Vampire Hunter D: Dark Nocturne

by Dark Nocturne (v5. 0) (epub)

  He’d noticed the change that’d come over Raya.

  “Not again!” he shouted as he raced toward her. As he came alongside her, his legs grew wobbly.

  “That kick of yours sure knocked me for a loop,” he said.

  Even as Dynus fell on top of the girl, he used both arms to support his weight and avoid a direct hit before rolling off to one side.

  Several seconds later, a shadowy figure appeared beside the two prone forms.

  “You’re both unbelievably strong,” spat the man who’d once identified himself as Duran, his face as emotionless as a Noh mask. “This big bastard and D are so intense, we couldn’t very easily make a move, but it looks like our time has finally come. Now I’ll put an end to this battle that’s been going on for ten thousand years. Oh, but it’s been so long . . .”

  As exhaustion seemed to spread through his whole body, the man in farm attire knelt down by the giant’s side. Thrusting both hands out before him, he began to move them as if he were tracing something in the air. And then, after mere seconds, an indistinct blue shape formed in the space that had clearly been vacant before. As he moved his hands with complete focus, Duran wore the expression of a flagellant. In no time at all, the semitransparent form he was manipulating became that of the giant lying beside him—Dynus.

  Duran stood up. As he did so, his hands also rose—and the other Dynus rose with them. And then the huge effigy through which the falling snow could still be glimpsed was positioned right on top of the real giant. Duran tumbled back on his ass, thoroughly winded. His face was pale.

  Taking a half dozen deep breaths, he then moved on to the next bizarre act. He placed his hands to either side of his head.

  Snow danced around.

  Overlapping like a double exposure, the twin forms of Dynus began to mysteriously lose their color from the top of their heads—not only the duplicate, but the body beneath it as well. Impressive as Dynus was, it didn’t seem likely that the warrior would be able to continue the fight once his head had been erased. But given Duran’s sorcerous might, it was likely he’d wipe the man’s whole body out of existence.

  However, before the fearful sorcerer could claim the victory that lay right before him, he had to turn.

  Though the figure was blurred by the white, the crazily gusting snow did nothing to detract from his beauty.

  “D—so you decided to come after all?” Duran muttered in a faraway tone as he stood up. “That being the case, Crumb must’ve been slain. I shall have to avenge him.”

  “I have no intention of getting involved in your battle,” D said softly.

  “Too late. Having killed one of my colleagues, you’re now part of this,” Duran informed him in a weary-sounding voice. He was aware that when D’s presence had interrupted his concentration, Dynus’s head had returned to normal. Both of his hands rose.

  D didn’t tell him to stop.

  He made a few delicate gestures, and a beautiful blue illusion flew at D from his fingertips. The instant the black figure who’d split that image in two landed right in front of Duran, the sorcerer’s body was slashed in half by a diagonal stroke.

  Tearing through the bloody mist, D raced over to the two combatants. When he put his left hand to Raya’s brow, she opened her eyes a crack. They were the eyes of an ordinary farm girl.

  “What’s going on, D? Why on earth am I . . .”

  “You were in an accident,” said D. “Dynus protected you.”

  “Really? I’m glad. I had this dream again . . . that I was fighting . . . with him . . .”

  The girl’s eyelids dropped.

  Confirming that her pulse was normal, D scooped her up in his arms and, still down on one knee, placed his left hand on the giant’s forehead.

  The wind whistled sharply. Dynus had just taken a breath.

  Opening his eyes wide and finding D, he said, “Hey, good to see you,” as if they were just normal people passing on the street.

  Staring at Raya cradled in the Hunter’s black arms, he asked, “Did it happen again?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish she’d hurry up and decide whether she’s gonna fight me or go back to normal. Every time I really start getting into the battle, this happens. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  “I bet.”

  “Don’t talk to me in that creepy old guy voice,” Dynus said, getting up without too much apparent pain. Perhaps that wasn’t so surprising given the fifty million megawatts that’d poured into him every hour for more than two thousand years.

