Vampire Hunter D 16: Tyrant's Stars

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  D gazed straight ahead without saying a word.

  “—There’s another assassin here besides them. D, you remember what Sigma told you? It said it was sending an assassin after you, too.” In Galleon Valley, in its last seconds with D, the antiproton computer had indeed told the Hunter that.

  “Five of Valcua’s underlings remain, but how many assassins could Sigma have sent? This is shaping up to be a hell of a trip!”

  There was no reply to this, but presently D halted his steed before the chunks of stone that buried the road. Getting off his horse, he took the blasting charges Matthew had supplied from the front seat of the wagon and went over to the rocks. Making a light leap up to cling to the surface of one rock, he made two or three more bounds before disappearing on the far side of the pile. It took about two minutes for him to reach the top of the rock heap.

  “You sure are one scary character,” his left hand groaned, sounding deeply impressed. “You set what I calculate to be the perfect-size charge in exactly the spots I would’ve chosen.”

  D still had the cords for a number of charges coiled around his right arm.

  Suddenly D turned around. Countless figures were approaching from the direction of the village.

  “Well, what do we have here?” the hoarse voice said with interest. “It’s the villagers!”

  There could be no question that these were the same people who’d lain in the houses and in the streets soaked in blood. Grins formed on faces stained with vermilion. The surging wave of the dead halted where the village road met the highway.

  D leaped down in front of the foremost rank before they could take another step forward. Perhaps even the dead felt the unearthly aura that filled the young man, because the grins were wiped from every last face.

  “What a handsome guy,” a middle-aged man facing D said, nearly moaning. His voice was quite clear. “You wouldn’t consider living in our village, would you?”

  Each and every head nodded in unison at his suggestion.

  “Your horse and your friends could live here, too. We’ll even give you houses and fields.”

  Saying nothing, D peered at the man’s face. The man’s right eye was a gaping cavern of deep red, while his eyeball dangled down by his Adam’s apple. All that connected the latter to the former was a whitish optic nerve.

  “I see. The whole point was to make an army of the dead. Now I get why everyone was slaughtered.”

  The middle-aged man wore a perplexed look as he turned his eyes toward D’s waist, where the hoarse voice had originated.

  Forgetting about the voice, the man reached one hand toward D’s shoulder, saying, “Come to the village.”

  The man thought a white light flashed by his nose, and then his right arm fell off at the elbow. With a vacant expression the man

  first stared at his wound, and then toppled backward. A scream rang out. Not an act—a real one.

  Could even the dead feel pain?

  D jumped back.

  “Come.”

  “Live in our village.”

  “Come back to our place.”

  Male and female, young and old alike held their arms out as if to embrace D as they rushed toward him. Ahead of them, fiery blossoms bloomed. Flames and shock waves threw villagers in all directions with a roar. D had backed away only after igniting the charges. Whether they were dead or not, this young man had no kind thoughts toward his foes.

  Black smoke streaming behind them like ticker tape, the remaining villagers attacked. The Hunter’s sword danced in the sunlight. Heads flew from the villagers as if they were jack-in-the-boxes. Out in the sun and without so much as a drop of blood being spilled, there was actually something invigorating about the scene.

  The villagers had him vastly outnumbered. There was no way a single sword could stop a wave of more than a hundred villagers. But look! The instant the arc of D’s blade touched the dead, their heads were sent flying mercilessly. The fallen bodies overlapped, building a rampart with their own corpses. As the others tried to climb over it, silvery flashes shot out, adding their freshly decapitated corpses to the pile. Unable to set foot in the zone carved out by D and his sword, the villagers met a new death.

  From the tail end of the visibly shrinking throng of living dead, one figure dashed off toward the village. A scorching beam of red angled down from the sky above to pierce the figure at the waist. As the body thudded to the ground, a white puppy jumped out at his feet and made a beeline for the village.

  Aided by the blistering red beams of light, the glittering sword mowed down the villagers.

  Less than five minutes later, a jet helicopter touched down in the center of the vast expanse of corpses. Inside it, holding a laser rifle, was none other than Greed.

  When his eyes met D’s, the man frantically held out his left hand and said, “Don’t get the wrong idea! The shock of the crash brought me around. See, I grabbed another helicopter to come save you.”

  “Who possessed you?”

  “Some jerk in a red robe.”

  When Greed saw that D was approaching, his body stiffened, but the gorgeous young man paid no attention to this as he pressed his left hand against the man’s brow. Something oddly cold sank into the warrior’s brain. For a second, he felt like screaming, and then the sensation vanished.

  Pulling his left hand away, D turned his back on Greed and walked toward the villager who’d fled. Apparently the examination had ended.

  The fallen villager was a young man who seemed to be around twenty, give or take a bit. He didn’t move at all.

  “Is he dead?” Greed asked after following the Hunter, slouching forward a bit and looking down as he did so. “But I only shot him below the waist. He shouldn’t have died from that—well, aside from the fact that he was already dead, that is.”

  “Are you certain he’s from this village?” D asked.

  “Yeah, the guy’s named Egbert. Just a regular young fella.”

