Just then, there was a great rumbling sound in the distance. A short time after that, a shock reached them through the ground. It continued for a long time.
“That came from the highway,” the hoarse voice said.
But D had already told the pair, “Stay right here,” and dashed off.
Just a thousand feet from the village, the road between the community and the highway was buried under chunks of rock. Someone had blown up the cliffs by the side of the road.
Looking up at the top of the pile of boulders, each up to ten feet high, the man in the guerrilla fatigues scratched his chin.
Halting his new horse beside the man, the first thing D asked was, “Was that you?”
“Huh?”
Greed pointed to the top of the rock pile, then at himself, frowning and shaking his head.
“It was the same monster that slaughtered the villagers. I didn’t see any sign of it, but I had my suspicions, and this makes it pretty plain. This is the work of the Weapon Master.”
“The Weapon Master?” a hoarse voice inquired. It didn’t reach Greed’s ears.
“The lifeblood of the village is the weapons they craft here. Buyers come from all over the Frontier. To keep anything from happening to the goods, they’re all stored in a single location. And the Weapon Master is the one in charge of ’em.”
While Greed’s expression could be described as intrepid, he began to look a little pale.
“Not only had the villagers been forced into the center of town, but the warehouses and factories were torn apart, too. No one but the Weapon Master could do something like that. Gotta be hiding around here somewhere.”
“What’ll you do?”
“I’m gonna settle up accounts,” Greed said, smacking his laser gun. “Nothing to do with that murderer but have a hanging. Before I do, I’ve gotta hear why the hell it’d do such a thing. I’m a warrior, after all.”
“You don’t have an employer anymore.”
“I took the job, just the same.”
“How’s this Weapon Master armed?”
“That’s top secret in any village like this. No one but it and the mayor would know. From the rumors I’ve heard, it’s packing a sixty-millimeter particle cannon and two hundred guided pencil missiles, a pair of flamethrowers, and a needle gun, but apparently it’s also got a couple of secret weapons to be used against Nobility.”
“That’s a formidable opponent.”
“Damn straight,” Greed said, scratching his head. “So you shouldn’t just be strolling around out here. Since the road’s been blocked, the bastard must mean to kill you, too. The only reason it ain’t showed itself is because it got hit when we exchanged fire. If I get killed, you folks have gotta find some way to get outta here.” “Come with me.” D indicated the back of his saddle.
After returning, with Greed, to the Dyalhis children, D explained the situation and told them to go into the village. Sue was to stay inside the covered wagon until he gave the word.
Not even asking why, Sue simply nodded.
Still suspicious, Matthew pointed to Greed and asked, “You sure we can trust him?”
“Hell, no,” Greed replied. “Do whatever the hell you like. I’ve got a job to see to. D, that’s one swell employer you’ve got there.”
And with that, he walked off. From the look in his eyes, it was clear he didn’t think much of Matthew.
Passing through the gates, Matthew gazed, dumbfounded, at the bodies lying around.
“This is just sick. Who’d do something like this?”
“Apparently it was someone known as the Weapon Master.”
“The Weapon Master of Razin?” Matthew said, apparently having some knowledge on the subject. “Tell me it ain’t so. If that’s the case, we’re in deep shit. D, we’ve gotta get outta here right away!” “The road’s blocked. You have any explosives?”
“Well, I’ve got charges for blasting irrigation ditches. I’ll go get ’em.”
Climbing into the back of the wagon, he emerged with yellow cylinders in his hands. He had a dozen.
“They’re not all that powerful. They couldn’t blow a rock like that out of the way.”
“Find an inn.”
Saying this, D started forward on his horse.
“Wait. What do we do if it finds us? Shouldn’t we hide or something?”
“It already has found us. Apparently the Weapon Master’s equipped with high-powered radar.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“Find the best place you can to roost.”
Matthew couldn’t say a word.
“Right now, the Weapon Master is repairing the damage Greed inflicted, but sooner or later it’ll be back. Until then, get some rest.” Wiping the sweat from his brow, Matthew said, “Where are we supposed to look for a good place to roost when the whole town’s soaked in blood?”
Just then, Sue stuck her head out of the wagon. Seeing the scene around them, she grew deathly pale and shut her eyes.
“Get back inside!” Matthew shouted.
“No, I’ll be fine. I have to get used to things like this. Say, Mr. D, there’s a good inn.”
Looking at D, the girl had a gleam in her eye that made Matthew’s face turn to stone.
In front of the community center, the three travelers stopped the vehicles and horses. It hadn’t been destroyed, and there weren’t any corpses around. As the building doubled as a hotel, they knew it would have soft beds and fresh food.
Once the wagon and car had been deposited in the parking lot, D quickly appeared, racing off in the same direction from which they’d come.
Watching him go from the window of a spacious room, Sue said anxiously, “I wonder if everything will be okay.”
“It’s too late to worry about that. This is where you suggested we stay. There’s no one left, but it looks comfortable enough,” Matthew replied as he surveyed the surroundings.
“That’s not what I meant! ”
On hearing this rare angry outburst from his normally reserved sister, the boy quickly turned in her direction.
