“I hope you’re right,” Josette said, her reply not entirely free of fear. “The vampires in this village are a little different.”
Bligh smiled and said, “Well, we’ll manage somehow. One way or another, I’m gonna stay alive and make it outta the village. And you and the flesh peddler are coming with me.”
“You’re pretty confident of that.”
“Yeah. Just leave it to me.”
“Can’t believe it,” Josette murmured weakly.
“What do you mean? I ain’t lying!”
“No, it’s nothing,” Josette said elusively, her previous cryptic remark spurred by how different from her husband she found Bligh to be.
Through all their days of trying battle, not once had Josette’s husband tried to protect her. He only charged in to help her in accordance with pre-made plans. Even then, when things got out of control, Brennan left it to Josette to handle them. He’d left her behind. The only thing that’d saved Josette from fearsome servants of the Nobility or death at the hands of wanted men was her own luck and skill. Traveling with a husband who didn’t care whether his wife lived or died, Josette had felt her heart become a vast and barren wasteland. But now that was at an end. It’d been stopped by words like just leave it to me and coming with me.
“Hey,” Bligh said, wearing an expression of amazement, “are you crying?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Josette replied, batting her eyes and shaking her head. “At any rate, let’s hang tough until daybreak.”
“Yeah. Ain’t no telling where those bastards will try hitting us.”
That unpredictable pair was up in a watchtower only a hundred yards from the farmhouse. They were more than sixty feet off the ground. Wind and rain lashed at them head-on. They looked at a window with light spilling from it.
“Since their outer defenses are strong, we’ll just have to topple them from within,” Emily said, gnashing her trenchant fangs.
Beth remained silent, gazing at her compatriot.
“But we’re a new type, right? Last time didn’t work out, but now we can do this!”
Emily pursed her lips. What escaped them wasn’t a whistle. It was a thin tube that was red, as if choked with blood. The tip of it tapered like a needle, and taking it in hand, Emily rested her chin on the railing surrounding the watchtower. Her breath hissed out. And with it, her tongue stretched. Shaken all the while by the wind and rain that hammered them, at first glance it looked weak, but with the strength of a steel cable it kept stretching farther and farther.
It was about a hundred yards to the farmhouse. Easily stretching that far, the tongue started to descend, bound for a chimney.
“You know their location?” Beth asked.
Soaking wet and with eyes closed, Emily didn’t reply, but after about five minutes she finally said, “Found them.”
Her eyes opened. They gave off a glow the same color as blood.
There was only a single chimney, but it was connected to every fireplace in the house to rid them of their smoke. Probing it, she’d found something.
“Two of them were in there, but they left,” said Emily. For she had an eye at the tip of her tongue. It must’ve been some sort of sensory organ.
“Here we come, Jan!” Beth exclaimed, an evil smile spreading across her face. A flash of lightning bleached it white. “We’ll give you the life of a Noble once again.”
The thin red tube crept from the ancient stonework of the fireplace. The way it wriggled over to Jan’s corpse without hesitation called to mind a snake. Stopping by the right side of his head, it reared up like a striking serpent, then plunged right into Jan’s heart. The red, blood-like liquid coursed through the tube.
As Josette had stated, vampires who’d been run through the heart didn’t come back to life again. But look. Was a healthy hue not slowly creeping into his pale flesh? His heart wasn’t beating. Yet the crimson fluid flowed through Jan’s veins, and his fingers began to close tightly. Even a vampire would’ve found this an unearthly world of strutting monsters.
The duchess was pleased with her success. Two of her obstacles had vanished into watery graves in the “artificial sea,” which meant there was no longer anyone to impede her ambitions.
An hour had passed—and she’d already begun creating the new life form. Based on all the data accumulated up until now, the operation proceeded so smoothly it surprised even her, with only one procedure remaining before her aims had been met.
In the control sphere for this experimental facility that was the pinnacle of “Noble science,” the duchess stared down with irony at the rusty lever by her hand. The final pull that would determine the results of so many experiments would come from this old-fashioned iron lever. And somewhere in her heart, the Noblewoman was able to take a cold view of that anachronism.
In the center of the laboratory there stretched a vast pool that looked large enough to house more than a hundred sharks. Blue-green water spread farther than the eye could see, foaming, and bubbles roiled to the surface. The control sphere suddenly floated into the air. Soundlessly gliding through space thanks to its gravity field propulsion system, it halted in midair at the point indicated by the numerical data—the center of the enormous pool. The trappings of a laboratory were nowhere to be seen.
By means unknown, the pitch-black sky was split by the starkness of lightning. The duchess ran her eyes over the figures. Each and every value was perfectly correct. She felt satisfaction and confidence—and a touch of apprehension.
Two of the figures were off by one quadrillionth. The computer said that was due to the genetic fusion. However, it also stated that such a tiny discrepancy wouldn’t be a problem.
The figures for the DNA fusion process are being distorted. Was the mysterious equation wrong? No, that can’t be.
The duchess’s right hand reached for the final lever.
“Go!”
Just as she was about to throw the lever, there was a change to the diagram above her head.
