Vampire Hunter D Volume 22

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “I can’t believe it. I wonder which one’s blood I have to thank for this?” the Huntress muttered to herself, and just then, Vera screamed right behind her.

  “Coming from the castle—”

  “What?”

  Lilia turned her gaze back toward the castle, where she witnessed a puff of snow shooting up a few yards from them. She was at a loss for words. The swirling snow burst apart. It went without saying what emerged from the newest hole in the snow.

  “That bastard just doesn’t give up!”

  Lilia got to her feet, longsword in one hand.

  It came at her from the right. She blocked its blow. The impact left her shaky. The blade the creature drew made a horizontal swipe at her torso. That, too, she parried, but she hadn’t managed to plant her feet. She was sent flying a good fifteen feet, where she sank into the snow.

  “Vera!”

  The enemy was closing on the doctor. Lilia pulled a knife from a sheath she wore on her right hip and tossed it. It landed right beside the doctor. Whether Vera noticed it or not was the question.

  The enemy raised its longsword to strike. Unable to make a sound, the woman quaked, and her body blurred. It wasn’t due to the snow. Once again, the high-speed vibrations had come over Vera.

  Before her foe, who grunted in confusion and hesitated for a moment, the woman returned to her normal form. Her eyes gleamed. These weren’t the eyes of a woman who could do nothing but cower. Her left hand reached into the snow beside her. Slipping under the enemy’s blade with perfect timing when it was thrust at her with deadly intent, Vera stabbed Lilia’s knife into her foe’s abdomen.

  The enemy hunched forward. A blow with average human strength probably would’ve bounced off the alien’s armor. However, the high-speed vibrations had caused a change in the doctor, imbuing her slim arms with superhuman strength.

  As Vera stepped away from her toppled foe, Lilia raced over to her. The deep snow caught at her feet. When she finally reached the doctor and took a position in front of her like a shield, her own knife sank into the snow before her. The enemy had recovered. Kicking up snow, it charged at them.

  “Are you up for this?” Lilia asked.

  “Of course!” Vera replied.

  “Good!”

  The two of them dove in opposite directions. The longsword that swung down between them cut ten feet into the snow. The weapon whipped around to the right. Lilia was the target. The alien had decided it would be best to get rid of her first, and it wasn’t mistaken on that count.

  A black arrow flew out of nowhere. Unerringly true, it penetrated the alien’s chest from behind. The enemy was normally on guard against sneak attacks, but these two women were overly formidable opponents. It couldn’t afford to ignore them—and that had allowed an enemy behind it to make a move.

  Lilia and Vera were equally surprised. They could’ve understood if that had happened inside the castle, but now they were outside. Who could’ve . . . ? Then they realized something. Before they’d reached the castle, someone had slain the mountain folk with arrows. Hadn’t that been Lourié’s father?

  There were strident sounds. A second and third arrow had been batted down. At a distance that was impossible to judge due to the blizzard, Lilia was able to detect a hazy form.

  Letting out a single groan, the enormous figure charged toward it. The sight of it struggling to pull one leg after another from the thigh-deep snow as it closed on its opponent was comical in spite of the alien’s rage and murderous intent. When it had advanced thirty-five or forty feet, a figure popped up at the alien’s feet and drove the long spear in his right hand up through the enormous creature’s crotch. It was difficult to say whether the weapon penetrated the alien so deeply due to the strength of the spear or the force of its wielder. It had struck the enemy in a vital spot. The enormous figure trembled. Green blood poured down like a waterfall on the spear wielder.

  On seeing that, the doctor shouted, “Dust?”

  It was unclear to the women where he’d been or what he’d been doing. The bald bodyguard let go of what was apparently a homemade spear and tried to extricate himself from the snow. The snow collapsed. When the man stopped moving, this time the enemy thrust its blade deep into his chest. Dust arched backward. The sword blade rose for another thrust.

  A gunshot rang out. The right half of the alien’s face had been blown away.

