The person in the bunk turned over, though it was clearly painful to do so. He was a pitifully small lump beneath the blankets. “I’m sorry, bro . . .about not carrying my own weight . . . ”
In response to the frail voice, Borgoff shook his head without a word. His bull neck creaked and looked like it might pop. “Don’t talk nonsense. The four of us are more than enough to take anyone on. You ought to keep quiet and get your rest.” After he stroked it lightly, the slender hand finally pulled back into the blankets. “So,” Borgoff added, “it doesn’t look like you’ll be having any seizures for a while then, eh?”
At this entirely sympathetic question, the other man let the covers he’d pulled up over his head slip back down smoothly. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I think I’ll be able to keep it under control on my own.” His face was smiling as he answered feebly. His brother knew he had to be smiling, but the expression turned out to resemble nothing so much as a rictus. His cheeks were hollowed, his terribly cloudy eyes were sunken in cavernous sockets, and the breath that leaked out with his voice from lips the color of earth was as thin as that of a patient at death’s door. The feeble body belonged to Grove, the infirm younger brother Nolt mentioned when the clan first met D.
However, if he were to catch a glimpse of these corpse-like features, even D himself would have been surprised. Grove’s face, which held a childlike innocence, was etched with exactly the same features as the vital young man who’d slaughtered the army of attacking vampires that day in one blow, and then left.
—
Mayerling watched almost absentmindedly as his fearsome pursuer was sucked into the dirty torrent below the bridge and was lost from view in a matter of seconds. Mayerling didn’t notice that the girl had opened the light-impermeable curtains and poked her head out the window.
“What happened?”
Turning around at the sound of her anxious voice, he replied, “It’s nothing. Just one less thing to bother us.”
Seeing the bridge behind the carriage, where flames and black smoke were still rising, the girl’s face clouded quickly. “What on earth—” she gasped. “Did you make that hole?”
Mayerling wouldn’t answer. He could feel in his bones that this was the work of another foe.
It wasn’t lightning that’d bored a hole through the bridge, but a destructive energy-beam of another sort. Even now, a swarm of over two thousand satellites loaded with beam weaponry continued their long slumber in geostationary orbit some 22,500 miles above the Earth. Many of them had been launched by the government to help keep the human rebellion down, but there were also numerous privately owned satellites. Each of them was equipped with a means of generating beams that were decidedly man-made. What they fired was quite unlike the natural energy generated by storms. Judging from the beam’s accuracy, and how it seemed to be only aiming at D, it’d been fired by a human, and one who undoubtedly felt some animosity toward D. That much was evident; any who would’ve wished to help Mayerling had long since perished.
It was probably another Hunter. A foe who should be feared for different reasons than D. But was it just one?
Training his boundlessly cold and dark pupils on the silver serpent of current, Mayerling presently turned to face the girl again. “Be assured . . . with the passing of but two more nights, we shall be at the gateway to the stars. Sleep well. Relax, and trust everything to me.”
When the girl nodded and pulled back inside, Mayerling looked up at the moon hanging in the heavens and muttered, “Two more days . . . but daylight will come shortly. I wonder if I’ll encounter this new foe before those days have passed?”
—
Even a torrent that flowed with enough force to split rocks lost its ferocity when it had come so far, and when it hit the shore here it no longer bared its fangs. The river widened, and here and there the glimmer of silvery scales from fish leaping out to seek the light of the moon rippled along the surface of the water. Occasionally, the water ran translucent all the way down to the riverbed, and the way colossal snakelike shapes swam upstream on a zigzagging path was rather unsettling.
On the trail that ran just a little way above the riverbank, a rider muttered, “Well, this should put me right in the neighborhood now.” The rider, Nolt Marcus, the oldest of the clan, halted his mount. In accordance with Borgoff’s orders, Nolt had set off to find and destroy D after D had been swallowed by the muddied current. This is how far Nolt had gone.
The spot was about two miles downstream of the bridge. Along the spine of the eastern mountains, a foreshadowing of the thin blue light of dawn had come calling, but the darkness swathing the world was still thick and black.
