“You could still be treated.”
As D said that, his words were joined by a mournful wail.
“That’s right! Don’t go. You can’t go off and become one of those things!”
As the mayor’s daughter grabbed both her hands, Amne thrashed wildly.
“It’s okay. I want to try and see it, too. Try and see the same world as the woman who sang that song.” Then the boy turned and said, “I’m sorry, Amne, but I want you to come with us.”
Perhaps that was meant to keep D in check—if he interfered, she’d be killed.
The whole group entered the mansion. From the corridor they passed into the laboratory.
It seems this is the end, a crystal clear voice chimed in the minds of all.
“It’s over,” the mayor’s daughter said.
The woman by the window grew hazy, dissolving in moonlight.
The mayor’s daughter staggered. To Ry and Amne, it seemed as if the girl had drawn something into herself.
Two that were one—surely it wouldn’t be beyond the Nobility’s science to create such a being.
“And now to undertake our final task,” the mayor’s daughter told her party.
“Stop them, Mister D!” Amne cried with all her might.
“Don’t do this, D,” the other girl said in a bid to stop him. “Earlier, you made no attempt to slay us. As you said, we don’t drink blood. And he’s going to become something far greater.”
“So it would seem,” Ry said with a smile. “Take care of Amne and the mayor. So long.”
“No, you can’t!” Amne shouted, thrashing until one of her arms popped free of her captor.
A peculiar scent spread through the room. A bit of red stained Amne’s arm. As she’d struggled with all her strength to win her freedom, she’d been clawed by fingernails in the process.
“D!” Amne cried.
The mayor’s daughter opened her mouth and revealed a pair of fangs.
It was the basement of the concert hall all over again. Apparently they’d only been able to get past the scent of Price’s blood. But when all of them charged toward Amne, each was pierced through the chest either by a wooden stake or naked steel.
The mayor’s daughter fell to the floor, and in a matter of seconds she turned to dust. Like the fine powder that shrouded the history of this house, her remains shimmered in the moonlight.
Only Ry remained.
“I haven’t sprouted fangs yet, but who can say what’ll happen next,” he said. “I’d probably be better off just having you run me through right now.”
“Stop it!” Amne shouted as she jumped between him and the Hunter. “The mayor and I will keep watch and see what happens next. If he winds up like the Nobility—well, then we’ll . . .”
Amne hiccuped.
“She said they hadn’t done the last part to him yet, right?” said the mayor. Apparently freed now of her daughter’s power, she shook her head as she spoke. “That being the case, I suppose there’s a chance he might go back to being a normal human being. However—”
There she broke off.
“I really don’t know,” she continued. “Even though I talked with my daughter so many times about humans and Nobles, there is no way to be certain. Which do you suppose is better? What are you going to do, D?”
His only answer was silence.
Showered with moonlight, the four figures simply stood there like philosophers waiting for an answer that would never come.
__
†
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Several minutes later, D cut across the courtyard and exited the mansion. Straddling his horse, he turned back to the building once before riding off. Silhouettes flickered in the lit window. Were there two, or were there three? Quickly facing forward again, D gave a kick to his mount’s flanks.
Shortly after the black rider was swallowed by the darkness, a gentle voice began to drift out into the night from somewhere. There was no saying whether it was that of a man or a woman. But it sang the nocturne.
THE FALL VILLAGE
CHAPTER 1
I
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There were villages that shone in one season beyond all others, and in the case of Shirley’s Door, it was the fall. The community of less than two thousand was situated roughly in the center of the Landau Plain, and when its deep green world began to take on the colors of the sunset, the strangest activity took place. The normally taciturn villagers would host travelers who were merely passing through in their very own homes, and many children who were normally cooped up in their houses would race around town while a unique serenity hung in the air. It was as if the fall had granted them special permission. And the people set benches out in front of their gates, listening to the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot on the red brick roads while they shared cheap wine and long conversations all day on holidays and from dusk until late at night on the days that they worked.
“Well, they sure do like the fall there,” their nearest neighbors in the village six miles away would say. While their own fall was quite beautiful in its own right, those villagers knew that it lacked something.
The fall people, the fall village, an anonymous poet who stayed in Shirley’s Door once wrote. And surely there must be a fall traveler as well. However, that is not my lot. It should be noted that the poet’s ode was never completed. The people and village of the fall could never surmise from the verse why the fall traveler was necessary.
But as it happened, that anonymous poet might’ve done better as a prophet. Because a few years after his uneventful departure from the village, the local inhabitants were to learn why it was they had need of a traveler. This fall, to be exact.
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Driving along a lone road that ran through a forest where only traces of green now remained, Lyle slammed on the brakes. Sending out the sort of malodorous cloud that was a scourge on all around him, his sulfur-powered car halted. After exchanging looks with Cecile, who sat in the seat behind him, he then stared at the rider about to pass him on the right. The road forked about half a mile back on the way the two of them had came, but apparently some prankster had seen fit to remove the sign that pointed to town. The early autumn fields still brimmed with afternoon light. Even if the rider chose the wrong road, he’d probably have time enough to backtrack and reach the village before evening, but this kind-hearted pair still thought it would be an unfortunate occurrence.