  Vera threw herself at the creature’s legs. Reeling unsteadily, the enemy swung its blade around. Vera bent backward. The snow that fell on her back was stained red.

  The gigantic figure advanced, moving right toward the doctor’s cries.

  Above the alien’s head, a crimson flower sailed through the air. The instant her leap went into its descent, Lilia delivered the coup de grâce she was aiming for. Her blade came down with every ounce of her strength behind it—and her foe’s head split all the way down to its chest. She put her weight behind the sword. In a single motion she split the creature all the way to the crotch. When she pulled her green-gore-spattered form up from the snow, the body of the foe she’d split vertically slowly spread down the middle, then flopped down in the white snow. It didn’t move a muscle. The alien fiend had finally been destroyed.

  By the time Lilia had dashed over to them, both Dust and Vera were barely breathing. Lilia desperately fought back a sigh. To be killed so easily now—what had they been fighting for all this time, then?

  “Sorry you had to see me . . . not quite at my most civilized,” Vera suddenly whispered in a surprisingly steady tone.

  “Don’t say that—you only did what was right,” Lilia said kindly. She couldn’t even believe she was saying these words. Was it the influence of the young man’s blood? Or was it just—

  “How about . . . Dust?”

  In a pained voice the village guard replied, “I’m still kicking, Vera—and thanks. For covering for me like that, I mean.”

  “The least I could do . . . by way of apology. I . . . Three years ago . . . I let your daughter . . . die.”

  “Don’t talk!” Lilia told the woman as her eyes were drawn to the shadowy figure approaching from up ahead.

  “It’s okay . . . Let me say this . . . Three years ago . . . grade-school children from the village climbed the mountain . . . And I went along as the doctor . . .”

  And then, a mountain tiger had attacked them. Although the teacher and bodyguards had fought the beast, a seven-year-old girl had lost her life.

  “The girl . . . was killed right beside me . . . And I couldn’t budge an inch . . . I was so scared . . . She was Dust’s daughter!”

  Lilia looked down.

  “It’s okay now . . . You protected me . . .” Dust said gently. As if those words were all he had to offer the dead.

  Vera shook her head from side to side. Tears fell from her eyes.

  “Lilia . . . the coward you saw . . . that was the real me . . . But I . . . I really didn’t want to die . . . I still don’t . . .”

  “You were the brave little doctor, right up to the end,” Lilia said, taking Vera’s hand and giving it a shake. She could feel no throb of life in the cold hand.

  “I want to live . . .” Vera said flatly. “To live . . . longer . . . And I want to treat . . . children in the village when they’re sick . . . I’m the doctor . . .”

  Her voice swiftly grew thin. The strength drained from her body.

  “Vera . . .” Dust murmured. He gazed at Lilia. “I wanted to tell you this . . . but Vera and I . . . We were husband and wife . . . But when that happened to our daughter . . . we broke up . . .”

  Lilia didn’t say anything. The tragedy of three years earlier had dragged on, and here it would finally end. Dust shut his eyes. Taking his right hand, Lilia wrapped it around Vera’s hand that she’d been holding.

  “Goodbye,” she said. There was nothing else to say.

  But someone else had something to add. From beside Lilia, a voice said, “It’s still too early for that!”

&n
bsp; III

  The instant their blades locked together, the Hunter felt that Gilzen’s strength surpassed his own. But D had greater speed. Parrying the Hunter’s blow, Gilzen put his weight behind his blade and forced it back through D, but the man in black broke free and made a slash at the Nobleman with ungodly speed. Gilzen groaned. Beneath his rent cape his clothes too were split open, and fresh blood spilled from him.

  As if to crush that disgrace, Gilzen lashed out with his blade. Clangs rang out from steel on steel to the accompaniment of showers of sparks, and every time the figures in gold and black changed direction like the wind, their murderous intentions shifted as well.

  “Urrh!”

  With a cry that sounded like his abdomen was about to burst, Gilzen struck at the Hunter, and D parried. Gilzen smashed into the Hunter shoulder first. A normal human D could’ve easily deflected, but this was someone with the monstrous strength of a vampire—and D was knocked backward, impacting on a stone wall. As his body sank, he made a horizontal swipe of his sword. Having casually pressed forward, Gilzen found his right knee devastated, sending him reeling backward.

