Groaning in agony, Mayerling went to pull the arrows out, but his hands wouldn’t move.
“It’s no use,” Borgoff chortled. “I don’t care if you’re a Noble or not, you ain’t gonna be able to pull them out. For starters, you can’t raise your arms. So, how do you like my chaser arrows bit?”
Borgoff’s confidence-choked laughter was certainly fitting praise for his own masterful skill. Taking into account where the first two arrows he fired would drop, he’d driven Mayerling there with his relentless waves of attacks. However, Mayerling had been free to move as he liked. What could possibly rope in someone with several times the speed and strength of a human, and herd him right into the target in the instant the arrows fell? Borgoff’s ungodly skill—and the chaser arrows—could.
At that moment, something about the scene changed. The ground at Mayerling’s feet suddenly had a blackness to it. Something like an inky stain was surging forward, headed in his direction. When he tried to jump out of the way, callous steel whistled past him on either side.
Shrilly, Borgoff asked, “Well, what’s wrong? Aren’t you gonna run away? Can’t escape now, can you? If you move, I’ll put an arrow through your heart. Of course, them mints have caught the smell the blood, and if you stand there you’ll be their next meal.”
He was right. The wave of black steadily approaching Mayerling’s feet was in fact a large swarm of fearsome flesh-eating ants, otherwise known as mints. This spot so reminiscent of the Capital was indeed a metropolis—a cathedral for hundreds of millions of the smallest and fiercest of creatures.
“Well, well, well. You don’t have time to think it over,” said Borgoff. “What’ll it be—one right through the heart, or are you gonna wind up in the belly of them mints with nothing but your bones left behind? Nobility or not, you can’t come back from just bones. What’ll it be?”
When Borgoff had slowly pulled his bowstring taut, he saw the Noble’s hands go into motion.
—
Who the hell are you?” asked Leila. The man didn’t look like someone she’d need anything as heavy as the sliver gun against, and she held her javelin casually as she stood in front of the huntsman. It was only when Leila caught sight of the charring on Mashira’s stomach that her face hardened. I’d swear that’s a wound from one of Groveck’s power rays, she thought. And yet, this guy’s still—
“That’s not him,” the girl cried out in a quavering voice. “Originally, he was one of our bodyguards. But he transferred himself into a different body. He’s got this other face on his stomach that—” Before she could finish, the girl doubled over like a shrimp, as if victim to agonizing stomach pains.
Unsure what was happening, Leila let the javelin fly. Her “shoot first, ask questions later,” Hunter habits had come to the fore. The man didn’t move. The javelin should’ve sunk into his stomach, but, when the tip of it was stopped by a sharp clang, Leila leapt back. As she leapt, her right hand grabbed hold of the sliver gun at her hip. The handle of the weapon shooting back out of the man’s stomach knocked the gun out of her hand.
“Knock it off already,” the man said. Apparently he could manipulate the nerves and vocal cords of a corpse, and this threatening outburst from the mouth of the deceased huntsman coupled with the raised barrel of the high-caliber rifle rooted Leila to the spot. “It’s been a good while since I ran across a scrappy little hellcat like you,” the huntsman said in the countenanced carbuncle’s voice. “That’s just perfect. I’ll make both of you my women. Come on.”
As if beckoned by that evil voice, Leila took a few steps forward. The huntsman’s free hand lifted his shirt. Seeing the human face that swelled up on his belly, Leila cried out in surprise. Its lips pursed, and a terrifying brown ligament shot out at Leila’s stomach.
A scream arose. It belonged to neither Leila, nor the girl. It’d been loosed by the countenanced carbuncle. There was a single needle of rough wood stuck right through the middle of the brown umbilicus the countenanced carbuncle apparently used to transfer itself. When the pain-wracked huntsman spun around in search of his foe, more needles pierced him through the heart and right between the eyes. Of course, the corpse didn’t fall.
Though she didn’t know exactly when he’d appeared, Leila launched an impassioned cry of “D!” at the rider and mount pausing in a shower of brilliant moonlight.