“Don’t tell me—” Matthew began, his expression growing more intense. “You really are sweet on him, aren’t you? Sweet on that dhampir—that monster!”
“Stop it! He’s keeping us safe. Why don’t you grow up?”
“You’re the one who needs to grow up!”
Grabbing his sister’s wrist, Matthew spun her around so she faced him.
“What are you doing, Matt?”
Jabbing a finger at his terrified sister’s nose, he said, “I’m only saying this because I’m your brother. Don’t you ever make nice with that freakin’ dhampir again. You’ve gotta keep some distance from the hired help.”
“I don’t want to!”
Matthew became furious. His sister had never disobeyed him before. And he’d never acted like an overbearing older brother, either. Everyone who knew the two of them always sighed and said they couldn’t believe how well the siblings got along. But a young man of unearthly beauty had caused a split between them. Matthew struck out with his hand, as if he could bat the rift away.
A hard smack resounded from Sue’s cheek, and she fell.
Matthew had swung his fist at her.
“I’m sorry, Sue! Are you okay?” he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder, but it was viciously knocked away. “Sue?”
“Don’t touch me! I hate you!”
Suddenly, Matthew felt completely isolated, like he was all alone in the world. Everyone had turned their backs on him, leaving him far behind. His father, his mother, and now even Sue.
“Sue .. .”
When the girl at his feet looked up at him, his face was no longer that of his normal self. Extending both hands, he slowly bent down toward his sister.
Something was reflected in the corner of his eye.
The window faced the parking lot and the center of town, where little paths crisscrossed fallow barley fields. A bizarre object stood on
one of those paths.
The simplest way to describe it was to say it was a lovely young lady riding on a black sphere about six and a half feet in diameter. Her long, blond hair was tied back, and she had the kind of refined good looks and pale skin rarely seen in farming communities—she was the kind of girl who’d undoubtedly make the hearts of the village lads beat faster. The high-necked yellow shirt that covered
her pale nape still displayed her curvaceous figure. And the weapons mounted on the pylons that ran through the center of the sphere—a high-caliber beam cannon, flamethrowers, miniature missile-launcher boxes, a needle gun and its ammunition—were the sort of dangerous business that hardly seemed to suit such a person.
Matthew realized something instantly.
She’s it. She’s the Weapon Master!
The eyes of the lovely young lady on the sphere were devoid of anything that could be called life. She had to be a mere sixteen or seventeen years of age, but just one look at her beautiful face would’ve told anyone she was insane.
With the sound of meshing gears, a particle-beam cannon took aim at the community center.
“Don’t!”
Just as Matthew frantically clamored on top of Sue, a raging crimson stream streaked out under the blue sky to score a direct hit on the wall of the center, spreading a boiling-hot field as it ate its way through the reinforced plastic and concrete.
The cyborg horses that were tethered nearby went berserk, snapping the reins and galloping away with the wagon still behind them.
The beam cannon took aim at the pair on the ground.
A streak of white suddenly stretched from the girl’s temple: a needle of unfinished wood. Over a foot in length, it punched cleanly through her right temple to poke out below her left ear.
The girl turned her face to the side.
About thirty feet away, on the path to her right, darkness in human form sat astride a black steed. Was darkness born beneath a blue sky always this gorgeous?
“AnD yOu . . . WoUlD bE . . .” the impaled girl murmured in a robotic tone of rapture.
The lovely Weapon Master who’d destroyed an entire village was linked to D by a ghastly will to kill.
CHAPTER 4
I
"You can’t answer that?” D asked. It was in the same low voice as always, but his foe, a good thirty feet away, still heard it with perfect clarity.
For a heartbeat, a stunned expression spread across the lovely young girl’s maddened countenance. But it didn’t last long. The sphere didn’t appear to move as it rotated so that the girl and D faced one another. Did she realize D had chosen the community center to lure her out?
Completely expressionless, the girl fired her beam cannon.
The instant the stream of blistering heat produced a heat shimmer near the weapon’s muzzle, D started his horse galloping with all its might. But when D abruptly disappeared from the melting, steaming path, the Weapon Master didn’t think it strange. It wasn’t her crazed brain that sensed this; it was her intuition.
There’s no way such a gorgeous man could exist in our world.
As D left his horse and sailed down, the girl’s survival instincts repelled the Hunter’s sword. D bounded in the same direction as the blade and at the same speed, not losing his balance in the least as he touched back down to the ground.
“That’s an electronic barrier,” the hoarse voice indicated. “With that last needle, you caught her off guard, but now she’s got her eye on you. Her survival instincts have been triggered.”
The sphere backed away without a sound. The scenery that was visible behind it was distorted, undoubtedly due to the force field. D suddenly felt a terrific weight across every inch of his body. “Oh, no! She’s pinning us down with this force field—we’ve gotta make a break for it!”
Before the hoarse voice had finished speaking, white smoke gushed from the back of the sphere. Trailing long plumes of that same smoke, thin objects reflected the sunlight as they climbed steeply. Dazzling flames spouted from their tails as the pencil missiles followed their sensors into the force field—into the powerful hand that was outstretched . . . and the mouth that had opened in it. All thirty missiles were inhaled, and the instant the last had been swallowed, thirty feet of flames and black smoke stretched from that tiny mouth.