  “Gaah!”

  While he listened to a howl worthy of a beast, D also heard the grinding sound of sliding stonework behind him.

  Gilzen smirked at him.

  “Did you bump the door controls? Have a good look, D! See what the interior of my reactor is like.”

  Not turning, D reached back with his left arm and held out the palm of his hand. Behind him was a white-hot river of slime. From an unknown source to an equally unknown destination, the goop that could only be described as boiling sludge coursed from right to left.

  “This is no nuclear reactor!” Gilzen said. “Initially I used nuclear power from a light water reactor, but through torture I obtained the secrets of the aliens’ energy. D, this is the core of a galactic drive!”

  It was a writhing, foamy river of white-hot slime that crept by, bubbles bursting—but D didn’t know whether or not it flowed all the way to the far side of the Milky Way. However, when the young man pulled his left hand back after no more than the span of a breath, his expression contained only a beautifully frightening air of the supernatural and nothingness.

  “If you were to fall into it, you’d be banished to the ends of the galaxy. What say you, D? Will you not calm yourself and aid me in my aims?”

  D leapt into the air. As he avoided the blade being swung straight down at him, the Hunter also changed the angle of his own attack, and Gilzen rubbed his empty hand against his right cheek. Wiping up some of the blood that spilled from his deeply carved flesh, he put his fingers in his mouth and licked them.

  “Just what I would expect from the Sacred Ancestor’s sole success. When I first laid eyes on you, even I had to wonder if perhaps he had truly chosen the correct path.”

  The duke’s eyes had begun to give off a terrible light. Blood light.

  “Oh, my!” the hoarse voice said, sounding frightened. For a new air had begun to spill from Gilzen, one both unknown and unimaginable.

  “However,” Gilzen continued, “I regret that now. I’m forced to by the alien power that fills every inch of me. Look, D, at the wounds you dealt.”

  The Nobleman didn’t need to tell him. D had seen with his own eyes how the wounds to Gilzen’s abdomen and knee, as well as the one the Hunter had just left on his cheek, had all vanished without a trace. Even considering the Nobility’s startling regenerative powers, such a recovery was impossible.

  “Oh, how it fills me! The energy of another world, fostered on the far side of the universe. D, experience it and die!”

  The Nobleman spun himself around as he swung his sword hard at the Hunter, but this was no longer the same Gilzen. Still poised to parry, D was sent flying backward a great distance. The blade didn’t touch him, yet his black garb split open in a straight line. Not only that, but the Hunter’s blood went flying as well.

  As D landed, the hoarse voice said to him in a cramped tone, “Cut you in exactly the same place, didn’t he?”

  Before it had finished speaking, Gilzen charged forward with a deadly flurry of blows—D parried or dodged them, but was driven back to the brink of the boiling sludge.

  “Have at you!”

  Striking from a high position, the sword blade suddenly swished down low, shooting up from below in a scooping motion. Blood spouted from D’s right knee. It had been a blow neither his fighting instincts nor his reflexes had been able to stop. As the Hunter staggered, heat struck his back.

  “No place left to go!” Gilzen jeered. In his eyes, D was no longer an opponent. The Nobleman’s eyes had the look of a huntsman who stands before a wounded beast. Confidence, frenzy, and murderous intent were there—and he raised his sword beside his head like a bat. And then he switched the blade to his left hand with unbelievable speed, to be driven straight down—right at Gilzen’s feet.

  The shadow cried out. It was a cry of agony to make anybody’s hair stand on end.

  “G-Gilzen . . .”

  “Imagine finding you still lurking about, Mother,” Gilzen said unpleasantly, never taking his eyes off D. His face had begun to depart from human lines, but expressions only a human face could wear surfaced on it, alternating between looks of love and hate. “Your son has become a new sort of Noble, fundamentally changing the very nature of the Nobility. All the old things are fated to be disposed of. That includes you, dear Mother.”