When the forelimbs of the white cyborg horse lined up with the front end of Lyle’s car, he called out, “Hey,” then fell silent. His reaction was prompted by the realization that next to him, Cecile was melting into a senseless mass. She was enraptured, to put it plainly.
Yet the horse rode right by the side of the car without the rider saying a word.
“Hey, you—wait a second,” Lyle called out to him only after the rider was a good thirty feet away. Despite the cold reception, he hadn’t lost any of his kindheartedness.
The horse halted. The rather dusty coat of the white mount spoke volumes about the distance it had come.
Thinking better of raising his voice, Lyle muttered, “Here goes nothing,” as he backed his car over to where the horse and rider waited.
Between the wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and long coat was an almost translucent face that peered down at the boy and girl. Cecile began to melt again. The boy knew he had to make this quick.
“You know, there’s a split in the road up ahead that’s not marked. Go left and you’ll hit Shirley’s Door, right and you’re into the swamp. Get lost out there and it could be a problem. They say the Nobility had a mansion out in the swamp, and it’s pretty murky territory even by day.”
And once he’d spoken Lyle began blinking his eyes. If he didn’t, he thought he’d lose his mind, too. Looking at a face that beautiful would draw the wrath of Heaven.
“You have my thanks,” the rider in black said, raising his left hand casually. His voice had a patina to it that was painfully masculine.
“I’d like to ask you something else as well,” said the rider.
“Sure. Please, ask away.”
“Do you know where ‘Helga of the Red Basket’ lives?”
Lyle looked at Cecile. The eighteen-year-old girl was still in a daze, so the boy elbowed her to return her to her senses.
“I know,” she said.
“So, you’re some acquaintance of old Helga, are you? Don’t tell me you’re the ghost of her husband!”
Although the boy thought it was a rather witty remark, he got no reply.
“Take the road to the right that he just mentioned and follow it into the forest,” Cecile continued. “Please be sure to keep your eyes open on the right. The first house you’ll see on that side is hers. If you’re not careful, it’s pretty easy to miss it.”
The rider touched his right hand to the brim of his hat. Cecile understood that this was the greatest sign of gratitude this traveler could show.
“Okay, watch yourself then,” Lyle said.
In a hurry to distance himself from such a character as quickly as possible, the boy let out the clutch. And the traveler’s horse began to walk away.
Some bittersweet impulse made the girl turn as they sped into the horizon.
“By the way, my name’s Cecile. And this is Lyle. Would you be so kind as to give us your name?”
The traveler in black turned to them. Although he was so far away they shouldn’t have been able to hear him, Cecile caught a fragment of his voice. Borne on the wind.
“D,” the fall traveler had said.
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With her trademark red picnic basket stuffed full of plums, old Helga returned home. The scarlet-stained western sky was nicked by the silhouettes of trees. Even after noticing the white horse tied to the hitching post by her front door, the old woman wasn’t the least bit surprised. In almost a century of living, there’d been over a hundred things more amazing than a sudden caller, and this particular guest certainly wasn’t unexpected.
Putting her hand on the top of the horse’s neck, she enjoyed the feel of its artificial hide as she said to it, “Where’s your master at?”
A sharp crack came from out back.
“Out at the woodshed, is he?”
Setting her basket down on the front stoop, she had just finished turning the corner when she encountered a figure in black. Seeing the great bundles of kindling he had under either arm, she remarked, “It’s not every day that you see a Hunter chopping wood while his employer’s out. You’re Mister D, I take it?”
The young man nodded. The air stirred—even it felt his beauty.
As if it were a sight too terrible to behold, the old woman averted her gaze and stared at the wretched little hut out back. “Looks like there’s enough kindling to last a hundred years back there. How long you been splitting it, anyway?”
“I got here three hours ago,” said D.
“And in all that time you didn’t bother to go inside, but chopped wood instead? Some of them upstart Hunters would’ve gone on their way or forced their way into the house. You’ve had a darned good upbringing, haven’t you? Why, I can tell that just by looking at your face. At any rate, welcome!”
Old Helga’s request was a little out of the norm.
“Soon we’ll be full on into fall. And when that happens, the Nobility are gonna play hell with the village.”
Her request was that D take care of them. Ordinarily, someone who’d suffered an attack would hire him personally, or in cases where a whole community was plagued by the Nobility, a representative would handle his employ. It was unheard-of for an old woman who wasn’t a victim of the Nobility and seemed to have almost no chance of becoming one to hire an expensive Vampire Hunter for the sake of the entire village. Especially when she said the Nobility wouldn’t appear until fall.
“Do you have any proof?” asked D.
“Not really. But if you want to get technical, there’s always this.”
The crone put the contents of her basket on the wooden table. Several pieces of the black and rotting fruit rolled by D’s hands.
