Vampire Hunter D Volume 22

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “But what?”

  “The child didn’t remember anything about the fight, you see. He knew they were teasing him about his father, but after that his memory was a complete blank. The other three weren’t hurt too badly, so we didn’t ask too many questions.”

  “You sure he wasn’t so excited his mind just went blank? I’ve seen a fair bit of that myself.”

  “No—but that’s just my intuition . . .”

  “In that case, what is he, some kind of genius brawler who loses his memory? I don’t get it,” Crey said, exhaling smoke flamboyantly.

  “Well, whatever he is—and I didn’t come right out and ask him about this—but he might have come looking for his father to clear him of the accusation of looting ruins. I don’t know how he’d do that; frankly, I think it’d be impossible.”

  “Amen to that. Thanks.”

  Crey got up. Perhaps due to the wind, he had to struggle to get the door open, shoving his way through the snow as he stepped outside.

  About five minutes later, there was a knock at the door. After the sealing tape had been removed, the person who stepped in accompanied by the wind and snow wasn’t Dust.

  “What is it, Crey?” the doctor asked in a suspicious tone.

  With a rather odd expression on his face, the outlaw replied, “They’re gone!”

  “What?”

  “The tent’s there. Inside, it’s like they just stepped out. They left cups of cocoa and coffee, both still warm. Both of ’em were there until a second ago. It’s just . . .”

  Though Crey’s features stiffened, no terror surfaced in them. Even if he was holding it back, that in itself was laudable. Leave it to the professional killer.

  “Were they taken?”

  “Most likely. I don’t know about the kid, but I hardly think your bodyguard would’ve gone without a fight. Think maybe a roaming dimensional vortex got ’em? Or did some foe come along who was so tough they couldn’t do a thing . . .”

  “From the castle?” Vera didn’t conceal the fright in her voice. “In that case . . . it’s Duke Gilzen . . .”

  “It’s a little late to be getting scared. When the mountain changed into that castle, we decided not to take off, right?”

  “I know.” Putting her hand on her chest, Vera let out a deep breath. “I’m okay. But what’ll we do about those two?”

  “At any rate, I’ll search our immediate surroundings, and if I don’t find ’em I’ll give up. You’re staying right here. You’ve got a weapon, don’t you?”

  Vera touched her hand to her right coat pocket, where she’d tucked a rapid-fire rivet gun. She had a rifle, too. Neither calmed her in the least.

  “See ya, then.”

  Crey disappeared into the darkness.

  After redoing the tape on the door, Vera went to the center of the tent and sat down. Anxiety gnawed at her heart.

  As she was rubbing her right hand over her face, there was a knock at the door.

  “It’s me.”

  She recognized the voice as Crey’s.

  “Open up. If you’ve got a flashlight, I need to borrow it.”

  “Just a minute.”

  Running over, Vera peeled off the tape. In that instant, a horrifying thought sparked in her brain. The voice was Crey’s. But was the person using it really him or not?

  A snow-covered man stepped inside. Brushing the flakes off his hood, Crey looked up.

  “Doc—”

  His breath caught in his throat. There was no one there. The lady who’d just undone the tape was nowhere to be seen.

  “Not the doc too . . . She was just here . . .”

  Rooted in place, the outlaw stood mired in a bottomless solitude—but it was immediately extinguished. Someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

  II

  D halted.

  “This is the place,” the hoarse voice told him. Its tone was low, but it carried a steely confidence.

  Just ten feet away was an iron plate set in a stone wall. It was thirty feet high and ten feet wide. Myriad rivets studded its surface, and on the walls to either side of it torches burned in iron sconces.

  “This clown’s old fashioned to the very last,” the hoarse voice said.

  This was the central control room.

  D stepped forward, putting his left hand against the iron door. It creaked open. In light of what the room contained, this was a bit underwhelming.

  “Great—this is a trap.”

  That went without saying. However, this young man wasn’t the sort to fall back just because of that. Waiting for the trap to be sprung, D stepped inside.