Scanning his surroundings, Nolt reached for his hexagonal staff with his right hand. “I don’t think I’ll find him any farther downstream. So, did the bastard make it out without drowning then?” the Marcus brother wondered aloud. “Then again, I don’t see how a dhampir could manage a stunt like that . . . ”
The tinge of displeasure in Nolt’s voice was due to the fact the species known as dhampir had many of the characteristics of supernatural creatures. As a blood mix between the Nobility—the vampires—and humans, dhampirs inherited some of the physical strengths and weaknesses of both. From the Nobility, dhampirs inherited the ability to recover from injuries that would be considered lethal to a human being. On the other hand, dhampirs lost up to seventy percent of their strength in daylight, they felt an unbridled lust for the blood of the living when they were hungry, and, perhaps strangest of all, not one of them could stay afloat in water.
At the beginning of the era of mankind’s Great Rebellion, the vampires’ utter lack of buoyancy was prized as one of the few possible ways to dispose of them. However, when it became clear that drowning itself had markedly milder results when compared to stakes or sunlight, a much dimmer view of immersion’s value as a countermeasure was adopted. Drowning caused the heart to stop functioning and the body to cease all regeneration, but these effects were easily undone with the coming of night and an infusion of fresh blood.
But so long as a vampire was denied either blood or the onset of night, it would be impossible for him to recover from drowning. In other words, after an immersion, it was possible to put the comatose Nobility to the torch or to seal him away in the earth forever. Because vampires were so vulnerable after drowning, running water still served mankind in reasonably good stead.
That’s what Borgoff was talking about when he told Nolt to “Finish him off.”
“I’m glad you could make it.”
The low voice made Nolt’s whole body stiffen. Just for an instant, though. His hexagonal staff ripped through the air behind him—in the direction of the voice. It was as if his right hand had become a flash of brown. The strange thing was, the arc his weapon painted with the speed of light was a full circle. Surely enough, the hexagonal staff had grown to nearly twice its former length, stretching toward the spot from which the voice had issued.
However, when Nolt spun around dumbstruck by the lack of contact, the pole in his hands was no longer than normal.
“That’s quite an unusual skill you have, sir,” the youth of hair-raising beauty said in a voice of steel from atop a cyclopean block of stone that loomed by the side of the road.
No reply was given, but a flash of brown shot out. The spot it touched blasted apart, and in the midst of the scattered chips of stone D flew through the air like a mystic bird. Had his gelid gaze caught the mark the pole left on the rocky surface?
In Nolt’s hands, the staff that plowed through almost diamond-hard stone like it was clay changed direction easily and raced for the airborne D.
There was a glimmer in D’s right hand. The arc of brown was countered by a flash of silver, and there was a dull thud. Not giving Nolt time for a second attack, as soon as he landed right in front of the Marcus brother, D swung his blade down.
Tasting the blood-freezing fear of that blade all the while, Nolt leapt backward. The attack he u
nleashed as he leapt was not a swing but rather a jab, and his staff seemed to grow without end as it struck for D’s face. Though he didn’t seem to move a muscle, the pole missed D by a fraction of an inch as he launched himself into the air.
A flashing sideways slash. The blade that would’ve put a diagonal split down the middle of Nolt’s face bit instead into the pole that shot up, and the two figures broke to opposite sides.
The end of his staff still aimed at D’s chest, Nolt was breathing hard. Tidings of his fear. A thread-thin line of vermilion ran down the middle of his face from his forehead, and it widened at his jaw. That was the work of the blade D brought down as soon as he’d landed.
However, the blood trickling down his face wasn’t Nolt’s only concern. His hexagonal staff wasn’t a mere piece of wood, but rather its center was packed with a steel core that, despite its thinness, could still deflect a high-intensity laser beam. Yet the pole was missing about a foot off one end. Realizing that it’d been chopped off while he was in midair, Nolt lost much of the fever in his blood.