“It really became noticeable how bad they were getting about a week ago—the same day I contacted you. Now they’re all rotten. I’ve lived a hundred years, and I don’t think this is any accident of nature. I had given some thought about holding off until I was completely sure, but that would’ve meant waiting until victims started cropping up.”
“And what have you called me here for?”
“I’m getting on in years and don’t have much time left. And I want to do some good while I’m still here. If you can, I’d like you to keep my name out of this while you go about your business.”
“There probably won’t be any problems, you know.”
“If that were the case, you wouldn’t be sitting here now. But rest assured, I’ll pay you as agreed regardless. Besides, just getting to sit here staring at your face like this, I get the feeling it’d be worth it just to meet you. You want to know why?” the old woman asked as the silent embodiment of beauty flickered in her failing vision. After raising a steaming cup to her lips and taking a sip, she continued, “Actually, you’re a lot like my husband. Not your face, of course, but your general mood.”
According to what the old woman told him, her husband had joined a group trying to track down a Noble in a neighboring village about eighty years ago and had never returned. No body was ever found, but she never heard from him again, nor did the slightest rumor ever reach her ears. It’d been summer when he’d set off, so she’d believed he’d be back in the fall, and even now the old woman continued to wait. Fortunately, even eighty years later, she still experienced the season known as fall.
“The fall?”
“Yes, the fall. In our village, everything starts in fall. That’s when we gather our food for the winter, and when we collect the seeds we’ll sow in spring. It’s even when we store the water we’ll need in summer. Fall is when people pass away and when others are born—and it’s when handsome travelers come along, too.”
“I heard the Nobility had a mansion here,” said the Hunter.
“Yes, for about the last five hundred years. They say they just abandoned everything and disappeared a hundred years ago, but at any rate, there was no one out there by the time I was born.”
“Why did they disappear?”
“I wouldn’t know. They were real cruel Nobles, and had an awful lot of robotic servants. Apparently they were researching something.”
“There’s no sign of it out there. I wonder if I should’ve drained the swamp.”
“You mean to tell me you’ve already gone and had a look?” the crone said, her eyes going wide. “In the span of three hours you went out to the swamp and split a whole shed full of wood to boot? You really aren’t a blessed thing like the others, I guess.”
“Is it far to the village?”
“About thirty minutes if you gallop all the way. I suppose you could call this the outskirts.”
Helga asked him to hurry and at least check out the ponds if he could.
“I don’t suppose anything could’ve possibly been slumbering there for the past century, but just to be safe. And they’ve got a custom here in the village that has me worried,” the old woman confided.
“And that is?”
“They offer a sacrifice, a real fine-looking girl. And that’s how they get them to leave everyone else alone.”
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II
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The night air was comfortable.
The girl had gone out to pick apples. On the east edge of town in a spot known only to her was a tree that spread its branches like a folding fan. Since before its fruit was fully red and ripe, the tree’s bounty had been filling her mouth with its refreshing sweetness whenever she sank her teeth into it.
By the girl’s side was a young man. Ever
since finishing secondary school the two of them had been inseparable, and the villagers figured in a few years the couple would throw a modest banquet and be together for all time. Under the tree in question the pair of bodies intertwined. But before the boy’s arms could draw the full strength of his passion, the girl pulled back and with just the sort of mischievous teasing unique to their age, she circled around behind the tree trunk. The scent of the fruit in the night air—the scent of fall—lifted the girl’s spirits. Tonight would no doubt be a special night.
The girl grabbed one of apples that swayed above her head and plucked it from the tree. Her lips were quite red despite their lack of lipstick, and as they closed around the fruit, her white teeth bit into it with a crisp snap. Mere seconds later, the girl spat out what she’d taken in her mouth. The bits that scattered at her feet and the fruit in her hand were rotten and black on the inside. Grabbing another one, the girl squeezed it between her fingers. The fruit cracked open and black juice dripped from it.
Driven by fear, the girl called out the young man’s name. But no matter how many times she shouted it, he didn’t come. Terror tightened its corset around her.
The girl circled back around the tree trunk. The young man stood exactly where she’d left him, and although it looked like he hadn’t moved an inch, there was something different about his pose. Both his arms were out in front of him, forming a rough semicircle. If the girl were to slip between his arms and his body, it would’ve made for a fiery embrace. However, that embrace was not for her.
Still calling his name, the girl touched the boy, at which point the seemingly faithless lover who’d forgotten all about her toppled over without a sound.
Why was it that her eyes were immediately drawn to his neck? Wrapped in a swell of powerful muscle, his throat had been split open like a pomegranate. It was easy enough for the girl to surmise that this was a fatal wound.
Without even trying to get him back up, the girl spun around and was embraced. Even before she felt the terrific force of the arms that wrapped around her waist, the nape of her neck was ripped open. As her hand clawed out in agony, it caught hold of an apple on one of the larger boughs. And when the fruit shattered in her wildly clutching fingers, sure enough, it was black to the core.
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Nocturne Page 7