamming into the ground and rolling two or three times like an enormous ball of rags, plowing into a vacant lot by the side of the highway and sending grass and dirt flying before it finally halted. Though it’d breathed its last, the giant hawk was still twitching when Curio crawled out from under its body about a minute later.

  As Curio staggered to his feet and shook his head, a low but dignified voice weighed heavily on the night air, saying, “So, it shielded you with its wing?”

  Not seeming particularly agitated, Curio looked up at the giant who towered some fifteen to twenty feet away.

  “You’re ..

  “Now, why would a hawk do such an admirable thing on an empty stomach? You’re one of Valcua’s seven, aren’t you?”

  “Whatever could you be talking about?”

  “I was covering D on his way back from Janos, expecting to stop someone from attacking him, and it looks like here we have our first rat in the trap. The nerve of asking us to come out in the daylight! Don’t you have the courage to fight a Noble now, at night? I am Count Braujou.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I

  He was up against a great, ten-foot-tall man—a veritable giant. Even the bravest warrior would suffer a heart attack from the shock. But the preacher in the vermilion robe didn’t seem the least bit afraid as he said, “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am one of Valcua’s seven—Curio is my name.”

  “What kind of tricks do you have?”

  “That’s a trade secret.”

  The giant guffawed at this. His was completely unrestrained laughter. “You’re an amusing fellow. However, since you mentioned Valcua,

  I can’t let you leave here alive.”

  “I might very well say the same thing to you.”

  “The blazes you might!” Count Braujou bellowed, his right knee rising before he slammed his foot against the ground.

  A line ran straight toward Curio. Halfway to him it split to either side, opening into an enormous crack.

  Wringing a cry of terror from the bottom of his heart, Curio leaped to one side to escape. At his feet another crack opened, swallowing him up. The count brought his foot down again.

  Having seen his success, the giant’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction when he saw Curio trapped chest deep in the crack. The split had opened no further.

  Letting out a deep sigh, the count made a light bound, landing next to the giant hawk. Artlessly extricating his long spear, he licked at the bird blood that clung to its tip. His eyes began to glow with blood light.

  “It’s been a long time since I had a fresh meal,”
he said, running his tongue around lips that already had a pair of fangs peeking from them. “I aimed for the hawk. You see, there are a number of things I want to ask you. I know the abilities of four of the seven of you. And I have a good idea about another one. As for the other two— of which you are one—what powers do you have? What’s the other one look like? And what’s his or her name? I stopped that crack you’re in. But I can make it swallow you with another tap of my foot. So you’d better start telling me what I want to know, unless you want to be smashed flat as a pancake in the depths of the earth.”

  “I have nothing to say regarding the other member,” Curio replied. His tone was soft.

  That only angered the count more.

  “However,” the preacher continued, “as far as my own abilities go,

  I shall be more than happy to give you a demonstration. You see, it wasn’t you who stopped the crack, Count.”

  “What?” ‘

  In the darkness, the Noble’s prim and proper countenance blackened with rage. He pounded a foot the size of a throw rug against the ground. But his ears caught Curio saying, “Stop that.”

  Quaking, the crack widened a bit, and then stopped.

  Firmly planting both hands on the ground, Curio slipped out of the deadly maw.

  Oddly enough, the count didn’t launch his next attack. Shutting his eyes, he grimaced as if he had a headache, and he leaped back at essentially the same time Curio escaped from the fissure. It was difficult to tell what the Nobleman was thinking as he jabbed his long spear into the ground and put his hands over his ears.

  “So you’ve discovered how my sermonizing power works? I should’ve expected as much from a Noble. Now that you’re powerless to do anything, you can just stand there while I destroy you.”

  The preacher in vermilion drew a machete from inside his robe. For travelers or wandering holy men whose travels took them to trackless wastes, it was an essential implement for hacking through the forests that stood in their way or slaying beasts.