“You son of a bitch,” he growled, finally managing to say something. “So I guess you ain’t no plain old dhampir, are you?”
“I’m a dhampir,” D answered, still holding the same pose in his opponent’s blue eyes.
Nolt’s mouth twisted up in a smile. “Is that a fact? Then how do you like these apples?” With these words, his staff spun in a circle and struck the ground next to him.
With a gut-wrenching rumble, a chunk of ground a yard in diameter collapsed in on itself. This was no ordinary hollow. Maintaining a depth of about a foot, it became a ditch running all the way to the river.
About to pounce once again, D turned his eyes to this subsidence. Madness gripped the once calmly flowing water. As it coursed down the ditch from the shore, the water gathered intense speed, and, slapping up against the banks, it rose like a living creature. In great rolls, the water gushed into the space between the two of them. First the ankles and then the boots of both D and Nolt sank below the surface.
“How about it, dhampir? Can you move?” Nolt asked with a smile. It was the smirk of a victor. “You know, I’ve thrown down with your kind before. And this is what I did then. When a part of a dhampir gets wet, it kinda gets all stiff, don’t it?”
D didn’t move. Perhaps he couldn’t move?
“Die, you bastard!” Nolt screamed as he charged forward. Getting a solid grip on the bottom part of the staff, he brandished it like he was going to bring it straight down and smash D’s head open. The water splashed from his feet, and he kicked off the ground.
Black lightning raced up from below. Higher and faster than the staff, it danced up over his head. The last thing Nolt saw was the thick water stretching up from the ground like a tenacious predator clinging to D’s black boots.
Split by D’s blade from forehead to chin, by the time Nolt had fallen back to earth he wasn’t breathing anymore. A bloody mist reeled out from his remains.
Without so much as a glance at Nolt as he collapsed in a heap, D walked back behind the rocks where he’d first appeared. His horse was waiting there. Coat billowing as he straddled his mount, the Hunter’s eyes were eternally cold as he set them upstream, but they held a hint of sadness as well.
“Run if you like,” D murmured. “But I’ll still catch you.”
While his words hung in the air, his horse clambered down to the shore. Without pausing, it stepped into the water. It wasn’t shallow. The river would be about waist-deep on D while mounted.
If anyone was watching, they would’ve thought the horse was leaping across the surface of the water. Making a massive bound, the horse sank only hoof-deep before continuing to take one effortless leap after another, kicking up a little white spray as it carried D across the wide river.
There couldn’t be all that many stones submerged just an inch or so below the water’s surface. But clearly it was within D’s power to find them in a split second and maneuver his horse onto them.
A VILLAGE OF FREAKS
CHAPTER 3
—
I
—
Elsewhere, another confrontation was about to unfold.
The Marcus clan’s bus was approaching a section of reddish brown valley, some thirty miles from the bridge.
The reason Kyle hadn’t been sent along ahead was that Borgoff had calculated the speed of the carriage and the time left until daybreak, deciding that the bus itself would be sufficient to catch up with their foe. Added to that was the fact that, if Kyle left, he would have had to look after Leila and Groveck himself. Plus, he had reservations about letting Kyle tackle the situation on his own.
He was also worried about Nolt, whom he’d sent to dispatch D. Though considering his brother’s special skills with that staff, the task of finishing off a Hunter who’d almost certainly drowned should be easier than busting a baby’s arm. Once they’d wrapped up their work here, they could always just shoot off a flare and call him back.
“Hold on. That’s a flare,” said Kyle, squinting to see it while he kept his grip on the wheel.
“What’s that?” Borgoff asked, poking his rough face out of the bedroom. A single streak of light rose into a sky already bright with the radiance of dawn. The streak quickly grew several times more brilliant. “A flare way out here, smack dab in the middle of nowhere? I’d say that couldn’t be nothing but the Nobility.”
“Bingo! Roughly three miles from here. We’ll be on them in five minutes. The bastard ain’t gonna be able to move a muscle.” Laughing confidently, Kyle added, “One good jab’ll do it!” As he licked his lips, Kyle stroked the tip of one of the stakes secured to the wall.
