Vampire Hunter D

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  I know he’s coming back, she thought.

  Her right hand brushed the nape of her neck. Moments before he’d set out, D had put what he said was a charm on the fang marks there. The charm was disappointingly simple, consisting merely of a light press of the palm of his left hand to the wound; he hadn’t even explained what effect it was supposed to have, but it was all Doris had to rely on now.

  Another face formed in her mind. That dashing young man in the saloon could also be considered her savior in a way, but Doris felt an ominous shadow fall across her heart. When he’d lifted her from the floor and she saw his handsome visage up close, she had in truth swooned. But her virgin instinct had caught the sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit that lingered around his gorgeous face.

  No, most likely it wasn’t her instinct that caught it, but rather the work of something firmly etched in a deeper part of her: the visage of a young man more beautiful and more noble than Rei-Ginsei. Doris had a foreboding that the handsome new arrival would prove a greater danger to her than Greco had. That was another of her concerns.

  Come back. I don’t care if you can’t beat the Count, just come back to me.

  That these thoughts had nothing to do with her safety was something the seventeen-year-old had not yet noticed.

  .

  For the past few minutes, the tepid, waist-deep water had been growing warmer, and the mist licking its way up the stony walls had become denser. He had been walking for thirty minutes now. The drop from the great hall must have been around seventy feet. A vast subterranean aqueduct brimming with water had awaited D. As the water only came up to his chest, it didn’t matter much that he’d fallen feet first—what had saved D from a brutal impact was his inhuman skill, and the indisputably superhuman anatomy all dhampirs possessed.

  Vampire anatomy—primarily their bones, muscles, and nerves—allowed them to absorb impact and recover from damage hundreds of times better than humans could. While it naturally varied from individual to individual, dhampirs inherited at least fifty percent of those abilities. From a height of seventy feet, a dhampir could probably hit solid ground and survive. It would be nigh impossible to keep from breaking every bone in their body and rupturing some internal organs, but even then some of the faster dhampirs would be able to heal completely in about seventy-two hours.

  At any rate, D hadn’t been hurt in the least, and he stood chest-deep in the black water surveying his surroundings. This was most likely a pre-existing subterranean cavern that had been buttressed through later construction. Places here and there on the black, rock walls to either side showed signs of being repaired with reinforced concrete. The water throughout was lukewarm, and a pale, white mist lent the air an oppressive humidity. The aqueduct itself was roughly fifteen feet wide. It seemed to be a natural formation, and an odor peculiar to mineral springs had reached D’s nostrils even as he was falling into the pit. All around him stretched a world of complete darkness. Only his dhampir eyesight allowed him to distinguish how wide the aqueduct was. He turned his gaze upward, but, not surprisingly, he was unable to discern the trapdoor seventy feet above. As the doors had long since been reset, it was only natural he couldn’t see them. And of course there was no means of egress to be seen on the rock walls that boasted mass beyond reckoning.

  “What to do, what to do ...,” D muttered this rare comment in a deep voice, yet started walking purposefully in the direction from which the water all around him flowed, though the flow was soundless and so gentle as to be imperceptible. Hard and even, the bottom of the aqueduct seemed to be the work of some external force. That wasn’t to say that he had merely to walk long enough and far enough for an exit to present itself. He was unaware of the three sisters the Count had mentioned so ominously in the chamber far above.

  Something was waiting for him.

  D was cognizant of that much. And he knew that his thrust had dealt a wound to the Count. There was no way the vampire lord would let such a fearsome opponent just drop into the subterranean waterway and then sit idly by. D was positive some sort of attack was coming. And yet, as he walked along, there was no hesitation in the legs that carried him across the firm bottom of the aqueduct, and no hint of tension or fretfulness in the shining, handsome face that seemed to make the darkness retreat. And then he halted.

  About twenty-five feet ahead, the aqueduct grew wider and a number of eerily shaped stones jutted from the water’s surface. There alone the mist was oddly thick—or rather, it hung so heavily it seemed to rise from the very waters, twisting the stones into far more outrageous and disturbing shapes and sealing off the waterway. The air bore a foul stench of decay. D’s eyes saw a film of oily scum covering the water and white things concealed in the recesses of the stones. Bleached bones. Deep in the mist there was a sharp splash, like a fish flicking its tail up out of the water.

  There was something here. Its lair was beyond the eldritch stones.

  Still, D showed no sign of turning back, and he continued walking calmly into the mist at the center of the stones. Once inside, the space between the stones looked like a sort of pool or a fishpond. The stones formed rows to either side that completely enclosed the waterway. The water sat stagnant there, blacker than ever, and the white mist eddied savagely. It seemed the source of the mineral springs wasn’t too far off. The more he advanced, the greater the number of eldritch stones, and, as the number of bones multiplied, the stench grew ever more overpowering. Most of the bones were from cattle and other livestock, but human remains were also evident. There was a skeleton that, judging from the quiver on his back, looked to be a huntsman, a woman’s skull resting in the tattered remnants of a long dress, and the diminutive bones of a child. Many of them hadn’t had time to be denuded; dark red meat and entrails hung from their bones, rife with maggots. In this vile, disturbing scene—a scene that would make the average person go mad or stop, paralyzed with fear—D noticed the spines and ribs of all the stark skeletons had been pulverized. This was not the result of being gnawed by tenacious fangs and jaws. They’d been crushed. Like something had squeezed them tight and twisted them ways they were never meant to go.

