The leaves trembled, shaking off the moonlight. Seconds earlier, D apparently hadn’t missed the groan up in the tree. The rough wooden needle had found its mark.
“Done playing with your dolls?” D asked as he looked up.
Miska knit her brow. She didn’t understand what D meant.
From the treetop, a mournful voice flowed out, saying, “It figures he’d only hire the best as an escort—you’re the first person to ever find me while I was hidden.”
“So, you’re a puppet master?” said D.
“Aye. Folks call me ‘Mario the Puppeteer.’ Keep in mind; the ones I just threw at you were merely a test. I wonder whether you’ll be able to spot the puppets I use next time,” the voice said, laughing as if its pain were already forgotten.
Once more an arrow of light flew from D’s right hand, and the stand of trees swayed in response.
“We’ll meet again, dashing Hunter! Perhaps next time it’ll be in the depths of hell,” the same voice called from the grove to D’s rear, then the treetops rustled noisily once before it became quiet again.
D used his hand to bat away what was falling in front of him.
Miska also seemed to notice it, and she said, “Whatever could these strings be for?”
She then looked quickly at the figures lying at her feet and nodded knowingly to herself.
“Say,” she called out to D, but then she noticed something that completely altered her expression. D still had a firm grip on her right wrist. One had to wonder how he’d managed to work his sword or hurl the wooden needles under the circumstances.
Their eyes met. His were still ice, unchanged from when he’d told her he would dispose of her.
“Do you still intend to do something . . . to me?” Miska said, backing away a step.
Terror shot through her from the very top of her head down to the tips of her toes. The Hunter had just released her, and she knew what that had to mean.
Glittering, D’s blade went into motion.
And then—
“Wait!”
The voice was that of Baron Balazs. Crossing the grass, he said, “I came out here thinking something like this might’ve happened. Stop, D! I won’t allow you to lay a hand on this girl.”
“She tried to kill me.”
D’s reply left the baron at a loss for words. Noticing the black shapes lying at his feet, he’d thought that was what had attacked them.
Quickly turning to Miska, the baron said, “That was a foolish thing to do—you must never do so again.”
Miska lowered her eyes at his harsh tone.
D stepped forward.
Somewhat flustered, the baron told him, “Stop it! Dawn will be here soon. Then we part company. Just let her be.”
“Out of my way,” D replied.
“I’m your employer.”
“And what have you employed me for? If you don’t have me around, you’ll be in danger. She was well aware of that.”
“This time, I must ask you to restrain yourself,” the baron said coolly. “Besides, as my guard, you committed a major blunder.”
“What blunder?”
“I was attacked just now. See for yourself.”
The left side of his cape was thrown back, revealing a jagged wound to his shoulder. Due to the incredible recuperative powers of the Nobility, the actual wound had half closed already, but the clothing over it was damp and red.
“They struck at the same time. They must’ve waited for you to leave my side. And as my guard, your failure to realize that was an obvious mistake.”
Although the Nobleman may have been exaggerating a bit, D’s sword returned to its sheath.
“There won’t be a second time,” the Hunter stated, but it was unclear if his remark was directed at Miska or the baron. But the young Noblewoman’s shoulders still dropped in relief.
“We’re going back now,” D told him.
The baron was captivated by a strange thought, and he followed the Hunter naturally enough. Although he’d agreed to comply with D’s instructions for the duration of the journey, a Noble ordinarily would probably never accept such an arrangement, particularly when it involved an employee whose way of speaking and general bearing were light years away from where they should be. Yet he wasn’t at all angry. In fact, he got the impression he could trust the Hunter, and that this was the safest thing to do.
Of course, dhampirs had some Noble blood in them. The empathy that sprang from that connection was actually the biggest reason the Nobility detested dhampirs. A human being with the same regal blood they possessed? Due to these feelings, the highest honor a dhampir could receive was to be treated as a Noble, but for a Noble, the very lowest form of employment was exterminating dhampirs.
At a certain Noble’s mansion in the southern Frontier district, a “head market” was held once a year in imitation of the open-air markets in human cities. Of all the countless severed heads on exhibit there from humans and beasts, the cheapest of all were those of dhampirs—which were sold by the mound. Of course, you could say such excessive contempt only served to betray the Nobility’s mixed feelings about dhampirs.
And the baron probably wasn’t exempt from those emotions. Though he was indispensable where this trip was concerned, taking orders from D the dhampir had to be more than a little humbling to his psyche. Miska’s actions were most likely prompted by this unease as well. And yet, the Noble couldn’t help but wonder if the young man wasn’t something far greater than even he could imagine. The baron had to consciously push back this thought when it suddenly popped into his mind.
“What was your attacker like?” D asked as they were walking.
“Someone made up of flowers.”
“Flowers?”
Not long after D had gone off in pursuit of Miska, a golden pollen-like dust had blown in on the wind. Immediately holding his breath, the baron had seen a figure in all the colors of the rainbow standing just beyond the eddying swirls of yellow. The cape that shrouded the tall figure had spread wide. The reason he seemed to have every imaginable hue was because the body beneath that cape was covered with lovely flower petals. The dust—or pollen—flew from one of those varieties.
The baron had taken cover behind his carriage. A split second later, more madness assailed him from above. He’d narrowly escaped, though his shoulder was rent wide in the process. The only thing that’d allowed him to get off so lightly was the superhuman reflexes he possessed as a member of the Nobility. He’d quickly looked up to the sky, but even with the lyncean eyes of a Noble, he hadn’t been able to discern any more than a shadowy winged figure flying off to the south at incredible speed, and the multicolored assassin had also vanished.
There had been two foes.
“Do you know them?” asked the baron.
“The flower character? Yes.”
“Oh, really?”
“He’s known as ‘Crimson Stitchwort,’ and he’s a famous Vampire Hunter in the eastern sectors. Mario, who I ran into, is one of the top-three out west. It would seem you’ve got every half-decent Hunter on the Frontier out to get you.”
“Do you suppose I have someone spooked?”
“Only you’d know that.”
The baron smiled thinly, but didn’t say another word all the way back to camp.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel, Demon City Shinjuku, in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has written numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, working in the tradition of occidental horror writers like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there are seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live-action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.
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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well know
n as a manga and anime artist, and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the U.S. as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman, and for Marvel Comics on Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer with best-selling author Greg Rucka.
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