  “So, this is why nothing’s interfered with us up till now. Even though we made it out of that elevator in one piece, it’ll pay to be careful.”

  It seemed the Hunter had easily escaped from the iron box that dropped two thousand stories.

  D pressed forward without a word.

  It was a white room. D was in the very center of a plain littered with white metal. Ahead of him, at an indeterminate distance, lay a hemispherical dome.

  “That’s the anti-energy reactor. For all the Nobility’s science, up till now they’ve never managed to make a perfectly stable one. One little slip-up and they go berserk. There’s a theory that the reason the Sacred Ancestor had Gilzen put under wraps was to keep his reactor under control. What the—”

  Cold air crushed in around D. Even the white light was frozen, the crystallizing air forming dancing flakes of ice in D’s periphery.

  “Oh, no . . . It’s four hundred and fifty-eight degrees . . . below zero. So sleepy . . .” His left hand let out a yawn. “Be . . . careful . . . This guy . . . knows . . . about us.”

  “Enjoy your rest,” D said softly, and he started forward.

  A voice rained down from the heavens. “Oh, even without your guardian angel, you can walk, stripling?”

  Though D focused his gaze, he could detect nothing save ice crystals in the air of this world at almost absolute zero.

  “You can’t see me because I have no form,” the voice said. “I myself find it strange, but you too are a creature that doesn’t seem to be restricted by your human form. Come here and you will see.”

  “Will you interfere?” D inquired softly.

  “I suppose I will, at that. That’s the reason we, the Sacred Protector Knights, returned to life. My name is Budges.”

  “D.”

  A sense of bewilderment radiated from the presence. “D? Did you say D? I’ve heard that name somewhere before . . . Oh, but it’s been ten millennia since I last lived. I’m sure I’ll remember it sooner or later. After I’ve disposed of you, that is!”

  D sailed into space. Making one whistling slash through the air, he executed a splendid landing.

  “Oh, is that where I am?” the voice from the ceiling remarked with admiration. “You see, not having any feeling in my limbs, I’m not entirely sure of my own location. You probably determined it by my voice, but this is a treat. However, no matter how competent you might be, you can’t cut something that has no form.” The voice laughed thinly. “That being the case, you’d think it impossible for me to attack, but it would seem that even without form I still have a mind. That will serve as my hands and feet. Like so!”

  A sharp pain ripped into D’s right shoulder. With fresh blood spurting from it, the Hunter changed to a backhanded grip on his sword.

  “Oh!”

  Not even giving Budges time to voice his surprise, D hurled his sword. The distance to the reactor was unknown, but after a hundred yards the weapon broke apart.

  “What?” Budges cried, as if his eyes were bugging from his head.

  The sword his will had fractured still continued to zip straight toward the reactor. But it was just the blade, which had broken free of the hilt. Perhaps it was too late for Budges to do anything with his willpower, because the blade flew another two hundred yards and sank into the wall of the reactor. Pale light raced through the air.

  “Damn
it! The wall’s been breached?” Budges’s voice cried out weakly. “My willpower didn’t work on your blade. Who the hell are you?”

  There was no reply.

  D turned around. A number of figures were speeding toward him from the same direction he’d come. They were accompanied by something that sounded exactly like the buzzing of an insect. Ion engines. D was surrounded by a number of vehicles that resembled wheel-less motorcycles. The orange-armored figures straddling them were almost lying flat. The red muzzles protruding from the fronts of the vehicles were undoubtedly laser cannons. Even D, with his left hand asleep and his sword gone, was in no position to do anything.

  “Is that you, Jeanne?” the voice of Budges inquired.

  “Don’t use my name.”

  The source of this new voice came over like a celebrated actor stepping on stage. Splendid in form, like a crystal given human shape, the lithe figure wore similar armor to the others, yet was draped in a purple cape. The sword on this one’s hip was more delicate than those of the other riders. The stride could be termed naught but elegant. However, the aura that gusted from her was so powerful, the men lined up there naturally stepped to one side and let her pass. “Her”? Yes, it was a woman.