  Once again, D halted.

  There was another splash, this time much closer. The whine of a blade leaving its sheath rose from D’s back. At the same time, ripples formed on the surface a few yards ahead of him, and a white mass bobbed to the surface. And just after that, another one bobbed to the right. Then one to the left. Unearthly white in the darkness—they were the heads of carnal, alluring women.

  Perhaps D had lost his nerve, because he stood stock-still instead of holding his sword at the ready. The women gazed at him intently. Their facial features were distinct, but all were equally beautiful, and the red lips of the three women twisted into broad grins. Far behind them there was another sharp splash. Perhaps these three swam this way to escape whatever was chasing them? If that was the case, the way they kept all but their heads submerged after meeting D was quite out of the ordinary. And the grins they wore were so evil, so enticing. He looked at them and they at him for a few seconds. With the sound of a torrent of drops, the three women rose in unison. Their heads came up to the height of D’s. And then above his—far above.

  Who in the human world could imagine such an amazing sight? Three disembodied but beautiful heads smiling down charmingly at him from a height of ten feet. These women had to be the three sisters the Count had mentioned.

  At that point, D said softly, “I’ve heard rumors about you. So you’re the Midwich Medusas I take it?”

  “Oh, you know of us, do you?” The head in the middle, which would be the eldest sister, wiped the smile from her face. Her voice was like the pealing of a bell, but it also dripped with venom. However, it wasn’t the fact that the dashing young man before them seemed to recognized them for what they truly were that gave her voice a ring of surprise, but rather because there wasn’t a whit of fear in his words, so far as she could detect.

  The Midwich Medusas.
These three women—or these three creatures—were supernatural beasts of unrivaled evil that fed on the lust of young men and women. They had devoured hundreds of villagers in a part of the Frontier known as Midwich. Years earlier, they’d supposedly been destroyed by the prayers of an eminently virtuous monk passing through the region, but, unknown to all, they had escaped. After a chance encounter with Count Lee, they agreed to take up residence far below his castle on the condition they received three cows per day. Unlike the faux monsters the Nobility engineered, nothing could be more difficult to destroy than a true demon like this one. The Medusas had survived tens of thousands of years and had even outlived their own legend. Like the hydra of ancient myth, the three heads of the Medusas, which appeared to be separate, were in fact joined a few yards down in a massive pillar of a torso clad with scales of silvery gray that remained sunken in the water. The splashing sounds to their rear came from the end of the torso—a tail that thrashed in delight at finding prey.

  But D could only see the women’s heads. The reason he knew what they really were was because he’d recognized the heads of three beautiful women as the objects of one of the many bizarre rumors out on the Frontier. But the real question was, why did they melt into the darkness below the neck?

  “He’s a fine specimen, sisters.” The whispers from the head on the right sounded deeply impressed, and she licked her lips. Her red flame of a tongue was slim, and the tip was forked. “At long last, we have a man worthy of our pleasuring. And not just a pretty face, either—look at how muscular he is.”

  “Sisters, you can’t have him first,” the third head—the one on the left—declared. “Just five days ago, the two of you fed on the huntsman who wandered in here while I was asleep. This time I shall be first. First to take him to the heights of rapture, and first to taste his blood when he hits that peak.”

  “The nerve of you! We are your elders,” the head on the right—and apparently the second-in-command—bellowed.

  “Stop your sibling quarrels,” the middle head scolded them, turning to the head on the left. “You may be the first to drink of his blood. However, the three of us shall pleasure him together.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m amenable to that.”

  Without another word the three heads nodded in agreement. Little flame tongues flicking in and out and the women fondled every inch of D with smitten eyes.

  “But be on guard,” the oldest sister said quite plainly. “This man does not fear us.”

  “Rubbish! Could anyone know what we are and not tremble? When we grew angry at our meager repasts and bared our fangs, did not the Count himself beat a hasty retreat, never to return to our realm again?” asked the second sister.

  “Even supposing that he is not afraid, what could he do? Manling, can you move?”

  D remained silent. In truth, he couldn’t move. From the first moment he laid eyes on the women’s heads, his whole body had been gripped by countless hands.

  “Do you comprehend, manling,” the second sister went on. “That’s our hair at work.”

  Exactly. The reason why the necks and torso of the Midwich Medusas melded with the darkness was because everything below their jaws was hidden by black hair that fell in a cascade of tens of thousands of strands, shrouding the rest completely. However, this was no ordinary hair. Once on the water’s surface, the strands spread out like tentacles, drifted about, and when they felt the movement of something in the lair, in accordance with the will of the three sisters, they would lure the prey into the center. Then, when the appropriate time came, they could wrap around the victim’s limbs in a split second and rob the victim of his freedom with the strength of piano wire.

