The Count gave a pained smile. He nodded, as if acknowledging the inevitable.
“That’s the point. I have been meaning to bring this up for some time now, but I intend to take the girl as my wife.”
Larmica looked as if a stake had just been pounded through her heart. Nothing shy of that could have delivered the same shock to this proud young woman. After a while, her characteristically pale skin became the color of paper, and she said, “I understand. If you have considered that far ahead, then I will no longer be unreasonable. Do as you wish. However, I believe I shall take my leave of this castle and set off on a long journey.”
“A journey, you say? Very well.”
For all the distress in the Count’s voice, there was also a faint ring of relief. He knew in the very marrow of his bones that his beloved but temperamental daughter would never be able to coexist with the human girl, no matter how he might try to persuade them both.
“So, Father,” Larmica asked, her face as charming as if the problem had completely been forgotten, “how exactly do you intend to destroy the young upstart and claim the girl?”
.
By the time Doris got back to the farm with D, the sun was already high in the sky. Having heard an account of the previous night from his babysitter, Dr. Ferringo, Dan’s little heart was steeped in anxiety as he awaited his sister’s return. When he saw the two of them return safely he was overjoyed, though his eyes nearly leapt out of his head at the same time.
“What the heck happened to you, Sis? You fall off your horse and bust your behind or something?”
“Oh, you hush up! It’s nothing, really. I’m just making D do this to make up for all the worrying he put us through,” Doris shouted from her place on D’s back. D was carrying her piggyback.
Her nerves had borne her through heated battles with two equally fiendish adversaries—the Count last night and Rei-Ginsei this morning—but the instant she stepped out of the foggy world and heard D tell her, “You’re all right now,” her nerves had just snapped. The next thing she knew, she was on his broad back and he was treading the road home. “Hey, that’s not funny. Put me down,” she had cried, her face flushing bright red. D quickly complied, but Doris, seemingly overcome with relief, couldn’t muster any strength in her legs. They wobbled under her when they touched the ground, forcing her to sit on the spot. And so he had carried her the rest of the way to the farm.
D carried Doris right on into her room and put her to bed. The second she felt the spring of the mattress beneath her, she dropped off to sleep, but at that moment she got the distinct impression she heard a vulgar voice laugh and say, “She had a nice big butt on her. Sometimes this job has its perks.”
When the sun was getting ready to set, Doris awoke. Dr. Ferringo had long since returned to town, and D and Dan were busy repairing the door and hallway damaged in the previous night’s conflict. “Don’t bother with that, D, we can take care of it ourselves. You’ve got to be worn out enough as it is.”
On the way back to the farm from the ruins, D hadn’t really told her the circumstances that had prevented him from returning the night before. He’d simply said, “I blew it.”
She understood that he meant he’d failed to destroy the Count. But beyond that, he didn’t say anything like, “Sorry I was gone so long,” or ask, “Did anything happen last night?” Quite peeved by that, Doris subjected him to a somewhat exaggerated account of the evening’s events. She didn’t even think it particularly odd that things she’d normally be too terrified to speak of now rolled right off her tongue, simply because D was with her.
Once she’d finished, D said, “Good thing you are all right,” and that was the end of it. It seemed a cold and insolent thing to say, but it left Doris thoroughly satisfied nonetheless, and if she was a fool for that, then so be it.
At any rate, she somehow knew D had done battle with the Count, and that, in addition, he’d had some other far from ordinary experience. That was why she said he must be worn out.
“Aw, that’s okay,” Dan countered. “My big brother D here is great at this stuff. Sis, you and I couldn’t have handled all this in a month. Take a gander outside. He took care of everything—he refilled the weed-killers, fixed the fence, and even swapped out the solar panels.”
“My goodness,” Doris exclaimed in amazement.
