“You’re—D.”
“You know me?”
“Surely you know the power of the soul. Everything that’s been said about you reaches my ears.”
“Where is Muma?” D asked. Though he’d confirmed who she was, he didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Of course, he didn’t seem at all frightened, either.
“Do you want to know? If so, you must grant me a favor.”
“Name it.”
Joy tinged the cheeks of the transparent woman. Her right hand rose to her chest. It stopped there for a moment, and then came away again. Within her blurry body, a black lump swelled and shrank by turns. It was obvious at a glance. That was her heart.
“The great one—oh, but then you must know of whom I speak. He put this into me. Even when I was killed, it beat on. And it prevents me from undertaking my eternal journey. If you wish to know the way to Muma, I want you to stop this.”
D saw tears well up in the woman’s eyes. Could a soul cry?
“You must’ve come from the subterranean realm where my uncle was. I am not uninformed as to what transpired there.”
“Hmm,” the left hand replied.
The woman smiled thinly.
“I was one of those who worked there. You see, the great one’s experiments required not only the science of the Nobility, but also the primitive magics of every race. As it continued, it affected my mental state—in truth, it got to the point where even the minds of the pitiless Nobles working there could bear it no longer. Weird children born one after another—oh, I can still hear them! This heart carries the noise to me. The heartrending whimpers of the babies deemed failures. All of them were discarded in a bottomless pit. No one can know how the sight of that has tormented me. On the brink of losing my mind, I talked with a number of my associates, and then we set the subatomic reactor to overload and fled the subterranean realm. I galloped off on a horse then, riding a full year until I took up residence in a freezing village nestled between the glaciers.”
One after another, the woman’s words rang out with a despair that was denser than the dark of winter. And it was because of this that D remained silent and listened to her.
“But alas, as I feared, I wasn’t safe there. Those who’d labored at forbidden tasks in the subterranean realm would never be allowed to escape the black arms of the great one. Every day and every night, I heard his voice in my dreams whispering to me, Come back. And after living there a hundred years, I turned my back on the glacier village. For the next three centuries I walked across the Frontier, looking like some wandering wraith, and then I settled on this village. All the bizarre experiments I conducted here were done at the great one’s bidding. As a result, I wound up cursed and killed. Not that I’m resentful of that—I was painfully aware that the great one never forgave traitors when I chose to rebel. However, the fate the great one bestowed upon me was not the peace of death. My ears ring with the cries of desperately clinging babies who realized their fate just as they were about to be hurled into a dark hole. Babies who wrapped their arms around my neck. When I close my eyes, their faces appear, begging to be spared. I have been locked away with the very things I sought to flee. And for the rest of time I’ll be unable to escape them. Not so long as I have this heart—the heart the great one gave me in place of my own when he appeared to me in a dream the night before the villagers murdered me.”
The woman covered her eyes. She plugged her ears. She wrapped her arms around herself. As overly dramatic as these gestures were, they laid the woman’s misery bare.
“Stop this heart of mine,” the woman said, her words growing slurred. She was desperate. It wasn’t life she desired. The freedom of her soul hung in the balance. “No one can stop a heart made by the great one. Except for his one success, that is.”
You were my only success.
“You know the way to Muma, don’t you?” D asked, just to be sure.
“Oh, will you do it, then? Of course I know the way. I was a handmaiden to the great one.”
D didn’t move from that spot, but held his sword ready in his left hand, drawing it far back under his arm. Poised for a thrust. Could the same blow that’d pierced the superdense stone destroy the heart housed in her spirit—an artificial heart that’d been put into her in a dream?
D’s eyes glowed with an intense light. His eyelids slid shut, and a second later, the sword blade pierced her black heart.
Menda screamed. Though the writhing figure clutching her heart was semitransparent, she was just like a real person of flesh and blood experiencing real agony.
D lowered his sword. He knew his blade had met no resistance—it was like stabbing into thin air.
There was no change in the evil beating of the black heart. An artificial heart made of the same material as a dream, and which, when damaged, put the soul into hellish agony—what in the world was it, and how on earth could it be destroyed?
“Stop this. You’ll only torture her soul,” a hoarse voice choked with distress called out to stay his hand.
“Looks like I failed,” D said to the soul of Menda, which had finally finished twitching. “What do you want to do?”
“How about you? Do you pity me? Are you loath to make me feel the same pain again? Do you wish to run away with your tail between your legs?”
She looked up at D with tears in her eyes. That single blow had left her face gaunt, but a hopeful smile gradually spread across it.
“You’re ready now, aren’t you? You’re going to do it. You really, truly intend to free me from this accursed existence. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Stop this madness,” the left hand urged them. “Her soul won’t die. But every time you fail, she’ll go into agonized convulsions. Unless you have some proof you’ll succeed next time, this is just torture. Gaaaah!”
Opening his hand again from the tight fist he’d just made, the Hunter closed his eyes. He was focusing his mind.
Would the second thrust bring salvation, or would it give rise to tragedy?