“Still, there’s something I don’t like about this,” Borgoff said, folding his arms. “What does he hope to gain by firing off a flare way out here? Even if he wanted help, there ain’t no one who’d come . . . ” After some consideration, Borgoff suddenly raised his bearded countenance again. “No fucking way!” he gasped. “We’d better make some speed, Kyle. If my hunch is right, that bastard might’ve called in some serious trouble.”
Kyle’s face grew tense at his brother’s grave tone. “Here we go!” he shouted.
With a sharp change in gear and a stomp on the accelerator, the bus raced forward. The scene outside the windows started to course by at an intense speed. The scenery of the stony mountain crags grew more and more desolate. White smoke gushed from the earth in odd spots and crept heavily along the ground, evidence of nearby volcanic activity. The area around the vents was caked with yellow lumps of sulfur. Even the rocks formed extraordinary shapes—some menacing the heavens like spears, others looking so impossibly fragile that they’d crumble at a touch.
The mere passing of the vehicle caused cracks to form here and there in the depressed earth, and, when something watery but not quite the shade of blood squirted up from below, the tiny insects that flew slowly through this world were seized by spasms and dropped to the ground.
A number of times the bus plowed over bleached bones—mountains of them, contributed by everything from huge fang-baring beasts down to the smallest of vermin. The atmosphere was permeated not only by sulfur, but by strong toxins as well.
Before long, the road narrowed and the rocky surface to either side grew higher, giving the dramatic effect of an avalanche about to sweep over the bus. Neither Kyle nor Borgoff could conceal their concern.
They continued down the menacing road through the valley for about twenty minutes. Then, without warning, Kyle slowed down. “There it is!” he shouted.
Ahead of them, the blurred form of the carriage was visible in the depths of the swirling white smoke.
“What should we do, bro? Just keep going and ram ’em?” The bus had plates of armored steel bolted to the front, after all.
“Nope,” the older brother replied. “Gotta keep in mind the girl might still be alive. Anyway you slice it, the Noble can’t move by daylight. We’ll get out and take care of ’em
. Put on a gas mask.”
When the two brothers had turned themselves around, the door to the bedroom opened and Leila looked out. Not surprisingly, her complexion was still pale, but her eyes blazed with the will to fight. “Picked a hell of a place to stop,” she said. “Did you find them?”
“You get some rest now. And look after Grove,” Borgoff said as he slipped on his gas mask.
“No way! Let me go with you!” Leila caught the oldest of the clan by the arm. The muscles felt like stone. “This is a Noble we’re dealing with. Even if he can’t move during the day, that still doesn’t mean he’ll be defenseless. You can use all the backup you can get.”
“A gimp would just get in the way,” Borgoff replied.
“But—”
“Leila, why don’t you give it a rest?” Kyle interjected, a javelin tight in his grip. On his right hip, there hung another gas mask he intended to use for the abducted girl. “Look, you heard what Borgoff said. He told you to just leave this to the two of us. I mean, look how high the sun still is. There ain’t nothing to worry about.”
His voice was coaxing, but had a touch of carnal desire in it, and Leila turned away. She nodded, apparently giving in.
“Now don’t you go out there!”
With that final admonishment, Borgoff and Kyle stood on the steps by the door. When Kyle pressed the switch by his side, a semitransparent veil descended from overhead, sealing the two of them off from the rest of the vehicle. This wasn’t the first time they had to stalk their quarry in a poison-shrouded environ.
Opening the door manually, the two stepped down to the ground. They wore no other protection besides the gas masks. Artificial antibodies in their blood could handle the rest of the poisonous vapors and radiation.
Their feet didn’t make the slightest sound as they hustled over the ground.
The Noble’s carriage was motionless, just branding the earth with its faint and lonely shadow. Even the six black steeds hung their heads, appearing either to sleep or to be absorbed in contemplation.
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