Earning premium pay, a Hunter might keep up his own home, but she’d never heard of one helping his employer with repairs. Especially in D’s case, where his reward was only…Doris’ train of thought got that far before she flushed red. She remembered what she’d promised him before she brought him there to work. “Anyway, sit down over there and have a rest. I’ll get dinner going straight away.”
“We’ll be done soon,” D said, screwing the door hinges back into place. “It’s been a while since I did this, and it’s tougher than I thought.”
“Yeah, but you’re great at it,” Dan interjected. “You tie the knot with him, Sis, and you’re set for life.”
“Dan!” Her voice nearly a shriek, she tried to smack the boy, but the little figure ducked her hand and scampered out the open door. Only the gorgeous youth and the girl of seventeen remained. The sun stained the edge of the prairie crimson, and the last rays of light spearing through the doorway gave the pair a rosy hue.
“D ...” Doris sounded obsessed as she said his name. “Uh, I was wondering, what were you planning on doing once your work here is done? If you’re not in such a hurry, I was thinking ...”
“I’m not in a hurry, but we don’t know if my work here will get finished or not.”
Doris’ heart sank. In her frailty, the girl instinctively reached out for support and piece of mind, only to run into this sledgehammer. There was no guarantee her foe would be destroyed. She’d been lucky to weather two assaults so far, but the battle still raged on.
“D,” Doris said once again, the same word sounding like it came from a completely different person this time. “Once you finish up with that, come on back to the living room. I’d like to discuss what kind of strategy we should take from here on out.”
“Understood.”
The voice that came over his shoulder sounded satisfied.
.
Their enemy was extraordinarily quick about making his “visit.”
That evening, Greco was out carousing with his hoodlum friends, trying to work off some of the rage they still felt from the beating they’d taken at the hands of Rei-Ginsei’s gang. He was headed down a deserted street for home when he happened to see a strange carriage stop in front of the inn, and he quickly concealed himself in the shadows.
Stranger than strange, from the time the black carriage appeared out of the darkness till the time it came to a halt, it never made a single sound. The horses’ hooves beat the earth clearly enough, and the wagon wheels spun, but not even the sound of the scattering gravel reached Greco’s ears.
That there’s a Noble’s carriage…
This much Greco grasped. His drunken stupor dissipated instantly.
So, this is the prick that’s after Doris? Curiosity—and feelings of jealousy toward this rival suitor—held Greco in place. The door opened and a single figure garbed in black stepped down to the ground. By the light of a lamp dangling from the eaves of the inn, the pallid countenance of a man with a supernatural air to him came into view. I take it that’s the lord of the manner then.
Greco knew this intuitively. Though he’d never seen the man before, he matched the reliable descriptions of the fiend that’d been hammered into his head by village elders when he was still a child. Soon the carriage raced off, and the Count disappeared into the inn. What the hell brings him into town? Clouded as they were by low-grade alcohol, his brain cells weren’t up to neatly fitting the Count, the inn, and Doris together, but they did manage to give him a push in the right direction and tell him, Follow him, stupid.
On entering the inn, Greco found the clerk standing frozen behind the counter. The clerk see
med to be under some sort of spell; his eyes were open wide and his pupils didn’t track Greco’s hand as he waved it up and down. Greco opened the register. There were ten rooms. All of them were on the second floor. And there was only one guest staying there. The register put him in room #207.
Name: Charles E. Chan. Occupation: Artist.
Careful not to make a sound, Greco padded lightly up the stairs and made his way down to the door of the room in question. Light spilled out through crevasses around the door. The guest is a guy, so I don’t suppose the vampire is here to drink his blood. Maybe he’s one of the Count’s cronies? I wonder if this clown had to call in help to try and make Doris his own. Greco pulled out what looked like a stethoscope made of thin copper wire. Hunters swore by this sort of listening device. Quite a while back, Greco had won it in a rigged card game. The gossamer fairy wing, set in a tiny hole in the bell, could catch the voices of creatures otherwise inaudible to human ears, and those sounds were conveyed up the copper wire and into the listener’s ears. Ordinarily, the device would be used when searching for the hiding places of supernatural creatures too dangerous to approach, or to listen in on their private conversations, but Greco had made an art out of putting it to the windows of all the young ladies in town. Securing its bell to the door with a suction cup, he put the ear tips in and began to listen. An eerie voice that was not of this world reverberated from the other side of the door. Greco put his eye to the keyhole for good measure.
