And the left hand said, “I’m really sorry about this.”
Returning to the farmhouse, D told the group, “You heard what we said. Get going.”
Bligh was the first to speak, asking in a probing tone, “Can you believe anything a Noble says?”
“It’s better than remaining here, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“I wonder if the others will still be human when they get back,” said Josette. Her lovely features were hardened.
If those who came back bore the marks of the Nobility’s fangs on the napes of their necks, she was well aware they might try and get the rest of them to lower their guard before baring their teeth. And while D might have a way to see through their game, Josette and the others wouldn’t.
“That’s not a certainty,” D said, reaching his right hand into his coat and pulling out a glass vial about the size of a cigarette. It was filled with a yellow powder. “It’s garlic extract,” he told them. “Sprinkle some on the others before you head out with them.”
“Not sure quite why we should, but okay,” the warrior woman replied.
As Josette was eyeing the glass vial intently, Arbuckle said, “You ignored me and went ahead with your negotiations, even though I’m your employer!”
“Our contract is on hold for the moment. But I’ll take responsibility for you in the meantime.”
“Oh,” Arbuckle replied, staring at the high-handed Hunter more with curiosity than anger. “But we can’t take the word of any Noble. They view humans as no more than livestock. And who strikes a bargain with livestock? However, I do have faith in my contract with you. I hear the man called D would sooner die than go back on his word. So, how do you intend to take responsibility for us while we’re out of your sight?”
“Take this,” D said, producing a foot-tall doll from inside his coat.
The doll was made of wood and of strangely beautiful proportions, yet no eyes, nose, or mouth had been carved in its face. D raised his other arm, hiding the doll and his own face behind his coat. Sensing something weird—or supernatural, to be more precise—the three of them stiffened, but just then he lowered his coat.
On catching the doll the Hunter tossed him, Arbuckle looked down at its neck and let out a low groan. Seeing the same thing just shortly thereafter, Josette and Bligh both took sharp breaths. On the doll’s chest were a pair of small but distinct holes, black as if they were packed with darkness. Teeth marks. And nothing in the world could’ve been more beautiful.
“What’s this supposed to—” Arbuckle finally began when he could once again squeeze out some words.
“They’re coming,” D said.
The other three went slowly to the windows and gazed out at the blue world.
Three figures were approaching through the rain. Jan, Beth, and Emily. Even in this faint light interspersed with rain, the joy at being released that filled their faces was clearly visible. The trio raced toward them, sending water splashing up everywhere.
“We’ve been saved,” Jan said, panting for breath between the words.
“Do we have you to thank?” Emily asked, still clinging to Jan’s arm.
“I was out of my mind with worry, not knowing when they were bound to drink our blood,” Beth said, one hand pressed to her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
As they started for the back room, Josette stopped them, saying, “Just a minute.”
The trio wore dubious expressions as light yellow powder sailed through the air. Josette had scattered the contents of the glass vial.
“What’s all this?” Beth said with a grimace, brushing it off. The other two followed suit. They didn’t know it was garlic, or what effect it was supposed to have. For all the Nobility’s weaknesses had been erased from human memory.
“I know you want to check us, but we’re not in with the Nobility. So, what do you think?” Emily asked, pursing her cute lips.
“Yes, it would seem you’re not,” Josette said with a nod.
“D!” the duchess said, her voice coming from outside. “My subordinates will now lead the group out of the village. Once you’ve seen that completed for yourself, come up to the castle.”
“Understood.”
After the Hunter had given his reply, Josette went off to get her husband, while four more men on horseback stopped in front of the farmhouse. They must’ve been servants of the Nobility. They were leading a string of five horses. There was one less than the number in the party.
The reason for that soon became clear. Josette came back alone.
“He’s vanished. Is this your doing?” the warrior woman asked, throwing a look of comingled anger and resignation at the duchess, who ignored it.
“Well, I shall be waiting at the castle.”
Having said that, the duchess and the left hand vanished. As D had indicated, they were an illusion.
The group headed for the entrance to the village. No one said a word about Josette’s husband.
Like a white thread the highway twisted and turned out beyond the gigantic trees and the pounding rain.
“This is as far as you go,” one of the men told D.
D watched in silence as the group left with many a backward glance, and then he and two of the men wheeled their horses around. Any feelings or opinions he might’ve held about the fate of those people were trapped behind the bluish darkness, and the handsome, rain-lashed features remained merely cold and beautiful.
II
After crossing through the village and riding straight up the hill, D turned and looked.
The hoofbeats of the riders accompanying him had suddenly ceased. Both the two men and their horses had vanished. Perhaps it was because their duty was done.
Still astride his cyborg horse, D continued on to the hall. One of the doors was open. He passed through it without halting.
There was darkness. The door closed behind him with an old-fashioned sound, and then there was a pair of Nobles standing before D.
“We’ve been waiting for you, D,” the duchess said with a smile. Her canine teeth gleamed. In her right hand she held his severed left hand.
“What about my hand?” D asked.
The duchess raised her right hand.
“I have no use for an illusion.”