Intruder alert! it declared.
A blue ball of light shot up from the water, swallowing the control sphere. The control sphere creaked under the fierce molecular impact.
“Who dares?” the duchess groaned, but even then she knew the answer.
From the bottom of the sphere, a silvery mass about six and a half feet long dropped into the water. Once underwater, it took on the most effective shape for propulsion, going on the attack in a tenth of a second. The bluish-green expanse gave rise to a dome of light about thirty feet in diameter. Its color deepened by the second, and it swelled larger and larger.
The control sphere had risen to an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, and within it the duchess sensed that her counterattack had ended fruitlessly. There was no numerical data. Her own Noble instincts told her so. The light that’d colored the control sphere’s field of view for an instant was already gone.
“You realize all this kicking and screaming is no use. You are—”
Having the control sphere drop down to just shy of the bubbling surface of the water, the duchess switched the numerical display over to directional readings. There was no need to do so.
A supple figure was coming disinterestedly across the water’s surface straight toward the sphere. Boots ankle-deep in the water, he showed no hesitation in his strides. Lightning made his face blaze from the darkness.
The duchess’s features warped with rapture.
“—D.”
II
Precisely. It was D. The young man had supposedly fallen from the crumbling passageway and disappeared into the choppy sea below, but now he moved eerily across the sea’s surface, halting about ten yards from Heldarling.
Her breathing now ragged for some reason, the duchess said, “D! What are you doing here?”
“I fell into the sea,” D replied. “And there was someone else with me. He had a compact bathysphere with him.”
“Greylancer—and was he responsible for that missile a moment
ago as well? That miserable traitor.”
“Rather than curse him, you should be cursing yourself for dropping me into a sea that connected back here.”
The duchess looked as if a wave had washed across her face. “Oh, I see. It would seem I’ve underestimated your abilities. Wait. I shall summon an appropriate opponent for you now.”
At that instant, a crimson beam shot from the blue-green water. Penetrating the control sphere’s force field with ease, it unleashed its full power. The white-hot flow of energy spread across the water’s surface, engulfing D in the blink of an eye.
In no time, the flashes of lightning brought the lonely surface of the water out in relief, like a challenge thrown at eternity. There was no one there. But look. In one spot, the surface of the water had begun to bubble. A wind arose. Waves formed, their crests torn by the wind. Wasn’t that the way this planet had been in the distant past? Lightning struck the surface of the water, which even now hadn’t ceased bubbling, ions were released, and steam billowed up to hide even the crests of the waves.
Watch. From beneath the madly beating waves, a new form was rising eerily. The light died. It was as if it were afraid to illuminate that form. A thing stood on the water’s surface.
Leaving Bligh and Arbuckle on watch in the living room, Josette did a loop through the rest of the farmhouse once more. Making sure all the doors and windows were locked, she was just about to head back to the living room when there was a faint sound in the next room. Apparently a piece of furniture had moved. However, there was nothing in there but Jan’s corpse. Sliding the minigun’s firing mechanism into her left hand, Josette used her right to draw the short spear she had tucked through the back of her belt.
She turned the doorknob with the same hand that held the firing button. Pushing the door open as she turned the knob, she flashed in the light that was mounted on her minigun. A wind struck her cheek.
No one was there. And Jan’s corpse? It was gone. The circle of light illuminated naught save the lonely wooden floor.
Josette trained the light on the window. It was open. Wind and rain were blustering in.
Though she’d had no intention of entering the room, the thought that she had to shut that window got her moving first. She practically ran over to the window. Once she’d locked it, relief bubbled up in her. For a split second she let the tension escape her, and then her body was squeezed from behind with vise-like strength. Something warm latched on to the nape of her neck.
Josette shifted the barrel of the minigun ever so slightly, then hit the firing button. The barrel had been pointed backward to deal with the attack from behind, and now it showered her foe with long-awaited gunfire. The vice-like grip loosened, and then was torn free.
Making a broad turn purely on instinct, Josette let her short spear fly. Having taken the barrage, Jan’s body had nearly been cut in two above the waist. The spear went right through his heart. The force of the impact nailed his upper body to the wall, and his lower half tore free and fell to the floor. When she saw it stagger back to its feet, Josette let out a cry that was almost a shriek and started firing the minigun indiscriminately. Even after her target was reduced to a bloody mist, even after the minigun had run out of ammo, the woman still held down the firing button.
It was Bligh that finally stopped her, saying, “Simmer down. What happened?”
“Jan came back to life!”
“You’ve gotta be joking.”
Looking over at the wall, Bligh started toward where Jan’s upper body hung.
“One shot, right through the ticker,” the man noted. “Shouldn’t be a problem now.”
“If it’s happened twice, it can happen a third time. Cut his head off.”
“Okay. You oughta head back to the living room.”
“No, I have to see it for myself.”
When Bligh came back with a machete in his hand, Josette said to him, “I think you might’ve noticed this already.”
With that, she took away the hand she’d had pressed to her neck. A pair of teeth marks had been left over the carotid artery.