.
Rei-Ginsei was astonished when the supposedly bolted door opened without a sound and a figure in black leisurely strolled in. Quickly realizing the intruder was a Noble, he puzzled over the meaning of the visit even as he reached for the shrike-blades on the desk.
The intruder gazed at him with glittering eyes as he made a truly preposterous proposal. “I know all about you and your cohorts,” the figure in black said. “That you wiped out a Frontier Defense Force patrol, and that you tried, and failed, to kill a certain young lady. I have business with that particular girl. However, someone remains in my way. That was the person you encountered out in the fog, the one you were powerless to stop.”
“What on earth could you be referring to?” Rei-Ginsei asked, with feigned innocence. “I am but a simple traveling artisan. The mere mention of such sordid goings-on is enough to chill my blood.”
The black-garbed intruder laughed coldly and tossed a silver badge onto the bed. It had belonged to an FDF patrolman. “I know you believe all the horses and corpses were eaten or burned, and their ashes scattered to the four winds, but unfortunately such is not the case,” the voice said coolly. “Monitoring devices in my castle are linked to a spy satellite stationed overhead, and when I awake, it keeps me minutely informed of movements on the Frontier. That badge was reconstructed from molecules of ash recovered at the site, and I also have images of you and yours taken during the attack, and beamed down from the satellite. I needn’t tell you what would happen should this information be sent to not only this village, but also every place the lowly human race calls home.”
Having heard that much, Rei-Ginsei hurled a shrike-blade. It struck an invisible barrier in front of the fearsome blackmailer’s heart and imbedded itself in the floor. In truth, it was then that Rei-Ginsei gave up.
“There is the girl who eludes me to consider as well, “ the voice continued. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she were to pay a call on the sheriff tomorrow, and I assure you she would tell him all about you and your cohorts. I suppose the reason you’ve taken up lodging here in town alone is to kill the girl before she can do so, but as long as she has that man by her side, you’ll not have an easy time of it. After all, your foe is a dhampir—he has the blood of my kind in him. No matter which course you choose, naught save doom awaits your group.”
“Then why would you tell me this? What would you have us do?”
The reason Rei-Ginsei’s tone was surprisingly calm was because the intruder had been right on all points but one, and he’d decided that putting up any more of a struggle would be futile.
“I thought I might lend you some assistance,” the voice said—a remark that was quite unexpected. “So long as the stripling that’s frustrating my efforts is slain, and the girl comes into my possession, I have no interest in what happens in the lowly world of mankind.”
“But how?”
A vicious, vulgar light shone in Rei-Ginsei’s eyes. He realized he might have a chance now to slay the young punk—his opponent back in the fog. That was the one point on which the Count had been mistaken. He hadn’t left his three henchmen camped in the woods and come into town alone to keep the girl from talking. Well, that had been part of the plan, but his true aim was much more personal. He’d had the little bird where he could rip her wings off, tear her legs off, and wring her dainty neck, and his foe had taken her right out from under his nose. Worse yet, he’d known the humiliation of being paralyzed by a ghastly aura that kept him from lifting a finger against his foe, and he’d had the invincible shrike-blade he prided himself on knocked from the air with a single blow. He’d gone into town to see to it his foe paid for all these things. It was malice. Just as full of hatred and longing for vengeance as he was, his henchmen agreed to his plan. He returned to town alone to be less conspicuous as he looked for the girl and his mysterious foe.