  And that wasn’t all. The truth was, it wasn’t water that was in the three sisters’ stone-bordered den. The eldritch stones diverted the aqueduct and sent the water flowing around either side, while their lair was actually filled with a secretion from the hair itself. The liquid flowed subtly to complement the gently swaying movements of the hair, swirling it around, and even D—with a sense of touch far more sensitive than that of humans—hadn’t been alerted to the presence of the strands. Unbeknownst to D, the hair had crept up from his waist and wrapped itself around his wrists and upper arms, as well as his shoulders and neck, completely restraining his limbs.

  Even more disturbing, the rest of those countless hands—nay, tentacles—had started slipping in through the cuffs and seams of his clothes, creeping across him, rubbing against his naked flesh, teasing him, plotting to make D a slave of inflamed desire. No matter how resolute their will, a person’s reason would dissolve after a few seconds of these delicate movements, reducing them to lust-driven mindlessness—this was the Midwich Medusas’ obscene torture, and no one could resist it.

  “Well, have you come to crave us?” the oldest sister asked. “Ordinarily, we would take your life at this point. Like so.” With her words as their signal, the three heads twisted through the air to part their locks. The black cataract changed its course, and three lengthy necks striped with black and blue, as well as the massive torso that supported them, came into view. The torso was so thick, two grown men would have trouble reaching around it. The long necks swooped down at D, wrapping around and around the powerfully built man held captive by the bonds of their black hair. For its part, the hair continued its tiny wriggling movements below D’s clothes.

  “We can break your bones whenever it suits us,” the oldest sister said, her red eyes ablaze as she stared at D’s face. The fire in her eyes was an inferno of lust. “But you’re such a gorgeous man. Such a well-proportioned man.” Her tongue licked D’s cheek.

  “Verily. Lo these past three centuries we’ve not seen one so beautiful.” The moist lips of the second sister toyed with D’s earlobe from behind. Her hot, rank breath blew into his ear.

  “But we won’t kill you. The three of us will see to it you taste more than your share of unearthly rapture, and then drain you to the marrow.” The youngest sister fairly moaned the words.

  The source of the Midwich Medusas’ life was not only the energy they derived from the consumption of living organisms. With bizarre abilities only demons possessed, they reduced strapping men and lovely women in the bloom of youth to wanton creatures aching with desire, then imbibed the aura of pure rapture the victims’ radiated at their peak—this was the secret of the three sisters’ immortality, and this was how they had lived on since before the vampires, since the ancient times when humans ruled.

  Of course, that wasn’t to say they would feed on just anyone. The sisters were gourmands in their own way. Though the Count had sent hundreds of people into the subterranean world, and still others had wandered in from various entrances, the sisters hadn’t tasted pleasure like this for centuries, and had devoured their victims’ flesh greedily but joylessly year after year. Now the time had come for pleasure to burn through their shared body once again. A heady blush tinged the three beautiful faces, their eyes danced with flames, and the hot breath spilling from their vermilion lips threatened to melt D’s frostily gorgeous visage.

  “Well now,” the oldest sister fairly moaned. Three sets of damp, bewitching lips closed in on the firm iron gate that was D’s mouth.

  The instant their lips met his, the sisters saw it. They saw the crimson blood-light glinting from D’s eyes. It dealt a mysterious blow to their wicked minds. In that instant, the three sisters felt a sweet thrill racing through their body, the likes of which they’d never experienced before.

  “Oh, those lips,” the oldest sister said in a husky voice.

  “Show me your throats,” a low, rusty voice commanded.

  Without time to comprehend it was D’s voice they heard, the sisters raised their necks as one and brought the slick white base of their throats to D’s lips. Something told them there was no other way to snuff the feverish excitement gnawing its way through their bodies. The Midwich Medusas’ wits were no longer functioning properly.

  “Undo you
r hair.”

  D’s limbs were immediately set free. His right hand returned his sword to its sheath while his left scooped up a fistful of hair.

  “A trap baited with pleasure—but who caught whom?” Before his muttered words had faded, D dropped the strands he held and pulled the three lengthy necks to himself with both arms. “I don’t like doing this, but it’s the only way to find a way out of here. Someone’s waiting for me.” As he spoke, his eyebrows suddenly rose and his eyes rolled back. His lips spread wide, exposing a pair of fangs. Brutal and evil, his visage was that of a vampire.

  There in the darkness, what happened in the moments that followed?

  The cries of the women melded with the repeated splash of their tail beating the water’s surface, suggesting unearthly delights had just taken mastery of them. It was the sisters who had blundered into the pleasure-baited trap. Before long, there was the sound of something heavy dropping into the water three times in succession, and then D quickly gave the command: “Arise.”

  Twisting their torso and serpentine necks, the three sisters rose again. A hollow shadow clung to their countenances, and their bloodshot eyes were as damp as the mist, as desire choked the vitality from them. And it was truly eerie how their glistening, greasy faces were completely bloodless, with a luster like paraffin. At the base of each of the three necks a pair of deep red dots could be seen. Fang marks.

  Who could have known the demonic blood slumbering within D would awaken at the last possible second? He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Now, as his gorgeous countenance returned to the cool mountain spring it always was, he commanded the three sisters to lead him to an exit in a voice that resembled a moan of pain.