Bligh’s eyes went wide. Instinctively, he backed away, but that reaction was unavoidable.
“Jan bit you, but he’s been destroyed. His teeth marks should’ve disappeared! You sure it wasn’t Beth or Emily?”
“It was Jan,” Josette replied wearily. “There really is something different about the Nobility around here—they’re a new type. So their victims must be, too.”
“What should we do?”
“Kill me—at least, that’s what I should tell you, but I’ll try everything else first. We’ve got a fire going, don’t we?”
“Yeah.”
The two of them went back to the living room.
There was no sign of Arbuckle. The window was open.
“Where the hell’s he gone?” Bligh exclaimed, looking around wildly.
“Got attacked, most likely. Forget about him. It might just be they’re all here in the house.”
“Oh, that’d be fun.”
After a world-beating grin, Bligh gave Josette a worried look.
She said to him, “Vampires who come back from the dead after being stabbed through the heart, Nobility whose victims still turn into vampires even after the Noble responsible has been destroyed—there’s bound to be real trouble if we don’t take care of Beth and Emily. If they get out of the village and start feeding on humans, there’ll be no stopping them at that point. We have to slay them here. Here I was, ready to finish myself off, but I guess I’ll have to put that off until later.”
“Wh-what the hell am I supposed to do about you?” Bligh stammered.
“For the time being, patch me up. After that, if you see me acting even the slightest bit strange, go right ahead and run me through the heart and chop off my head.”
Bligh could only stare at Josette dismally after the outlandish thing she’d just said. However, a mysterious glint had filled his eyes. It was an emotion he’d long forgotten—respect.
Josette turned herself around and went over to the heater. Taking the tongs from beside the fireplace and pulling a piece of coal from the box beside it, she placed the black nugget in the fire. The coal immediately started to glow.
“Hey!” Bligh shouted at her. Just then, the warrior woman pressed the blazing lump against her neck.
Bligh raced over, but before he could pull the tongs and coal away, Josette dropped to one knee on the floor. She must’ve had a frightening amount of mental and physical fortitude to withstand the pain so well.
Though Bligh crinkled his brow at the stench of burning flesh, the emotion that’d taken root in his chest only grew stronger, like a rock upon which waves would break futilely. Reaching out his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, he put his arm around Josette’s shoulders and slowly helped her to her feet, then led her over to the sofa.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. But, you know, I’ve heard about this treatment of yours, too. Unless you sprinkle the magic water on the wound you seared, all you wind up with is a bad burn!”
“Still, it’ll buy me about two hours,” Josette retorted. “After that—well, you know what I need you to do.”
“Oh, you delegating responsibility now? Yeah, I’m okay with that.”
Josette placed her hand on top of the one the man had resting on her shoulder.
From the front hall, a voice that sounded like it’d been starved of oxygen for ten millennia said, “No, leave everything to me.”
The eyes of the pair came to focus on a spot where Arbuckle stood.
“Keep back, you son of a bitch!” Bligh snarled, short spear at the ready.
There was no way a man who’d disappeared with a pair of vampiresses was still normal.
“I wish I could tell you I’m fine, but they got me,” Arbuckle said, showing them the back of his right hand.
Josette took one look at it, then shut her eyes.
“Well, damna
tion,” Bligh growled. “Now I’ve gotta put you down, too? What about the two girls?”
“Before I knew it, there were two pairs of bright red eyes outside the window. By the time I realized it was their eyes, I was already outside.”
Fortunately for Arbuckle, the torrential downpour had left Beth and Emily’s hypnotic powers weakened, and it was probably on account of that that the old procurer was able to bring along the doll D had given them. Returning to his senses the instant the rain struck him, Arbuckle had thrown D’s doll at the pair just as they were about to pounce on him. The doll had swung its sword and nearly taken off Emily’s head, but Beth had dodged the blade and sunk her fangs into Arbuckle’s right hand.
“So, then you killed ’em?” asked Bligh.
Arbuckle nodded, adding, “Not me, but D’s proxy. We’ve got nothing more to fear. Well, nothing but me and Josette, that is.”
“Damn it all!” Bligh exclaimed, backing a safe distance away from the two of them and keeping his short spear at the ready.
“Relax. We’re still okay. I have magic water with me. If I were to press a burning coal to my neck it’d probably kill me, but Josette will survive. Sprinkle this on her.” Arbuckle pulled a slim whiskey flask like travelers favored from the inner pocket of his jacket and tossed it to Bligh.
Eyeing it skeptically, Bligh asked Josette, “What should I do?”
“Try putting some on me.”
“But on top of that burn—you sure it’s okay?”
In the past, tens of thousands of different spells or drugs had been devised to prevent someone from turning into a Noble, but all had proved fruitless. The only exception was a method that’d been discovered only two short years earlier, which consisted of burning the wound and then purifying it with magic water. But the combination of the two was so painful, it sometimes drove people to madness. Most women and children would die from the shock, or else lose their minds. The magic water couldn’t be mass produced, and its existence wasn’t common knowledge yet.
Vampire Hunter D Volume 27 Page 15