  “Where are you going?”

  D walked forward, the area before him a burning, melted depression in the ground thanks to the artificial sun Dynus had just created.

  “To where we found Raya the first time. The machinery for bringing out the warrior in her must be buried there.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  Dynus smiled. Slapping his hands together, he said, “Good, then! Just leave it to me. I’ll dig it right out.”

  “Thank you.”

  As D nodded, the giant’s form grew hazy. His whole body had begun to vibrate at the molecular level. The ground had been fused to glass, but it crumbled to pieces and swirled into the air in a cloud.

  When the two mounted figures arrived, the vast million-square-foot sanctum below the ruins had been left open to the mercy of the white snow.

  “This is fantastic—can you believe anything like this still survives?” Serna remarked with admiration. He peered down from the brink of a hole that yawned like the maw of an unholy beast where the ground had been left like a mortar that’d had the bottom worn right out of it.

  “My lord, this is remarkable! But then that’s the Nobility’s supercivilization for you, right, professor?” said a monocled man who needed no introduction as he gave the man beside him a pat on the back. Apparently being stuck headfirst into a snow bank hadn’t taught him anything.

  Spotting the larger and smaller figures about seventy feet below, the two men tied together the ropes loaded on their respective mounts and started to climb down.

  They clung to the mercilessly twisting cord for dear life, and when they finally reached the bottom, Dynus grinned and said, “Glad you could make it.”

  He then growled, “But what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I have a contract,” Brewer replied pertly as he pulled out the familiar sheet of paper.

  “Well, you can walk, you bastard.”

  Putting Serna up on his shoulder, Dynus swiftly strode back to the far side of the chamber, where D was waiting. He was surrounded by bizarre equipment—as was Raya. From the colossal cylinders that looked like they might go up the whole seventy feet right down to little bits no bigger than a fingernail, everything was clearly part of a highly complex machine.

  More to the center of the device than D, Raya lay on what appeared to be an operating table, although it was unclear whether it was made of metal or some organic substance. It was obvious that the table played an important role in the mechanism from the way a blue light radiated from deep within it.

  “Well?”

  Serna gave a nod of affirmation in reply to D’s query. This was definitely the chamber used for programming the superwarrior.

  “Do you know how to operate it?”

  It took the linguist ten seconds to look all around and tilt his head to one side.

  “More or less,” said Serna. “However, I can’t be sure if I’m correct or not. After all, this machine belonged to the Nobility.”

  “At any rate, let’s give it a try. Start telling us what to do,” D said, ignoring the mechanical uncertainties of the linguist.

  Serna began inspecting the equipment. Fortunately, there were no major differences between this and the plans discovered in the ruins of the moving continent. In particular, he was relieved to discover the check sensors that allowed someone to tell at a glance how well the entire machine was functioning were exactly the same.


  When the snow was about to turn all of them into white sculptures, Serna gave the thumbs-up.

  “This is a spectacular piece of equipment. There isn’t a single thing wrong with it; every single piece of machinery is operational now, and will probably still be so ten millennia from now.”

  “I couldn’t care less about that. Just get started already,” Dynus said as he exhaled on Raya to blow the snow off of her.

  “Understood. In principle, this is how it should go. I’ll erase the warrior DNA that’s been sleeping all along in Raya’s genes. This will involve using the machine that awakened her the first time she came here to completely reverse the process.”

  Serna walked off about six feet to the right to a piece of equipment that appeared to be a computer.

  “The data that was used to awaken the warrior memories in Miss Raya has been input into this machine. I’ll instruct it to immediately erase the same.”

  “That’d be wonderful. We’re counting on you,” said the giant.

  “Hold everything,” Brewer interjected through chattering teeth. “There’s not any chance of you screwing things up and killing her or anything, is there? Because warrior or not, I’ll have you know I still have six thousand dalas invested in her.”