Donning a wry grin, the Noblewoman waved her right hand. The left hand dissolved into thin air. It had indeed been an illusion.
“There’s no fooling the man known as D,” Greylancer remarked, a cool smile rising on his lips. He continued, “Your left hand escaped. Even now, it’s probably somewhere in this subterranean chamber. I know not what kind of trick it’s using, but none of our sensors can locate it, which is an impressive feat in itself.”
His praise was completely heartfelt. Apparently that was the sort of Nobleman he was.
“Then there’s nothing for us to discuss.”
Perhaps the duchess felt something in D’s words, for her expression stiffened.
“Well, just wait a moment,” Greylancer said, stepping between them. “I’ve discussed this with the duchess, and we aren’t necessarily at odds with you. This facility is exploring new possibilities for the Nobility, in keeping with the wishes of the Sacred Ancestor. You dhampirs are one example of this. However, though your kind descends from both humans and Nobility, rather than combining the strengths of both, they all seem to rather conspicuously assemble all their shortcomings.”
Greylancer’s statement was accurate. With both Noble and human parents, dhampirs inherited roughly half of the Nobility’s monstrous strength that could bend steel beams, their ability to leap ten feet high and sail another thirty feet, their ability to be equally at home in temperatures that were sub-zero or boiling hot, and the healing abilities that could recover from any wound in less than ten minutes’ time. They also maintained the cruelty that could be considered the very core of a Noble’s nature, as well as their habit of drinking blood. While they were more suited than anyone on Earth
to work as Vampire Hunters, they also caused incidents as horrifying as the Nobility themselves. It was on account of this that even now the humans who feared the Nobility would bow and scrape and pay dhampirs handsomely to work for them, yet never let their employees escape their looks of hatred and suspicion.
Greylancer’s eyes remained boring through D as he continued, “You are such an exception to that it’s almost the stuff of legend. Your skill at combat surpasses that of Nobles, and while you’ve inherited the cruelty and callousness we ourselves are powerless to change, you couple that with human kindness—such is your reputation. Therefore, we wish to examine you. Just a drop of your blood or a single cell, and we might accomplish that for which we’ve labored hundreds of thousands of moonlit nights, and then I might return to my rest. Even if my sleep is stained with blood. What say you? The duchess may be a bit overbearing, but I like a man who fights. Allow me to retract what I said earlier. I have no wish to fight now. And if you will but cooperate with us, I swear by the name of Greylancer that both you and your left hand will be allowed to leave here alive. How is that?”
“You leveled a spear at me,” D said, his reply causing the giant to tremble.
“That was stupid of me,” Greylancer groaned. “At the time, I didn’t realize how fearsome you were. However, now we have your decision. D, we shall perform our examination on your corpse!”
The giant made a swing of the long spear in his right hand. A wild wind snarled, racing to all the far corners of this cyberspace, a place that didn’t seem to suit it at all.
“What’s this?” the left hand murmured. It had sensed something abnormal in the flow of the air around it. “This is no ordinary lust for blood—could it be he is here?”
Atop one of the countless rails hanging from the stone ceiling, the left hand held tight with all five of its fingers, then continued another thirty feet straight ahead. It clawed at the rail to propel itself along.
This was a sinister room, and it seemed like another world from where Greylancer and the duchess were. The endless stone pillars and canopy ceiling were cruelly cracked, with fragments of both littering the floor. Apparently flames were burning toward the back, as their hues, sounds, and heat traveled around the room.
“So, analog accommodations right next door to modern ones? Hell, they don’t make it easy to come up with a plan of attack.”
After going from rail to rail and turning more corners down more corridors than it could count, the left hand cried out in surprise, “What in the—?!”
Suddenly, a vast factory spread before it. And it hardly suited the scientific achievements of the Nobility, but rather was in keeping with the unrivaled love the vampires had for the past—machinery of riveted iron, rows of chains hanging from the ceiling, antiquated analog gauges, flames, and steam shooting up from nowhere in particular, and a heavy, uncomfortably warm atmosphere. Disregarding the coldness of the inorganic machinery, it was the spreading waves of unearthly miasma that truly represented the factory.
“Yeah, that’s the Nobility for you. Even their factories reek of sorcery.”
The left hand lowered its wrist and raised the rest of itself. The eyes in the face that formed in it surveyed its surroundings with cautious curiosity, then narrowed unexpectedly.
“Oh, what have we here?” it said, the words slipping from it.
Leaping from one rail to the next with terrifying speed, in no time at all it came to a spot right above some tables secured in one corner of the vast factory. There were two of them. On one, a man in a white top and bottom was tied down with rubber straps, while about ten feet away on the right-hand side was what was clearly an alien creature, and it too was immobilized. The bodies of both had countless tubes running into them, which in turn pumped them full of liquids in a rainbow of hues.
The left hand knew that the one in white was U-taker, and the weird-looking one was a prototype.
“Hmm, looks like these clowns were sent to slay D and met with some stiff resistance. But to lose to him and still survive—that’s a miracle. This is a half-assed way of doing things, though. Guess I’ve got to get to the bottom of things after all.”