  “He was possessed.”

  The fact that only this average young man had tried to run made it clear that he wasn’t like the other villagers.

  “But why’d he die?” Greed inquired somewhat dubiously.

  “He had a dog with him,” D said. An almost imperceptible breeze tousled his long, black hair.

  Even the slightest change in something truly exquisite could lead others to discover new beauty. Greed was in a state of rapture. The meaning of D’s words dawned on him only after the Hunter had begun walking toward the village.

  “Oh, so whatever possessed Greed hopped over to the dog? If we don't find it soon, it could move into someone else—but there aren’t any more villagers, are there?”

  The warrior was about to walk off to his helicopter, but he halted at D’s voice.

  “Stay here and watch over the kids.”

  Though the words resounded against Greed’s eardrums, there was no longer any sign of their source.

  “I just don’t get that guy,” Greed muttered pensively.

  Entering the village by the back gate, D immediately put his left hand against the ground beneath the gates.

  “You catch the scent?”

  “Yep,” the hoarse voice replied. “Take a right on that little lane up ahead—but who would’ve thought we could track whatever’s possessing the dog by its scent? You’ve done me one better this time.”

  D became a gust of black wind that raced down a side road. Up ahead was a row of three enormous structures, apparently warehouses. The shutter on the first one was open.

  “Be careful. There’s the stink of oil and metal,” his left hand warned him.

  When they’d closed to about ten feet, something like a black whip shot out from behind the shutter to coil around D’s right leg. His naked blade flashed out, cutting through the thing with ease, but just a second later, countless tentacles whipped out. There were easily hundreds of them, and they were made of steel. A dozen were left wriggling on the ground as he leaped back fifteen feet.


  CHAPTER 5

  I

  The warehouse’s shutter exploded at the same time D touched back down to the ground. He saw something that, for all the world, looked like a mass of wriggling tentacles. Though there had to be a body somewhere, nothing was visible save the forest of wriggling arms, and aside from the ones that supported its weight, they reached out in every direction, glittering in the sunlight like the most disturbing mechanical creature imaginable.

  “Seems like folks in this here village were making more than just regular weapons. But what set it in motion—that dog?”

  As if in answer to the hoarse voice’s query, a transparent bubble that appeared to be a cockpit rose from the center of the mass of tentacles. On seeing who sat in it, the Hunter’s left hand let out a gasp.

  “It’s that preacher man!”

  “What about the dog?” said D. Even with a machine of an indeterminate nature before him, the Hunter didn’t seem at all unnerved.

  “It’s in the warehouse. Now, did that damn preacher find us and come out here on his own, or . . .”

  Had the being that controlled the puppy’s brain possessed Curio inside the warehouse? It seemed extremely unlikely that Curio would use such a device of his own volition.

  The tentacles streamed forward.

  As he backed away, D took in his surroundings with ungodly speed. This was the square in front of the warehouse. It also doubled as a testing area. Easily covering more than seven thousand square feet, the square had inspection equipment and tools scattered about, and nearby stood a well.

  D and the tentacled entity faced off in the center of the square.

  “Is this his doing—or the dog’s?”

  As if taking that murmured remark by the hoarse voice as a cue, the tentacles attacked. A naked blade mowed through them. The severed arms promptly regrew from the stumps. Apparently the engineers in this village had dreamed up a method for making metal regenerate.

  “There’s no end to this,” D’s left hand muttered in a disgusted tone.

  At that instant, the tentacles turned in the Hunter’s direction en masse. With the sound of compressed air being discharged, they flew by either side of D like spears. The Hunter cut down the ones that would’ve hit him.

  For a split second, a gap opened in front of D where the tentacles should’ve been. Entering that space, D swung his left hand. Fresh tentacles flew at his body, three of which were sliced off while two more pierced his abdomen and the right side of his chest. As D dropped to one knee, the tentacles engulfed him, but their movements quickly grew chaotic and they began to move toward the right.

  Within the cockpit, Curio was in his death throes. White needles jutted from his chest and throat. D’s aim had been true. But what kind of strength did it take to put mere wooden needles through bulletproof glass that was both heat and shock resistant, and also have them nail their target? What kind of precision did that require?

  Using the sword he had stuck in the ground like a cane, D got up again. There wasn’t a hint of pain in his bloodless countenance.

  Now that Curio had been slain, the tentacles would begin to run amok. If nothing were done, the device would probably get out of the village and cause endless slaughter and destruction. It had to be destroyed now.

  D pulled out the tentacle that was in his chest. Bright blood struck the ground. Removing the one from his abdomen as well, the Hunter was taking his first step toward the mass of tentacles that was now a good thirty feet away when a voice called out, “Walt!”

  When D turned to look, a pitch-black globe was drawing closer without a sound, and then it came to a stop. From the top of it, Eris gazed at D’s handsome features.

  “LeAvE tHiS tO mE,” Eris said softly. Her eyes were trained on the tentacles, but they soon returned to D. “I’m ThE WeApOn MaStEr. TaKiNg OuT wEaPoNs ThAt RuN aMoK iS mY jOb.”