However, wait as he might at the entrance to town, there was no sign of his prey. In asking around, he only managed to learn what the girl’s name was and where she lived. Normally he would’ve gone right out there and attacked her, but the proven strength of this other enemy—who no one in town had been able to identify—was enough to throw cold water on the wildfire that was his malice. He’d left town again briefly to meet with his cohorts and order them to keep an eye on Doris’ farm. Then he went back into the village to gather as much information as possible on his enemy for his own murderous purposes. And, while he hadn’t exactly gathered any information, he now had a more powerful ally than he ever could’ve imagined standing right before him.
“How shall we do it?” Rei-Ginsei asked once again.
“This is what you should do.”
Discussions between the demon in black and the gorgeous fiend went on for some time.
Presently, the visitor in black dropped something long, thin, and candle-like on the bed.
“That’s Time-Bewitching Incense. It’s a tool for turning day to night, or night to day. This is an especially potent version. Light it when you’re near him, then quickly extinguish it again. That should throw his defenses off. That’s when you kill him. However, just to keep you from getting any ideas about other uses you might put this to, it can only be used twice. You have only to give it a good shake and it should light.”
“Please, wait a moment,” Rei-Ginsei cried out, hoping to stop the departing figure. “I have one additional favor to ask of you.”
“A favor?” The shadowy figure sounded both puzzled and angered.
“Yes, sir.” With a nod and a smile, Rei-Ginsei made his outlandish request. “I ask that you make me one of the Nobility. Oh, you needn’t be so angry about it. Please, simply hear me out. I have to wonder why you bothered selecting me as your partner in this. If this incense alone is enough to do the trick, there must be any number of humans you could have entrusted this to. We live in times where parents will kill their own child for a gold coin and a new spear. And yet, the very fact that you went to all the trouble of coming to see me is proof enough that you need someone of my skill in order to kill the dhampir. I know a thing or two about dhampirs myself. I know they tend to be the very worst sort of enemy you could ever make. And there’s something so powerful, so terrifying about the one we’re dealing with now, it cuts me to the quick. That is no ordinary dhampir. With all due respect, it’s not enough to merely have you overlook my group’s misdeeds. I do not ask the same favor for all four of my party—I alone would like to rise to the hallowed ranks of the Nobility.”
The shadowy figure fell s
ilent.
Anyone with a heart who heard Rei-Ginsei’s overture would’ve wanted to scream “Traitor!”—to say nothing about what his three henchmen might have done—but then the world has never lacked for turncoats. Even as they hated and feared them like demons from hell, deep in their heart of hearts people looked at the dreaded vampires with a covetous gaze. Power and immortality had such an alluring scent.
“What say you?” Rei-Ginsei asked, pressuring his visitor for a response.
The shadowy figure gave a nod, and Rei-Ginsei nodded in return.
“Then thy will be done.”
“See to it.”
The shadowy figure left the room. He still had another visit to pay before he returned to his castle. By the guttering lamplight, he failed to notice the other person in the hallway.
THE BLOODY BATTLE—FIFTEEN SECONDS EACH
CHAPTER 6
.
It was early the next morning that Dan’s disappearance came to light.
Weary as she was from her deadly battle the previous night and from staying up almost all night preparing for the Count’s attack, Doris failed to notice her younger brother racing out to the prairie at the crack of dawn.
Having told D the details of her run-in with Rei-Ginsei and his gang, Doris had decided to go see the sheriff today to inform him. Though Dan had been told not to leave the farm until they were ready to go into town, the boy was just bursting at the seams with energy. Apparently he’d switched off the barrier and gone out alone with a laser rifle to hunt some mist devils.
Fog-like monsters that slipped in with the morning mist, the creatures were a nuisance on the Frontier mainly because they had a propensity for dissolving their way through crops and the hides of farm animals. They didn’t fare well against heat, however, and a blast from a laser beam was enough to destroy them. Being rather sluggish, they posed little threat to an armed boy used to dealing with them.
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