Watching as the dashing Vampire Hunter got off his horse, the huntsman didn’t move.
“D, that’s really . . . ”
Nodding faintly at Leila’s words, D reached back over his shoulder with his right hand. He hadn’t let the countenanced carbuncle get away. The needle sticking through the transfer membrane also prevented it from sinking back into its body.
When the whine of a blade leaving its sheath rose from D’s back, the huntsman’s stomach suddenly bulged. With a splat like a stone thrown into a muddy ditch, a gray mass flew from the huntsman’s abdomen. Blood and viscera streamed after it. The mass disappeared into the bushes with alarming speed.
“Oh, now this is a surprise,” said a low voice issuing from around D’s waist. “I didn’t think any of my kind could fly through the air. What fun, what fun!”
Sheathing his naked steel, D didn’t say a word as he walked toward Leila and the girl. Recovering from the sunlight syndrome took days, and, usually, the tougher a dhampir was, the longer it took for him to recuperate. But D already seemed to be over it, and the eyes he trained on the two young ladies swam with an impossibly black spirit. Perhaps this youth was no average dhampir after all.
“Oh ho ho. It looks like both of you are safe. You ought to thank me for spotting that light. Pretty boy here was still snoozing at the time.” The faint voice from the Hunter’s hand didn’t reach the ears of Leila or the girl.
Following D’s line of sight when she realized it wasn’t on herself, Leila saw that the girl was slumped on the ground. She ran over in a panic. “C’mon, snap out of it!” she shouted.
D came over and bent down by the girl’s side. Laying his left hand on top of the hands she had pressed against her own solar plexus, he asked, “Is it that thing we just saw?”
“Yep.” At the answer emitted by his left hand, Leila’s eyes went wide. “There’s still time to save her if you do it now,” the voice added.
D nodded. He lay the girl flat out on her back in the under-growth, and gently placed her hands back down by her sides. His gorgeous hands went into action, exposing the girl’s stomach.
Leila stifled a scream. In the center of that smooth, porcelain stomach, an ugly human face was rising to the surface. Its features were exactly the same as the one that’d been attached to the belly of the huntsman just moments earlier.
“All his little pals look the same,” D’s left hand stated. “What’s more, they’ve got a collective consciousness. The thoughts of one are immediately transmitted to the others. These things can be a real pain in the ass.”
“Why would it infect her?” asked D.
“Out of lechery, pure lechery. These critters have an appreciation for beauty and the finer things. On top of that, the dirty little bastards enjoy sex through the senses of the humans they inhabit. I imagine that’s what he wanted to use her body for.”
A naked blade glittered in D’s right hand.
Perhaps realizing what D intended to do, the startled face was about to magically sink back into the girl. But the blade D thrust at its forehead lanced down into the oral cavity of the countenanced carbuncle with matchless precision. Screaming in anguish, it rolled its eyes back in their sockets. Streams of blood erupted from either side of its mouth before it started to fade back into the girl’s body.
“That should do it! Now I guess it’ll just be assimilated by her normal organs,” said the voice.
Whether the procedure had been painful or not was unclear, but the girl had fainted. D stood up.
“What’s the story with your left hand, D?” asked Leila.
D only replied, “You were bitten by t
hat woman, weren’t you?”
Leila nodded, her expression gloomy.
“Then that’s someone else I have to put down.”
“Huh?” Leila said with surprise.
“I repay my debts.” D replied succinctly. He knew about the deadly struggle Leila had joined.
—
When the Noble’s hand reached not for the corresponding shoulder but for the opposite armpit, Borgoff grew pale. Forgetting to fire his next deadly shot, he watched the impossible happen.
Getting a tight grip on the arrowhead sticking through his armpit, the Noble pulled it right out with one yank. Not up, but down. The other end, of course, was fletched with vanes to make it fly straight. Just like the shafts and heads of all Borgoff’s arrows, the vanes were made of steel. Gouging flesh and shaving bone, the vanes went in the one direction that’d give the Noble his freedom again—they were pulled down. The Noble’s actions and his supernatural strength flew in the face of logic.
