The unearthly aura that welled from her rooted the recklessly courageous young men.
One stepped forward with a longsword in hand. He was their leader, and by far the fiercest of the bunch.
It’s just a damn Noble, he told himself, but there was nothing he could do about the tremble in his legs. As if to shake it off, he gave a shout of, “Take that!” and drove his blade into the woman.
They had heard about the Nobility’s immortal nature from their mothers and fathers. Although stabbing such a creature anywhere but through the heart wouldn’t destroy it, it could still prove fairly effective. They would try and grab her while she was still wincing from being struck in the belly—that’s what the leader thought.
Not moving a muscle, the woman took the blade through her svelte abdomen.
“Holy shit!” the young man screamed as he stumbled forward.
Feeling no contact, no physical resistance whatsoever, the longsword sank into the young woman’s form up to the hilt, and then the young man himself slipped right through her body.
“Whatever are you doing?”
Slamming nose-first into the ground, the young man snorted angrily but quickly got up again as her voice resounded behind him with naked scorn. He turned around in shock.
The woman’s form had vanished abruptly, but she now stood about ten feet in front of his compatriots, who’d also turned the same way. In her left hand she cradled the young man whose head dangled back on the thin strip of skin connecting it to his neck—her driver. Her right hand kept his gaping neck wound covered all the while.
“You—you stupid bitch!”
“Come to me. This time, I shall be the real thing,” she told them, her voice so refreshingly clear, it seemed as if the moon above them had spoken.
Ignorant of what lay behind that tone, all the young men aside from the leader shouldered their rifles. Flames and the booming report of gunfire rocked the night air. Due to the fact that their ammunition used far more gunpowder than necessary, the heavy rifles kicked their barrels up nearly ninety degrees.
But what shook horribly under the impact of the bullets was the driver’s corpse. Even though the young men realized she was using him as a shield, it still looked to them almost as if he’d stepped in front of the gunfire of his own accord. For a second they were blasted by a gale of sheer terror, and their fingers ceased pulling the triggers.
“I desire a substitute,” said the voice of the unseen girl. It was as if the headless corpse had spoken. “One of you—for the rest I have no use.”
A white blur rose straight up from the corpse’s neck. The five fingers that’d capped the wound had been taken away.
But something sparkled brilliantly in the moonlight as it rose in a geyser. As the youths watched, it spread in midair, billowing against them like black gossamer and staining their bodies with something dark. Blood. The blood of the driver.
There was no sense protesting that the heart pumping his blood should’ve already stopped when the only possible explanation was that it continued working even though his head had been almost completely taken off.
Dyed black, the young men stood paralyzed with disbelief for a while, but each soon gave a dying scream and fell to the ground. The gore that’d rained down on them was no ordinary blood. As a result of coming into contact with the girl’s hand, it had been transformed into a drug of sorts that, on entering the human body, caused a chemical reaction with their own blood that in turn formed an unknown but virulent poison. Even their flesh and bones were dissolving.
Ironically, the only one spared was the first one whose skin had come into contact with the black blood. As his friends’ faces and limbs collapsed into piles of offal, the leader could only stare in utter shock.
“Come to me,” said the girl, beckoning to him with her hand. Now no longer necessary, the corpse of her driver had been discarded at her feet.
It was the leader’s good fortune that the girl’s beckoning gesture was done half in jest—she had put no hypnotic power behind it. He still had a means of escape. Pushing the longsword he had in his hand against his neck, he slashed through the carotid artery before the woman’s voice or the gleam of her eyes could reach him.
“Of all the nerve,” the girl said, her voice carrying the first signs of loathing and agitation. “He won’t make much of a servant like that. Now where am I supposed to find another one? But wait—there may be a chance if he’s not completely dead yet!”
As if she’d just had a wonderful idea, the girl raced gaily to the prone form of the leader. So long as he hadn’t died, it would be possible to give him “the kiss of the Nobility” and transform him into one of the living dead. It would be easy enough to get him to do the trivial duties she had for him.
Easily taking away the longsword he gripped, she grabbed the leader by the scruff of the neck and flipped him over. At the time, she didn’t notice the spokes from the broken wagon wheel lying beside him.
The leader opened his eyes a crack.
“How splendid! I hope you shall enjoy serving me.”
Her pale and lovely visage slowly moved closer to the nape of his neck, and a heartbeat later, an unearthly scream gushed from the girl’s mouth. She was going to suck the blood from a half-dead man who could offer no resistance. But in the end, it was that simple act that’d invited her to drop her guard.
Like a curse on the swell of bosom in her white dress, the wooden spokes that’d supported the rim of the wheel were stuck through the middle of her chest. In his dying seconds, the group’s leader had wrung one last bit of strength from himself to drive the jagged chunk of wood into the girl’s torso. Though he ceased breathing almost immediately, he must’ve been satisfied by her screams, because in death his face wore an unsettling grin.
“You bastard! You rotten bastard!” the girl bellowed as she reached for the stake in her chest.
To be perfectly honest, her wound wasn’t that deep. The young man’s strength had been spent. And yet the girl couldn’t pull it out.