  With a beauty that would make males both human and Noble alike weak in the knees, she looked D straight in the face. And said nothing. Blinking her eyes, the lovely woman—Jeanne—turned and looked away. As she looked up toward the ceiling, the madly dancing electromagnetic waves truly bathed her face and body in pale light.

  “Don’t ever say my name again. I won’t have that from a moron like you, who couldn’t even protect the reactor.” Such anger tinged her lovely voice.

  Budges was silent.

  The young woman called Jeanne then finally turned to D and said, “You did well to make it this far. I have orders from Duke Gilzen that you’re to be treated courteously. I, Jeanne, shall be your guide.”

  Respectfully dropping to one knee, she brought her right hand against the amply curving breast of her chest plate and bowed. Her breath was white, so at least she had warm blood coursing through her.

  The laser cannons on the magnetic force bikes surrounding D all lost the glow in their muzzles in unison. Suddenly, flames burst from one of the vehicles. It’d taken a direct hit from the electromagnetic waves. The rider leapt off it.

  “You dolt—we have a guest here!”

  But even faster than Jeanne’s reproach was the hand that shot out to her right. It was unclear where her whip had been secreted, but it burned through the crystallized air like a tentacle for a single crack that rang out with earsplitting volume, and the man’s head sailed into the air. Its origin still a mystery, the whip returned to the beauty’s hand—and vanished.

  With all the grace of a stage performer, Jeanne elegantly folded the five fingers she had spread like the ribs of a glamorous fan, then got to her feet again.

  “Hey, Jeanne,” the voice of the formless knight called down from the ceiling in an agitated manner. “Has Gilzen returned yet?”

  “I hope that was a jest. As the reactor has been breached, he has no choice but to return.”

  Was that why the reactor was the first thing D had targeted? To make Gilzen step into the ring with him?

  Having coolly answered that query, Jeanne grinned at D. Never letting the smile leave her face, she said, “Your punishment for damaging the reactor will be meted out eventually. Do keep that in mind.” It was a tone that would freeze any listener to the bottom of their heart. Though her words changed, the tone didn’t vary in the slightest as she continued, “Very well, let us be off, Sir D. Duke Gilzen awaits us.”

  Her purple cape whipped around. The snowflakes danced.

  Quietly D began following the female knight who’d walked off down the corridor.

  –

  Around that same time, the mayor of Mungs made a sour face as he greeted some very dangerous-looking guests. These men and a trio of military aircraft had landed on the outskirts of town, having been dispatched by the Northern Frontier Airborne Division of the Capital’s standing army stationed about a hundred and twenty miles to the north.

  “An experimental reconnaissance balloon launched six months ago recorded the changes to Mount Shilla three hours ago,” their leader told them. “We understand that to be Duke Gilzen’s castle. We’ve come to destroy it.”

  “That’s absurd!” the mayor protested vehemently. He had been pressed into service by Director Marquis, who was also in attendance.

  He explained that an accomplished Hunter and several villagers were presently climbing to ascertain the condition of the crew and cargo of an aircraft that’d crash-landed near the castle. Until they made it back alive, an attack would be out of the question.

  The military men neither laughed nor scowled. Expression still devoid of emotion like a machine, one of them said, in a mechanical tone lacking blood or tears, “Duke Gilzen lives again. Do you actually think the search party will come back in one piece?”

  The mayor and the archaeologist fell silent.

  “The two of you need not take any kind of responsibility. We haven’t come to request your permission. We came to inform you. The attack begins with the coming of dawn tomorrow. This is a holy act of destruction to save the entire world, Frontier and Capital alike.”

  “But, at the risk of repeating what you yourself said, that’s Gilzen’s castle. With just three planes . . .”

  “Numbers don’t make the battle. It’s the quality of the ordnance that counts. Our forces will be carrying new weapons that can wipe away a whole mountain chain with a single blast. My apologies, Mr. Mayor, but before the night is through, I need your villagers to evacuate a thirty-mile radius from the village.”