  The Hunter said nothing.

  “NiCe MeEtlnG yOu. I’lL nEvEr FoRgEt YoU. ThOsE aRe My TrUe FeElInGs, NoT jUsT mY eLeCtRoNiC bRaln TaLklnG.”

  Her voice had the same mechanical coldness as always, but it changed unexpectedly as she said, “Goodbye, D.”

  Her hair fluttered. A faint fragrance mixed with the breeze, and then disappeared.

  D watched as the sphere raced toward the tentacles. All of them changed direction in unison. They opened to meet Eris. It called to mind some carnivorous plant, bizarre and brutal. The sphere plowed into them without hesitation. And the tentacles closed around their delicious prey.

  “Oh, no—jump for it!”

  Before the hoarse voice had spoken, about six feet of darkness had formed in the center of the tentacles and sphere. It instantly spread, extending its domain to include the entire form of both machines.

  “That’s a gizmo for creating a small black hole,” the hoarse voice said. “The woman had it planted inside herself somewhere. Seems that was her secret weapon.”

  The darkness had consumed most of the sphere, but a pale visage remained above it. Eris was facing them. A second later, she was sucked into the hole in space.

  “She was smiling, wasn’t she?” the hoarse voice said shortly after the darkness had swallowed Eris and vanished. “And her perfume—”

  The voice halted there. D hadn’t stopped it. It held its own tongue.

  The faint fragrance was something the girl had put on as she was preparing to meet her end. For whom had she worn it? Only D and the breeze had smelled it.

  Saying nothing, D faced the spot where the darkness had disappeared. A portion of the ground had been carved out in a circle—the place where part of the darkness’s circumference had encroached on the earth. At the edge of it, there gaped a hole, square and black. It was lined with stones on all sides. That was what remained of the well, since the part above ground had been consumed. And it was filled to the brim with water.

  “A well, eh? You know, I don’t follow this,” the hoarse voice said in a solemn tone.

  They knew that Curio hadn’t appeared in the village alone. The water witch, Lucienne, was with him. And she could suddenly appear anywhere there was water. D hadn’t seen the final instant when Curio had disappeared. Had the preacher escaped?

  In any case, there was no point in remaining in the village any longer. D spun around and started walking back down the road that had taken him there.

  The wind blew. All it carried was the scent of sunlight and grass and trees. There wasn’t a whiff of the sweet fragrance that had graced the young woman’s skin.

  Thirty minutes later, hundreds of tons of rock had been effortlessly blown away, and D and the two vehicles started on their way. Greed saw them off.

  As he was leaving, D asked the man, “Won’t you come with us?”

  Staring at him in surprise, Greed said, “You inviting someone along—now there’s something! It sure is an honor. But I’m gonna stay here. See, there are a few folks who were out of town, and they’ll be coming back. Somebody’s gotta explain what happened here to ’em. They might decide to rebuild the village from scratch, or if they move on to another area they’ll probably need some protection. Anyhow, seems like you took my vengeance for me. Thanks.”

  “That was—” D started to say, and then he realized he didn’t know the girl’s name. “It was the Weapon Master’s doing.”

  “What?”

  Knitting his brow with a vacant expression, Greed didn’t even nod an acknowledgment as D got on his horse. The Hunter didn’t look back after that.

  “So long!”

  Up in the driver’s seat, Sue waved in response to Greed’s words. The covered wagon and the figure of beauty slowly began to advance. After watching them until they’d disappeared down the highway, Greed walked back toward town. The sunlight had finally begun to exhibit the composure of afternoon.

  The next two days of their trip were more peaceful than D had expected.

  His left hand remarked, “Things are going too well. It gives me the creeps.”

  While D didn’t rep
ly, he did at least don a thin smile.

  On the other hand, Sue and Matthew were overjoyed—well, not exactly. Inside the count’s car, Sue’s condition had grown worse. It was clear that the weird atmosphere of the Noble’s vehicle had a negative influence on her feeble form. Fortunately, D had laid his left hand on her, and she’d quickly recovered. Still, her original frailty was unchanged, and she was forced to spend most of her time inside their wagon.

  That was also the reason Matthew grew even darker and more ill tempered. Though their problems with their father had made things hard for them, under their mother the siblings had done a wonderful job of running the farm. And then along came these weird people with an old, old story—about how they would protect the three of them from something that was preordained five thousand years ago. Their journey up until now had proven that what they said was no lie. However, it seemed as if in exchange for getting the Hunter to look after him and Sue, their mother had died, and now Sue was wheezing and panting for breath. While Matthew knew it wasn’t D’s fault, his thoughts always came back to the same place: If only these guys had never come at all.. .

  In the world that lay along that line of thinking, his mother was still fine, the farm was getting bigger, and Sue would be getting married in no time. Only it would be to a young guy far less attractive than Matthew, not to mention a good deal weaker and stupider. For a while, the two of them would leave the farm to enjoy married life, but the affection-starved Sue would come back to his mother and him. And the most important point in all of this: Sue’s husband would possess almost no manly drive, never once bedding her.