Now he’ll go for the other arrow . . . But just as Borgoff was thinking that, something whizzed through the air. The arrow the Noble had just removed.
An acute pain seared through Borgoff’s abdomen. The arrow his foe had just thrown back at him had been going faster than those Borgoff shot. Borgoff stared dumbfounded at the end of the arrow that went in through his belly and jutted out his back. Blood traveled down the shaft in dribs and drabs. He heard the Noble address him.
“Our duel is over, stray mongrel. It shall be you that the mints feast on.”
Borgoff opened his eyes wide. “I’m afraid not. This fight is just getting started.”
Saying that, the Hunter ran. Right to the mint nest. The nest of the flesh-eating ants was little more than a fragile metropolis of soil hardened by an adhesive the ants themselves secreted. A large bird landing on it would be more than enough to crush it—to say nothing of what the weight of a grown man would do to it.
But Borgoff stood on the ant nest. Or rather, he stuck to it. Both his legs were at a right angle to the wall. What’s more, he must’ve been using some sort of trick, because the fragile tower didn’t show a single crack.
In that outré pose—which, not surprisingly, drew a cry of astonishment from Mayerling—Borgoff let his arrows fly. They no longer had the same power they’d had a few moments earlier. Mayerling’s right hand went into action, and the murderous steel implements were struck down one after another.
Confusing his foe by moving over to one of the passageways and hanging upside down from it like a monkey, the Hunter dipped once more into his quiver. Suddenly, a strange sensation came from his legs. His profuse bleeding had robbed his legs of the ability to render him weightless, and he fell with the crumbling dirt into the very heart of the flesh-eating ants’ nest.
His next sensation was that of countless insects swarming all over his body.
Borgoff screamed. Squeezing every last bit of power from his body, he got up and ran. Each footfall crushed towers, destroyed passageways—he didn’t even feel the pain in his belly now. The fear of being eaten alive had his heart in its talons.
Deep into the woods he ran, his screams resounding through the trees.
—
III
—
The moonlight limned three faint shadows on the ground. D, Leila, and the girl.
Leila let out a deep sigh. The girl had just finished telling them the circumstances that’d brought her there. Only the wind moved near the trio, and darkness had fallen around them.
“There’s just one thing I want to ask you,” D said. He was still admiring the moonlight. “Are you aware that the Claybourne States are now . . . ”
The girl nodded.
“I see,” said D. “Then I guess you may as well go. But what’ll you do then?”
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. “Once we get there, our journey will be over. One way or another.”
D fell silent. The wind was singing a sad tune in the treetops.
“But it’s something good,” Leila muttered. “Love’s so great . . . So why does it have to go so wrong?”
For a long time, none of the trio moved.
D made the moonlight sway. “It seems he’s come for you,” he said. His eyes indicated the depths of the forest.
Tears glistened in the girl’s eyes. “Don’t do this, I beg of you. Please, just let me go to him. If we keep going at this rate, we’ll reach the Claybourne States by tomorrow night. Everything will end there. After that . . . ”
D faced the forest.
“Don’t move,” Leila said. D turned to face her. She had the barrel of the sliver gun aimed at his chest. “Let her go. We can settle things once they reach the Claybourne States.”
D didn’t move.
“Thank you,” said the girl. “Thank you—thank you both.”
In the depths of the woods, a tall silhouette hove into view. The girl ran to it. Pausing for an instant, the two silhouettes vanished among the trees as if embraced by the forest. Once they were gone, Leila lowered the sliver gun. “Sorry, D,” she said.
“Why the apology? I should thank you again.”
Leila said with surprise, “You don’t mean you would’ve—”
“Go to sleep already. Tomorrow morning I’ll take you to where to left your car. There we part company. After that, you can tail me, go back to your brothers, or whatever you like. You can count on me to take care of the female dhampir.”