A meaty little face formed on the hand’s surface and groaned with great pain, “That was a hell of a meal.”
D closed the distance between himself and the Weapon Master in a single bound. His blade came down in a deadly diagonal slash— and vivid sparks flew from the surface of the sphere. It’d literally escaped by a hair’s breadth. Not halting there, it retreated toward the center of town.
And D was still ready to give chase. He started to take a step, but then halted. The scenery before him was distorted—a force field had been activated. It was like a black hole, with the power to reduce even a steel battleship to its constituent atoms the instant it made contact. Not even a void existed within it. It was a parting gift from his opponent.
“So, she took that needle from you, no problem? Must be a cyborg or some kind of amplified human being,” D’s left hand murmured as the Hunter returned his sword to its sheath. “But those kids— that was just too bad.”
D turned toward the community center. Flames had begun to spring up in various parts of the collapsed building. Sue and Matthew were nowhere to be seen. D had left the two in an extremely dangerous situation, and then failed them.
Giving a small whistle, D summoned his cyborg steed. Just as he settled into the saddle, a crimson beam of light skimmed past his right cheek. D turned around.
This young man could even sense the murderous intent of a machine. That was why it was practically impossible to get the drop on him. But he hadn’t dodged the shot.
A jeep was approaching from the end of the path that ran to the west. Coming down the trail, it stopped beside D. The wagon and car remained in the community center parking lot.
Behind the jeep’s wheel, Greed turned his gaze from the blazing community center and the still, vapor-shrouded barley field and back to D, saying, “Fought the Weapon Master, didn’t you?”
As he looked D over from the top of his head down to the tips of his boots, the man’s good eye swiftly filled with admiration.
“And yet, you don’t have a blessed mark on you. What are you, some kind of monster?”
Greed’s one good eye bulged as he trained his gaze on the vicinity of D’s hip. He thought he’d heard low, hoarse laughter. However, he immediately looked up and grinned as he said, “I think you’d best go into hiding after all. Having two monsters running around here would just leave me on edge.”
Apparently the warrior was still determined to fight alone. When he looked at the collapsed community center, a sad expression came to his face, and he asked, “You don’t mean to tell me they were in there?”
D nodded.
“Damn,” Greed said with a shrug, and then he clapped D on one shoulder. “Those were some good kids, weren’t they?”
After that remark, Greed asked, “Where’d the girl get to?”
“The center of town.”
“Thank you kindly. Don’t take it so hard. And stay the hell out of this!”
Getting back in the jeep, he started the engine and raised one hand in parting. He wore an affable smile.
The jeep raced off down the path. After watching it go for a while, D got back on his cyborg horse and headed over to the car and wagon.
There were too many things Greed couldn’t understand. He didn’t know how or why the village’s entire populace had been slaughtered. When he’d returned to the village, everyone had been stained with red. Most of the villagers had died in their houses, but those who’d noticed something was wrong and tried to run had been murdered in the streets. The Weapon Master could do it—he realized that in an instant. But why?
He’d learned of the madness while he was searching the village, when the other warriors attac
ked him. The reason he’d somehow managed to fight them off was because they were mainly armed with gunpowder-based firearms, while Greed’s weapon was a far more powerful and accurate laser rifle, and as they’d approached him, they’d made no attempt to remain silent.
But where had this madness come from? On rare occasions, humans became infected with a virus that caused insanity. However, as only the warriors and the Weapon Master were affected, it was impossible to deny the possibility that it’d been induced artificially. He’d told D as much.
And when I find out who did this, I’m gonna tear them to pieces.
The faces of the village mayor and his daughter Vigne rose in Greed’s mind. When he’d come to the village as a drifter seeking work, the other villagers had mocked and berated him, but the mayor had given him a menial job on his farm. For a whole year he did manual labor in exchange for three meals a day, and then the mayor selected him to be a warrior. Greed still remembered the words he’d said: “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”
If he would have said he’d never wanted to run off during those days of hard physical labor, it would have been a lie. But whenever his exhausted body transmitted that thought to his brain, Vigne had always miraculously appeared. And each time her pale, slender hands had held a boxed lunch. “From my papa,” was all the girl said as she handed him the box, and though she turned around immediately, for a second their eyes met, and she didn’t try to look away. Greed remembered well her plump, pink cheeks and the large eyes that had reflected him. The world ain’t all bad, he’d thought. Why not try toughing it out a little longer?
In this village festooned with blood and corpses, the very first place he’d gone was the mayor’s house. The mayor lay in the foyer, while Vigne had fallen in the hallway in front of her bedroom. The mayor had been shot through the heart; half of Vigne’s face was missing. The damaged portion was charred to a crisp—she’d taken a savage blast of heat from a beam cannon. The remaining half of her face wore an oddly peaceful expression, and that was the only thing that kept Greed from losing his mind. At the very least, it left him ready to fight with a cool head.
Vampire Hunter D 16: Tyrant's Stars Page 20