A chill spread through the air—a paranormal phenomenon associated with D’s intense concentration. Once more he held the sword by his side—and when it blistered through the air, it impaled the black organ again, snapping Menda backward.
At the same time, D clutched his chest and staggered forward. A steely arrow ran into him through the back and poked out of his heart. Someone had shot him from behind.
Ordinarily, the Hunter would’ve sensed the murderous intent before his opponent had even fired and gone on the offensive. However, his intense concentration hadn’t allowed him to do so.
Reaching with his right hand for the part that protruded from his chest, D yanked it forward. Pulling eight inches of gory arrow out, he then fell forward as if in keeping with the speed and angle of that tug.
“Oh, D! D! D!” Menda cried, forgetting her own pain and clinging to him, but her face was heavily tinged with the hollowness of one who knew her own fate.
The wind blew across her grave. Aside from the fallen Vampire Hunter, there was no sign of anyone else there. For her soul wasn’t permitted to exist in the ordinary world.
To D’s rear—actually, on the road some fifty yards away—a wagon was stopped. In the driver’s seat with a twelve-pound crossbow propped against one shoulder was the same personable farmer who’d told D about this place.
“You were just so good-looking I knew you had to be up to something, so I follow you out here and sure enough, you’re getting into all kinds of weirdness. Trying to help the evil spirit of that witch after I went to all the trouble of sealing her up in that stone—that’s patently offensive. Shooting you in the back might’ve been unsporting, but heaven’s wrath shows no mercy. You can go straight to hell.”
Lowering the crossbow, he took off his hat. There wasn’t a single hair on his head. Then he took a folded-up monk’s cap from his chest pocket and put it on. The holy man who’d erected Menda’s grave was this very same man.
Fixing a cy
lindrical magazine of arrows to the crossbow, the monk got down from his wagon.
“The ghost of Menda is cursed. She’ll never be able to pass on. But if she lingers long in this world, she’s sure to cause harm. That’s why she was confined to this grave, until you stuck your busy little nose into this!”
Walking over to D, he kicked the Hunter’s face as hard as he could. D’s lips split and blood went flying.
“Stop it!” Menda cried out, bending over D.
“Are you trying to get smart with me, you vile spirit?” the monk cursed at her. For he could see souls.
Pointing the end of his crossbow at Menda’s heart, he pulled what looked like an earphone from one ear.
“I got this listening device from the Capital. I heard the entire conversation you two had. Now I’m going to see whether or not emptying every arrow I’ve got into your heart will send you to the hereafter,” he declared with naked loathing.
BEFORE THE GATE
CHAPTER 4
-
I
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"Don’t!” Menda pleaded, but—wearing a look on his face that hardly befitted a holy man—the monk pulled the crossbow’s trigger. Driven at speeds of six hundred feet per second by compressed air, the steel arrow pierced Menda’s chest, leaving the lost soul writhing on the ground.
“Stop it . . . Just stop!”
Her sobs were like pouring gasoline on a fire for someone of a sadistic bent, and the monk ran his tongue over his lips. “Oh, does that hurt? Are you in pain? Do even lost souls feel? I believe I could write a paper about that to send back to the main temple in the Capital. Just let me make some more observations.”
With a whuuut! a second shot scorched through the air, penetrating her heart and sticking into the ground far behind her. Menda rolled around, not even able to speak.
“How’s that? Here’s another,” he said, bracing the crossbow against his shoulder again.
But just then someone called out from behind him, “Knock it off, you bald bastard.”
The second he realized the voice was the same low tone the young man in black had used earlier, cold steel pressed against the base of the man’s neck, and he froze before he could say a word.
“Got here quicker than I expected. Have a look at him,” said the other D, who stood with his longsword at the ready. Mia was by his side, naturally, and as she rushed over to the Hunter she cried out, “D!”
“Looks like you lucked out, baldy,” the fake D said.
Still standing where he was, the man asked, “How’s that?”
But his eyes beheld a shadowy figure rising smoothly to its feet. A veritable spirit of the black earth—however, if that was the case, this spirit of the earth was undoubtedly an avatar of beauty.
“You—you’re alive? Even a Noble dies if you shoot it through the heart!”
“You see, I am special,” the fake D said, watching proudly as D effortlessly pulled out the arrow jutting from his chest.
The blackness that clung to the Hunter’s lips was blood the monk himself had drawn. It was the source of the energy behind his revival.
“If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d have been whacked in half before you got off that third shot. You see, that me isn’t as nice as this me.”
“Are you two twins?”
“No. We’re one and same, only there’s two of us.”
On hearing this, the monk looked bewildered. But when he saw the other D approaching, his panic reached an all-time high. “He-help me,” he stammered. “He’ll kill me!”
“Well, that’s to be expected, isn’t it? You’re the one who shot him in the back out of the blue.”
“I—I only did it for the village—”
“And was it for the peace of your village that you shot not one but two arrows into a defenseless soul?”
“You—you mean you can see her?”
“Of course I can. After all, he’s me and I’m me, too. Anything he can do, so can I. Anything he can’t do—well, I suppose that’d be out of the question.”
And while the fake was saying all that, D just kept getting closer.