  The shadow’s voice could no longer be heard. Gilzen stepped off to the side. A small shadow remained at his feet. It quivered two or three times, then moved no more.

  “I’ve done away with my mother,” Gilzen said proudly. “The one who held me back, the traitor who schemed to have me banished to the far reaches of the Frontier! D, don’t even think of asking how I could do such a thing to my own mother.”

  Once more, the Noble raised his sword by the side of his head. D held his blade out straight in front of him, aligned with Gilzen’s eye.

  “I’ll have your head, D. Know that the blood that drips from it will create a new chapter in the history of the Nobility.”

  The figure that charged forward was an enormous mass of energy. D didn’t flee, but rather ran forward too. As they passed each other, the cutting sounds overlapped. When D turned to look back, his left arm was missing from the elbow down. However, Gilzen had slumped over badly.

  “D . . .” he groaned, green blood flowing from his mouth. Then his head fell off—right into the stream of white sludge. When the splashes from the torso that followed it had subsided, D finally let the strength drain from his body and simply gazed at the sludge.

  “He said that was the energy of the galactic drive,” the hoarse voice murmured. “Will Gilzen’s damned head and body be carried to the ends of the universe?”

  D turned around. “I must thank you,” he said in a low voice.

  There was no one before him.

  “Why didn’t you hit me with a psychic attack?”

  A voice issuing from nothing replied, “My aim from the beginning was the duke.” The source of the voice had to be the man known as Budges.

  The instant the two combatants had made their final exchange, Gilzen’s movements had frozen in an unnatural manner, and in that heartbeat D’s blade had flashed out.

  “You’ve seen how the duke acted,” Budges continued. “That’s why I did it.”

  “And it never occurred to you to take me out while you were at it?”

  “You left me no opening. Besides—”

  “Yes?”

  “I once had an audience with the Sacred Ancestor. He was so much like—”

  The voice stopped there. D’s eyes had given off blood light.

  “Oh, those eyes . . . Just a glare from them makes even bodiless me feel like I’m being physically torn apart. Come to think of it . . . Could you really be . . . Could your highness be . . .”

  Returning his blade to its sheath, D bent down and retrieved his left arm from where it
lay at his feet. He lined up the wounds.

  “What’s this?” the hoarse voice cried out, and a tiny face surfaced in the palm of the Hunter’s left hand. It furrowed what might’ve been its brow, or perhaps just more wrinkles.

  The arm wouldn’t fuse at the elbow.

  “What the hell!”

  “It’s the way Gilzen cut me,” D replied stoically. Anyone who didn’t know the young man’s true nature would’ve thought this exchange some sort of joke or parlor trick. “It’ll reattach sooner or later. It’s just that it may take a day, or a week, or a month.”

  “That ain’t good. In the meantime, if you were to get—” The left hand suddenly held its tongue. It’d recalled the presence of the formless being. “At any rate,” it continued, “Gilzen’s been slain. Meaning your work should be finished. Let’s get going.”

  “I have something to do first,” D said, putting his left arm into an inner pocket of his long coat. “I heard that Jeanne had the child. Where are they?”

  “Come with me,” the formless voice told him.

  wJust as Gilzen had said, Lourié was in one of the castle’s rooms with Jeanne. It was the infirmary. Jeanne continued to give makeshift medical care to the large number of wounded soldiers, while Lourié learned by watching her, and also pitched in.

  “This child is more suited to doctoring than I!” Jeanne said proudly, rubbing the top of the boy’s head. “So much so that I’d love to keep him here in the castle to focus on treating the injured. How would you like that?”

  When she smiled at him, Lourié backed away. Her fangs frightened him.

  “I’m joking. Go with him,” she said, pushing the boy in D’s direction. Jeanne then asked, “What do you intend to do about the castle?”

  “I’ve done what I was hired to do,” D said softly. “You can live here or move somewhere else, whichever suits you. But if I’m asked to slay the lot of you, I will be back.”