  “You won’t be complaining much after you freeze to death.” The giant then trained an intense gaze on Serna as he said, “Let’s get started.”

  Serna nodded.

  His hand reached out for a protrusion on the computer—but there was a second’s pause before he actually touched it. During that time, the strangest thoughts occupied his mind.

  Should I be doing this? Should I turn her back into a normal human being? a dark murmur asked. It was the linguist’s own ambition-choked voice. I’ll never happen across another specimen like this again. A warrior spawned by the Nobility. A being to rival the incredible concentration of energy that dwelt so long in that other castle. Can I allow myself to simply put something like that back to sleep?

  Serna threw the switch.

  There was no change in the world. No light or sound was created, but both Raya’s eyes snapped open at that instant.

  “Something’s wrong!” Dynus shouted.

  It was a second later that Serna’s right arm was taken off at the shoulder by a flash of white light.

  “D—don’t get involved anymore,” Dynus said brightly. “I’ve had fun here the last few days. I’ll never have it that good again, I suppose.”

  “Exactly,” said Raya. As she quietly sat up on the operating table, her whole body was painted white by a horizontal gust of snow. “Don’t forget me, either. Good-bye, D.”

  As the girl got off the table, the giant crouched down and braced himself.

  “Hey! Stop it! You two don’t seriously intend to fight, do you?!”

  The two figures streaked up over Brewer’s head.

  “What in the world?!”

  As the flesh trader stood there with eyes bulging, the man in black raced past him, saying, “Take care of him.” The voice came from over by the same rope Brewer had climbed down.

  When he looked in that direction, Brewer’s eyes reflected only a figure in black going up the rope with the speed of a swallow in flight. Giving his head a shake to clear it, he then dashed over to the groaning and blood-spattered linguist.

  Up on the ground where everything was hidden by white, D looked to the heavens. Somewhere in the leaden clouds beyond his vision, a gruesome battle to the death was surely taking place. In the black center of his pupils, a white glow burnt its image. It swelled to include all the colors of the rainbow, covering first the entirety of his eyes, and then dominating a whole section of the sky.

  “It’s over, isn’t it?” said a weary voice from the left hand of the long shadow that fell on the ground.

  The angry howls of a new wind buffeted the earth. The snow had stopped. A short while after that, white steam enveloped the world—and D. The endless dance of the white flurry had suddenly become a downpour of warm water. And D alone saw the pair of black specks that fell in the distant wilderness.

  With a low whistle, the Hunter summoned his cyborg steed. The hot rain mercilessly pelted a burnt and twisted object that barely retained any resemblance to a human form. Getting off his horse, D went over to Raya.

  Perhaps sensing his presence, the girl opened her eyes a crack. They weren’t the eyes of a warrior.

  “This time . . . I remember,” Raya exhaled in a faint breath. “Never wanted . . . to do that, D . . . What in the world . . . was I, after all?”

  “A farmer’s daughter.”

  “Really?” the girl said, and she seemed to smile. “I wish we’d had more time . . . together. I wanted to stay with the two of you . . . forever . . .”

  All the strength drained from Raya’s body.

  “Has she passed on?” the giant lying beside her muttered in a low voice.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be cashing out shortly myself . . . but it felt good to be able to fight with everything I had. What’d she say, anyway?”

  Apparently he hadn’t heard her.

  “She’ll be waiting for you,” D said.

  “Is that a fact? I wonder if I’ll be able to tend fields on the other side, too? On second thought, scratch that. I’m sure she’ll be waiting for me with armor on.” As he looked at D, his bloody lips formed a smile. “Godspeed to you. The three of us will meet again.”

  A minor spasm ran through his body, and then his gigantic form returned to the earth.

  Something pale began dancing through the air again.

  D looked at the ruins. Hate-filled dreams that’d lived on for ten thousand years were now shrouded in white.