But take a closer look at it. The wheel had lost its outer rim, and most of the wooden spokes had broken off the hub, but a pair was still left sticking out from either side, forming the shape of a cross. A cross-shaped stake.
White smoke poured from the hand that’d grabbed hold of it, and her skin had melted away.
Unable to say a word, she was writhing when her body was abruptly turned over to face upward. Before her surprise could even register, the stake was pulled out.
“Who are you—?” the girl asked. Apparently some of the cross’s effect still remained, as she was barely able to catch her breath.
“I am Baron Byron Balazs,” the figure in the blue cape said, snapping the stake in two and hurling the pieces far away. “What are you doing out here?”
Putting one hand to her chest, where a crimson rose had blossomed, the girl let out an easy breath. She’d recognized him as one of her kind.
Curtsying respectfully, she said, “I am Miska, granddaughter of Duke Cornelius Drake, director of the Southern Frontier Control Committee. And I have certain business that takes me to the village of Krauhausen.”
“What are the odds?” the baron muttered, and the girl seemed to read something in his expression.
“Could it be that you’re headed there as well? If you don’t mind, might I travel in your company?” she asked in a voice that tugged at him with dependency.
“That may prove problematic,” the baron said noncommittally. He wasn’t exactly traveling alone.
“I can’t, then?”
Despair spread across her face like the legs of a black spider, but at that point the girl turned with a start. She’d just noticed that the baron was staring at something.
About thirty feet away, D stood beside a colossal bole.
“And who is this?” the girl—Miska—asked in spite of herself.
His sordid raiment was such a mismatch for his elegant features, she couldn’t help but ask. He looke
d like nothing shy of a Noble.
“This is my trusted escort. He’s known as D.” And after introducing him, the baron asked, “Well?”
He was referring to the matter of Miska.
“D? It can’t be,” the girl said before the man could respond, shock reshaping her countenance. “Vampire Hunter ‘D’—how many times I’ve heard that name. He’s our sworn foe!”
“He’s traveling with me. My partner, so to speak.”
At the baron’s words, Miska’s expression wavered.
“Is he your servant, then?”
“Regretfully, I haven’t laid a finger on him. As I mentioned, he’s accompanying me on my journey to the village of Krauhausen to keep me safe.”
“Impossible,” Miska groaned as she put her fist to her mouth. “A Noble and a Hunter would never travel together . . . I simply can’t believe it!”
“Regarding what I just asked you—what do you say?” the baron inquired.
“She’ll only be in the way,” said D. “We’ll do what we can for her. But if you’re taking care of her and find you’re unable to keep yourself safe, I don’t want to hear any complaints.”
“Understood,” the baron said with a firm nod.
“You can see how it is,” he told Miska. “I’m sorry, but we’ll have no choice but to part company with you. You would do well to try to reach some remote locale before dawn. You’d best go now.”
“Do you mean to tell me you, a Noble, answer to a lowly dhampir?” Miska said in a resolute tone. Glaring at D with wildly blazing eyes all the while, she added, “In that case, allow me to ask something of you. I should like you to see me to a safe location.”
Though she made this request without any visible concern, it left the baron in a difficult position. As a Noble, he couldn’t very well leave a lady in distress. However, he had a greater purpose, and in order to achieve his ends, D would prove indispensable.
Miska gazed at the baron with a rather angry look.
“Very well, we shall bring you now to a safe area,” he said.
The vitality returned to Miska’s expression—it was like the stars lighting up the night sky. That’s what it was to be a Noble.
“However, this is only for tonight,” the baron added. “If I may speak candidly, the journey we’re on is extremely dangerous. Even with this Hunter along for protection, you would still probably be safer traveling alone. I certainly would never leave you to fend for yourself otherwise. I just want you to understand that.”
“Understood,” Miska said curtly.
The baron’s face clouded at the reaction, though it was exactly what he’d expected.
“I realize your position and your terrible plight,” the girl continued. “However, this is unforgivable. If you abandon a frail woman simply because it suits your own convenience, the rest of the Nobility shall surely point at you and jeer till the end of time.”
The baron fell silent. Though he’d expected a remark like this, he found her words had far more power over him than he ever would’ve dreamt possible. For a few seconds, his thoughts made him want to retch blood.
“We can accompany you for tonight alone. If the code of the Nobility decrees that I’m to be an object of scorn for the rest of my days, then I shall resign myself to that fate.”
Once more, Miska’s expression changed.
__
III
__
After that, the group raced along for about an hour until an especially deep and black forest came into view.
Reattaching the steeds to Miska’s carriage and putting her inside it, the baron then told her, “Once the dawn comes, we must take our leave.”
“Thank you ever so much for going so far out of your way on my account,” Miska replied as if she was reading a prepared statement, and then her carriage sank into the abyss of silence.
Wearing a bitter grin, the baron walked over to D, who stood by Balazs’s carriage.
“Be they Noble or human, someone must look out for women and children,” the baron remarked.
“That girl killed four young men,” said D.