“His power is at work in Menda’s heart,” the Hunter said. “Though she was killed by the villagers, that heart has kept her from moving on. Upon learning this, he went and sealed Menda’s ghost away in superdense stone.”
“I see. So, that’s why he took a shot at you for busting her grave open? What a tricky bastard!”
“I—I only did it for the villagers—”
“By torturing a spirit in distress? What’ll you do with him?” the fake D asked the other.
D turned to face the monk. His handsome features were unaltered. However, his mien had changed completely. His eyes gave off blood light, and it looked like sanguine tears might fall from them at any moment. The corners of his slender lips pulled up, and a pair of threatening incisors poked from the crescent his mouth formed. And those lips stained crimson could mean only one thing—
“N-No-Nobility . . .”
Saying only that, the monk slumped to the ground limply. He’d fainted dead away from surpassing fear.
“I’m sure he’s telling the truth about doing it for the village,” the fake D remarked with apparent amusement. “But this weasel is a sadist, through and through. Sooner or later, he’ll accuse some gypsy or migrant girl of being a witch and drag her off to his temple under the pretext of saving her. I can just picture him poking her with needles, roasting her with flames, and even slapping her around. Oh, what’s this now?”
His voice grew fainter. For he’d just seen D’s right hand flash into action.
The monk was in a kneeling position, but fresh blood spurted from his throat and crotch. The crotch wasn’t hard to figure, but why had D cut his throat?
Holding both places, the monk rolled around on the ground, but not a sound came from him.
“Did you cut his vocal cords? He won’t be chanting any prayers now. And seeing where you also cut his manhood, he won’t be feeling too randy, either. He’s finished as a monk and as a man. You know, you—I mean I—am looking crueler all the time.”
Saying nothing, D sheathed his sword and walked off toward Mia. The fake D quickly followed after him, and the two of them stood by the fallen Menda.
“Could you do anything for her?” D asked. His expression had returned to normal—the madness of the Nobility had left him.
“I think I eased her pain a little,” the nodding Mia replied.
“I’m fine now,” Menda said, sitting up.
“You’ve been through quite a lot—will the next time be the same?”
“This time, let me try,” the fake D called out, and that made Menda’s eyes go wide. She’d finally noticed that there were two Ds.
“Sit back and relax. I’ll take one swipe at it for starters.”
“No,” Menda cried, backing away.
“What’s the matter? I’m just like him. Relax.”
Given the results up to this point, there was no way she could relax.
“Why the long face? If the first shot doesn’t work, I’ll give it a second whack—”
“It hurts!” Menda exclaimed.
“Is that a fact? Then let’s do this on the first shot.”
“You’re a reckless fool!”
“What?” the fake D shot back angrily at the woman, but D put a hand down on his shoulder. “Let go of me.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“You already blew it, didn’t you?”
“This is the last time. If this doesn’t work, I’ll give up.”
“Oh. Just so you know, your successes are my successes, and your failures are my failures. So don’t embarrass me, okay?”
There was a hoarse laugh.
“What was that I just heard?” he said, looking down at D’s left hand. “You’ve got something strange inside of you, do you? That’s something I don’t have. What is it?”
“It’s a secret,” the hoarse voice replied.
/> “Step back,” D said.
Tension filled the air—even the fake D retreated a good distance. Menda was motionless, as if frozen solid.
D reached for the hilt of his sword. His eyes were closed again. When they opened, the sword flashed out.
Slowly getting to her feet, Mia tried to slip past D, but he caught her tightly by the wrist. Before she even had time to scream, she was pulled close as if her body weighed nothing, her pale throat laid bare before D’s panting lips.
“Don’t!” someone shouted, but whether it was the fake D or the left hand was unclear.
Red lips were closing on Mia’s throat—but just before they did, D hoisted Mia high into the air. His fingers sank into her wrist, and Mia sensed that the skin had broken. A warm stream dripped down from her wrist. It spattered noisily against the ground. For some reason, Mia didn’t look at D. The air snapped taut as a bowstring, making her body tremble, and just then she heard a groan in D’s voice. Actually it’d come from the fake D, and when Mia raised her head again, D’s blade was sliding back into the sheath on his back without a sound while the illusory Menda wavered before him.
“Ah . . . It’s true . . . after all . . . You really are . . .” the fading woman said, tears spilling from her eyes. The tears vanished in midair.
“Muma—where is it?” D asked. His words rushed forward.
As D tumbled to the ground, Mia went right after him with a handkerchief still pressed to her wrist.
“I’ve told you now. Farewell, D. The great one’s own—”
There was no longer any sign of Menda, but her voice flowed from somewhere that was neither the sky nor the earth.
“She’s gone,” the fake D said, sounding deeply moved. Beside him, Mia had rolled D onto his back and had one ear pressed to his chest. “But who’d she tell, and what?”
“It was the location of Muma. She gave it to D,” Mia said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. You’re part of D, aren’t you? Well then, hurry up and get him to wake up!”
Mia fairly flung the words at the fake D, but he had an unexpected reply for her.
Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 Page 20