  The linguist’s wound was no longer bleeding a few hours later when the flesh trader reached ground-level with the younger man over his shoulder. What they saw there were two mounds beneath the white mantle, and one of them had a charred log planted behind it.

  Returning to the road, the flesh trader ran his gaze down it. Beyond the wildly gusting snow, he got the feeling that he caught a momentary glimpse of a hazy figure in a black coat—and then everything was swallowed by an endless dance of purest white.

  POSTSCRIPT

  __

  The volume Dark Nocturne is the only collection of novellas in the entire Vampire Hunter D series. What’s more, aside from the most recent book in Japan—Throng of Heretics—it’s also the only one that was originally serialized. At the time, Asahi Sonorama (which unfortunately was dissolved last October) was publishing a literary magazine called Shishi-Oh, and that’s where all the novellas in Dark Nocturne were serialized. Up until that point, the Vampire Hunter D series had been exclusively full-length novels. Not that I was dissatisfied with that, but I always had the feeling I’d like to write some stories that wouldn’t work in the regular novel length. So that was why when series editor Mr. Ishii suggested, “How about a serialization?” I responded, “Yes, yes, yes!” [laughs].

  For whatever reason, it seems that authors fall into the category of “novelist,” “short story writer,” or “can do either.” You often hear people say, “He specializes in novels,” or, “He can only write short stories.” Although it’s naturally best to be well-rounded and able to write both long and short works, that doesn’t necessarily suit every author’s temperament. To be honest, when I was still an amateur, I aspired to be a short story writer. I hadn’t written anything novel-length myself, and I was enthralled by short stories by the likes of Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, Fredric Brown, Richard Matheson, and Theodore Sturgeon—strange and frightening, stylish and intelligent, and beautiful tales, to boot. Even now I think the whole reason I became a writer was to try and write gems like those. However, the gilding tends to come off in the cold, harsh light of reality.

  At present, it’s extremely difficult for an author to specialize in short stories here in Japan. The field of “otherworldly tales”—horror and science fiction—is particularly brutal
. For starters, there are no magazines to carry such stories. Unless it’s some kind of special edition, a monthly periodically might carry at most two or three short stories in an issue. And there are times when there are none at all. Their readers like stories that cleave to reality (such as mysteries or romances). At that rate, it would take years to get enough short stories for an anthology, and even if you got such a volume printed, the number actually sold would be surprisingly low. There are no Bradburys in Japan.

  Fortunately, I had the ability to write novels (whether I write them well or not is another matter). And I’ve even managed to pull off some short stories. (Though there’s little call for them. The reason for that should be clear by now). According to a more experienced writer, “A novelist is an artist working in oils. The short story writer is a watercolor artist. Although an artist who uses oil paints can quickly adjust to using watercolors, the watercolor specialist can’t necessarily make an oil painting.” I think there may be some truth to that.

  It would give me great pleasure to someday show my English readers a collection of my short stories. I wonder if you’d be interested in a tale that combines Japanese swordplay and specters?

  __

  Hideyuki Kikuchi

  November 5, 2007

  While watching Dracula’s Daughter

  STRANGE TRAVELING COMPANIONS

  CHAPTER 1

  I

  __

  Though the moonlight should’ve been entirely impartial, that road alone seemed to stand out like a blue snake—it was surrounded by darkness. The leaves rustled restlessly. The wind was picking up.

  The road was really a highway. A relatively high number of people and vehicles traveled it by day, but with the coming of night, it became a kingdom of the weird prowled by such famed creatures of the western Frontier as shape-shifting humanoids and matter-changing bugs.

  Apparently an unfortunate traveler had invaded their domain tonight. Five or six bizarre silhouettes surrounded a tall figure in front of a carriage way station that sat by the side of the highway. The way station contained bolt-firing pistols, short spears, and longswords that might be used in an emergency, but the figure showed no sign of taking them in hand as he remained soaking in the hungry gazes of eyes aglow with a green phosphorescence.