“I . . . ” Leila swallowed the rest of the words. She was going to say she wanted to go with him. But how would she go about traveling with a shadow?
A blanket was tossed at her feet. D took another one in hand and walked over to the trunk of a nearby tree. Spreading the blanket on the ground, he sat back against the tree trunk and crossed his arms. The sword off his back had been placed by his left side.
After a moment’s consideration, Leila sat down next to D. D gazed at her steadily. His pupils seemed deep enough to swallow her. Suppressing a wave of rapture, she asked, “Does this bother you? You know, where I’m a vampire victim and all?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks,” she said. Pulling the blanket up to her chest, Leila lay down on the ground, using her arm for a pillow.
There was a fragrance to the wind. Night-blooming jasmine, moonlit grass, nocturnal peonies, moonshine . . . Sweet and heart-rending . . . There was life by night. The croaking of frogs, music from the jaws of longhorns, the whispering of great silkworms . . . All small and tough and full of life . . .
For a moment, Leila forgot she was the prey of a female dhampir. It’d never been like this for her. “Funny, isn’t it,” she said as she scratched the tip of her nose.
D didn’t move, but he seemed to be listening.
“The night doesn’t frighten me a bit. None of my brothers has ever done this . . . Every single night, we had the feeling there were beasts and evil spirits out to get us . . . Even inside the bus, we were still on edge.” And yet, now she seemed perfectly fine. “I wonder why I don’t mind the night now?”
After she’d said it, Leila was surprised. Had she actually thought that stern young man would give her an answer? She said it herself, quietly, in her heart. Because I’m with you . . .
Even after Leila fell asleep listening to the song of the wind, the young Vampire Hunter still trained his gaze patiently on the darkness of the night, anger and grief far from the void that was his eyes.
—
At about the same time, in a part of the forest not very far away, a strange and truly disturbing event was unfolding.
Borgoff could feel his internal organs being bored through and devoured. There was no longer any pain. Ants were swarming all over his body. They were inside his face, too. He saw his right eye fall out. The sensation of ants crawling around in his eye socket was strangely tickling. Tens of thousands of them were dining on his flesh. Each and every trifling bite splashed a chill over him. It was cold. So very cold.
A strange thing clawe
d its way out of the grass and came into view of the corner of his remaining left eye. It was a gooey gray lump. Oddly enough, though it lacked arms and legs, it clearly had eyes and a nose.
“Oh, this is a nice little find I’ve made,” said the lump. “It’s a little beat up, but if I knock all the freaking ants off it I should be able to get some use out of it. Yessir, when it comes to traveling, you can’t beat a human body.” Moving over to Borgoff’s mouth, it said to him, “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m kind of in a hurry, too.”
The gooey limbless lump pried open lips that the man himself lacked the strength to open, and Borgoff felt the thing sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach.
—
IV
—
There wasn’t really any place called the Claybourne States any longer. Neighboring sectors had only heard about the Ninety-Eighth Frontier Sector’s capital region because the spaceport was there, and the Claybourne States had come to be known by the spaceport’s name as well. But that name, too, had long since been forgotten, and people hadn’t mentioned either in ages.
With its automated housekeeping-systems destroyed, the interior of the terminal building was left to the rampant dust, and the winds that blew in through shattered panes of reinforced glass traced thin, swirling patterns in the accumulated grit.
A drifter who was calling one of the spaceport rooms his home that particular evening found his meager dinner interrupted by the untimely arrival of guests. A black carriage drawn by a half-dozen horses came in through the central gate. Once it halted at the entrance to the terminal building, two passengers got out. There was a man and a woman. What astonished the drifter was the fact that the couple consisted of a Noble and a human. Both of them went into the building, but the way they held each other’s hands only added to his consternation. A human and a Noble? he thought to himself. It couldn’t be! He slipped quietly out of his room and headed out of the spaceport as if he’d just had a nightmare.
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