  The mouths of the two old men dropped open at this new twist of fate, and five whole minutes were wasted before summoning the servants who would need to contact the other village officials.

  III

  D passed before a huge door.

  Perhaps the castle had been completed, or was immeasurably close to being so, because the sounds of construction no longer reached him, and the towering marble pillars and the precious-metal reliefs that adorned them now had a composed look, for all their ostentation. The floor absorbed the sound of Jeanne’s footsteps, allowing even the stillness of antiquity to be felt. To get this far, they’d ridden on moving sidewalks and taken supersonic elevators, but they hadn’t met a single person. From time to time a figure might be glimpsed at the end of a corridor or lurking behind a row of columns, but when the Hunter’s gaze turned toward it, no one would be there.

  The magnificent door was etched with weird dragons and strange flowers. Rather than giving a menacing impression, they all looked terribly forlorn.

  “This is as far as I go.” Jeanne halted, stepping off to one side.

  Giving her neither thanks nor a bow, D headed for the door.

  “How can you be allowed to enter?” Jeanne asked him. “Not even we of the Sacred Protector Knights can hope to pass beyond this door. That you, from whom our master should be protected, should be allowed to pass—”

  “Ask your master.” That was all he said. This young man cared not a whit for Jeanne’s beauty or the desolation that seemed to cling to her query. That was how he’d always lived. And it was how he would probably die.

  Several yards ahead of him, the door began to open slowly. Its heavy, dull sound gave the impression that this was accomplished not by nuclear power but by a titanic lever.

  It was a vast room. You might even call it a great hall. It was so large that if a human were ordered to make use of it, they wouldn’t be able to begin to imagine what to do. People could be gathered for a game—but they could have ten thousand people on each team and would need equipment the size of three-storied palaces. The ends of the room couldn’t actually be seen. Only a dim light fell from above. Looking up to the ceiling found it concealed in darkness.

  What greeted D’s eyes was a colossal pyram
id that loomed just fifty yards ahead. Blinding. A golden glitter was trying to burn itself into his retinas. The pyramid was made of gold. And in fact, it wasn’t a pyramid. There was a wide staircase up its front slope. Thirty feet up, at the summit, was a throne, also of gold, and on it sat a man in a dazzling golden cape. His face had stolid proportions that didn’t suggest Nobility. But perhaps that was on account of his stubbly beard. If he had shaved, every inch of him would’ve had an air of pure refinement.

  “D, is it?” A solemn voice echoed across the sprawling plain—and yet there was an inescapable impression of softness and weariness to it.

  “Duke Gilzen?”

  “Correct. So good of you to come.”

  “Let me ask you something first: what became of the crew that was on the aircraft with you?”

  The man on the throne was silent for a while, and then he said, “That’s the reason you’ve come here? I’ll be happy to tell you. They’re right there.”

  Suddenly there were evil presences to either side of D. Though it was unclear where they’d been, the two men stood there now. Both had their hands poised in front of their chests, as if to grab someone, and stark incisors peeked from spitefully red lips.

  “I’m Del Rey, the pilot.”

  “Geeson, an archaeologist.”

  “I’m D,” the owner of the handsome visage replied. “I came to find you two. But I can’t bring you back now, can I?”

  “Why not?” asked the master on his throne.

  D didn’t reply. The answer was far too obvious.

  The man on the throne gave him a sarcastic grin. “I see you don’t fathom the meaning of my question.”

  There was a loud clap. He’d brought his thin, pale hands together.

  From D’s right side the pilot attacked, wind churning in his wake. His evil visage, the speed with which he leapt, and the terrible claws that aimed for D’s face were all those of a vampire. And realizing that, who would’ve believed what happened next? That one who’d received the blood of the Nobility could be slain with a single blow?

  Dropping straight down from midair, he landed at D’s feet. A tapered point protruded from his back in the vicinity of his heart. D hadn’t used his longsword on him. It’d been a long wooden needle.