The hoarse voice finished saying that as the left hand landed on U-taker’s head.
“Whoopsy-daisy!”
Nearly slipping off, it grabbed onto U-taker’s hair to pull itself up, and let out a deep, exhausted breath.
“Hmm, maybe I should try pulling something else,” the hoarse voice said with a malicious laugh.
The fact that creatures as advanced as the Nobility hadn’t set up a surveillance system in what was, in a manner of speaking, a treatment center for their most powerful warriors went beyond mere carelessness; it was insanity. But then, perhaps that, too, was rooted in their love of nostalgia.
Springing up easily, the left hand landed on some tubes that connected tanks hanging from the ceiling to U-taker. To all appearances, they were for no more than pumping drugs for medical treatment. The hand grabbed the tubes and used all its weight to twist, then pull, finally managing to tear five of them free at the same time.
Medical solutions sprayed through the air as tubes whipped around like snakes. It was unclear if this was really intended as a treatment, since when two of the liquids came into contact on the floor, they instantly burst into flames.
“Oh, that’s nice. Burn, baby, burn. That way, we can split their attention. Between him and here.”
The flames came into contact with another solution, sending up a fresh fireball.
The left hand started yanking tubes out of the patient on the neighboring table—the OSB prototype. The floor became a sea of flames.
Having clambered up a control panel to the top of a rail, the left hand saw the flames envelop the two figures on the tables.
“Burn away to ashes, you goddamned factory!”
But there was an objection to the hoarse cries.
A pair of fireballs had risen from the burning tables. A heartbeat later, U-taker and the prototype appeared, scattering flames everywhere.
The two of them faced each other. The prototype dropped to its knees.
“A gravity field attack?!” the left hand groaned.
If that were the case, it would crush any object, no matter how great its density. However, the prototype got to its feet. The left hand noticed that it now had a bizarre covering on it.
“Are those hands?!”
Innumerable hands were interlocked around the prototype, forming a kind of armor to shield it from the gravity field attack.
“Just what in hell’s name were they working on here? Is this supposed to be one of their ‘new possibilities’? The idiots! It’s not beautiful at all!”
Two of the prototype’s hands rose, their palms pointing toward U-taker. What kind of power did they direct toward him? Up on top of a rail, the left hand was assailed by an intense vertigo and started to slip, only narrowly catching hold of the edge of the rail and preventing itself from falling. Its eyesight returned just as U-taker was staggering backward into the flames. It had to wonder if he was out of his mind, but he seemed to pay the flames no heed at all. And the prototype made no attempt to go after him, walking off in the opposite direction instead. Flames eddied there, too.
“They’re completely pissed off. Heh heh heh! Can’t wait to see the next time they run into each other!”
As the left hand chortled derisively, the hands of the flames grabbed at it from below.
The murderous intent that’d linked the pair of would-be combatants evaporated like mist when the warning rang.
“Save that for later,” the duchess said, turning her eyes to midair, and a room engulfed in flames appeared at the same height, immediately joined by the passages running from the room on all sides. A schematic of the entire floor had been rendered.
“This is Repair Sector Two. If the room’s continued existence poses a danger, activate the self-destruct mechanism. However, trouble in the very place those two are kept—that
can only be your left hand’s doing,” the beautiful woman said bitterly.
“When the rest of the body is like this, even a part of it is bound to do great things. I suppose you could say it’s in its blood, couldn’t you?” Greylancer remarked with a broad grin. Apparently he was quite different at heart from other Nobles.
Running her eyes over the rapidly changing schematics, the duchess let a single phrase escape: “Oh no.”
“What is it?”
“U-taker and the prototype have escaped. And the modifications to their psyches weren’t yet completed. As it stands, they’ll be like demons unleashed.”
“That should be interesting.” That remark came not from D, but rather from Greylancer. “To be honest, I’ve always wanted to fight one of those two. Which one would you have me deal with? I can leave negotiations with D to you, Duchess.”
“Wait,” D called out to the Nobleman, taking a step forward. “I’ll go with you.”
“Now, just a moment—” the duchess began.
But Greylancer turned and told her, “No, it’ll be fine. I’ll see to it he comes back safe and sound.”
With that assurance from Greylancer, the two of them headed toward the elevator. Indeed, that was where the elevator should’ve been, but what awaited them was a station for an elliptical vehicle called a mover. Once they sat down facing each other, the point of light at the front of the vehicle surged away at incredible speed.
“Why did you accompany me?” Greylancer inquired. Though he was the very picture of dignity, he seemed to be enjoying this on some level.
“This interests me, too,” said D.
Greylancer’s eyes became invested with a gleam.
“Interested in what new forms of life are being created, eh? Is it because that’s what you are, too?”
Silence from the Hunter.
“I fear I’ve said something boorish. But there would be no new forms of life if we didn’t make them. And new things offer expanded possibilities. It’s toward that end we produce them.”
“How many attempts have been made?”
Vampire Hunter D Volume 27 Page 11