“Surely that was their fault.”
“I’m not blaming her. Even a Noble has a right to defend herself. But if young Nobles had been doing the same thing, you’d certainly have been capable of turning a blind eye..”
“Are you certain we can’t bring her with us?”
“She could be an assassin,” the Hunter told him.
“Impossible!”
“There’s no way to be sure. In this world, anything can happen.”
“True enough.”
“Did you ask her why she was going to Krauhausen?”
“No,” the baron replied with a shake of his head. “Hmm, I suppose that is too much of a coincidence. I imagine going our separate ways truly is the best solution.”
But no sooner had he made peace with the idea than there was the creak of hinges. The door to Miska’s carriage opened, and a white glow stepped down. It was Miska. Without even glancing at the pair, she headed toward the highway with a gait that made it seem like she was swimming.
“What’s that all about?” the baron asked, squinting his eyes.
“Stay here,” D told him before heading off after the glowing Miska.
Though she wasn’t traveling all that quickly and he soon caught up, it almost looked as if a wind whipped up by D drove her forward as she glided along thirty feet ahead of him like some soap bubble he was chasing.
In a corner of the forest so overgrown even the moonlight never reached it, she vanished abruptly.
D halted. Though it was so pitch black here most people wouldn’t see their own hand in front of their face, his eyes saw the world as if it were in broad daylight.
“I see I was successful in my bid to lure you out, interloper,” Miska’s voice said from nowhere in particular. “I’m quite sure the only reason that gentleman has treated me so poorly is because you’ve been filling him with foolish notions. There’s no other reason why any upstanding Noble would leave a lady behind in her hour of need. You lowly half-blood impostor—here I’ll send you to your maker!”
“So, you’re a lady in distress?” D asked softly. “A woman who would hunt a Hunter—I’m sure you must be terribly frail.”
“Silence!”
And as if in response to her furious roar—a human figure suddenly glowed just ahead of D. It was Miska. Without even seeming to move her feet, she closed on D.
“Interesting,” someone said. It wasn’t D, but rather a hoarse voice from the vicinity of his left hip.
D’s left hand went into action.
Something knifed through the wind and pierced the trees. There was a woman’s gasp, and then it quickly became quiet again. And at the same time, the glowing Miska faded.
Bounding to that spot without making a sound, D took a look at the plain wooden stake stuck in the tree trunk before he spun around. Ahead of him, a black fog had billowed up silently. D’s kicking off the ground and the fog’s enveloping him were almost simultaneous. And it was a few seconds later that a cry of pain arose from the bushes about fifteen feet away.
“You did a wonderful job of seeing through my little deception, but you can’t stop the fog of death. I should’ve expected as much from Vampire Hunter ‘D.’ My carelessness has simply made more work for me,” said the figure in white who’d appeared from thin air—Miska.
Apparently she’d taken D seeing through her illusion into account all along.
“When my blood enters your body, it’ll become poison. Even a Noble can be immobilized for three days by it. But that’s nothing compared to what it’ll do to a miserable dhampir.”
As her feet pattered across the grass to bring her to where D had landed, her right hand clutched an imposing foot-long knife—although it was anyone’s guess where she’d kept it hidden up until now.
As expected, D fell flat on his back among the roots of the tree.
“I’m sure the baron will
be rather cross with me, but I’m prepared to accept that.”
The girl raised her knife, and then swung it down. But it was stopped cold in midair.
“It can’t be!”
As Miska’s eyes bulged in astonishment, the youth far more lovely than her slowly got back on his feet.
“So, are you the real thing?” D asked.
“Why didn’t my fog of blood harm you? Do you mean to tell me you’re indestructible?”
Of course, Miska had no way of knowing that a faint snicker issued from the part of his left hand that came into contact with her wrist, holding back the deadly blow.
“Kill me,” Miska groaned. Both her lips and her voice quaked. Her spell had been broken by a human/Noble half-breed. For a Noble like Miska, the humiliation of that was a fate worse than death.
The young man wasn’t the sort of person to pardon anyone who’d made an attempt on his life. Miska would meet her fate here.
D’s right hand flashed out. His longsword had shot up above his head.
The shadowy figures that’d just leapt down from the tree were bisected before they could cry out, leaving a total of six pieces.
“It’s not over yet,” Miska said as she watched the dark forms. Shockingly enough, it looked like she was enjoying herself.
D also realized it wasn’t over. Even before the half dozen pieces of the bisected figures sluggishly got up again, he knew there was something wrong from the unusual feel of his blade as it’d gone through them.
“It would appear you have someone else to take care of before you deal with me,” Miska said, her eyes turning to the half dozen pieces.
The figures didn’t move. Though they’d returned to life, they’d already tasted D’s blade once. But the right hand of each glistened with the cutting edge of a weapon.
Still facing them, D raised his left hand, and then something whistled through the air. At the same time, the shadowy figures pounced on him. D’s blade struck down only the first figure. The upper and lower halves of the remainder were flying through the air, but they then fell to the ground like puppets that’d had their strings cut.
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Nocturne Page 21