Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Parts One and Two

by Dark Road (Parts 1

  “There’s one thing I must verify,” Ann said fearlessly. “You won’t do anything to him . . . Am I correct?”

  The light of the lantern shifted, revealing D’s face. Any way you looked at it, it was a horrifying sight, but the handsome features the light fell upon had a beauty so intense it left the men dazed. The lantern was lowered. The man who carried it had a blank look on his face.

  Taking a hard kick in the ass, the man with the lantern came back to his senses. The light was raised again.

  “Snap out of it!” the center figure snarled at him in a harsh tone. He was the same one who’d said not to call anyone and who’d mentioned the election.

  Turning to Ann, he said, “Sad to say it, but this trouble started with you two—because we let a Noble and Noble half-breed into the village. Those freaking transport guys will be looking at some fines, I’m sure, but we’ll finish with you two right here. After that, it’ll just be a matter of convincing everyone I made the right decision.”

  His ghastly determination had given rise to this bold tone.

  “If it were a matter of me alone, I would’ve been in a quandary, but now you say you mean to harm him as well,” Lady Ann said in a tone that was actually quite bracing, delivering the words like a soliloquy. But as she stood next to where D’s head poked from the ground—with her sweet little face glowing pale in the circle of light and her eyes alone raised to stare at the men—something terrible lurked in her gaze. The second she’d heard they’d take the life of the man she loved, the dear little girl had been transformed into a demoness.

  However, the center man shouted, “Fire!”

  Was there anything that could be done to save Ann in the heartbeat that followed?

  Perhaps there was. As proof, all three of the men clutched at their throats, clawed at the sky, then toppled every which way. By the time they hit the ground, black blood gushed from their noses and mouths and they’d breathed their last. They’d gone through their death throes while they fell.

  Perhaps the way they died tipped her off, or maybe it was the superkeen senses unique to the Nobility, but Ann put one hand over her mouth, then crouched down to press the other one over D’s.

  From the depths of the darkness a voice carried on the night wind could be heard to say, “You can relax for the time being. For those of Noble blood, it’s no more than a sweet perfume.”

  “Dr. Gretchen!”

  Mayor Camus walked out of the stand of trees that towered behind where the three men had fallen. Despite the fact that the terrain was a twisted mess of snaking tree roots, her gait was as smooth as if she were on level ground.

  “I sowed poison in the wind. Now, leave D there and go. If you don’t, then Noble or not, I’ll send a deadly poison at you that will leave you in eternal pain.”

  Just for a moment, Ann hesitated. Dr. Gretchen’s experiments had been so outrageous not even her fellow Nobles could hide their disgust. It came as no surprise the girl’s tiny heart nearly stopped. However, a second later Ann cursed herself for her indecision.

  Who cares if she performs vivisection on me or dissolves my body? It doesn’t matter what happens to me. So long as I can save my precious D, I shall gladly go into the sleep of death.

  Ann spat another flower up into her hand, this one a pale purple bud. In the same manner as before, she breathed on it and sent it flying at Dr. Gretchen. Again the blossom withered and fell from the doctor’s brow.

  “Stop this foolishness. I don’t know how it is you still have enough strength left for that, but let my poisoned wind now ravage both of you.”

  But before the doctor/mayor had finished her declaration, the ground shook. The doctor was thrown well off balance, and her sinister wind blew off into the ether.

  Stumbling and falling on her back when her foot caught on a root, Ann saw an enormous silhouette rising from the earth between Dr. Gretchen and herself and cried, “Father!”

  __

  III

  __

  “Duke of Xenon—does your madness extend this far?” Dr. Gretchen shouted as she barely managed to regain her balance and secure her footing, but a second later she peered at the figure dominating the darkness and cried out in astonishment, “Grand Duke Mehmet!”

  “Indeed, it is I, Mehmet,” the huge figure said, bowing.

  Though the movement was fluid, the doctor was familiar with this Noble’s name and his style of combat, and she’d also determined the true nature of the gigantic silhouette.

  “Mehmet’s machine man,” she muttered.

  Standing more than twelve feet tall, the enormous humanoid machine was Grand Duke Mehmet’s weapon. This robot—or android, to be technical—was a device born of the Nobility’s science, but capable of far more intricate movements than other machines, which made it as graceful as any human. Just look at it. Black hair swaying in the night breeze, a dauntless mask of oriental styling resting on a bronzed face, threads of gold and silver, blue, red, and purple—his dazzling cape and clothes were stitched with the most brilliant hues. It didn’t differ in the slightest from the real Grand Duke Mehmet—aside from the fact that it was gigantic, its face and build were a perfect duplicate of his own. In comparison, the combat exoskeleton worn by Ann’s father—the Duke of Xenon—was a rough suit of armor utterly devoid of artistic sense.

  And there was another difference between the two.

  “Where are you, Grand Duke Mehmet?” the doctor said to him.

  “In the basement of General Gaskell’s castle. I fear I’ve imbibed a bit too much wine,” the giant doll of Mehmet replied.

  Although the Duke of Xenon’s armor required him to be inside the exoskeleton controlling it, Grand Duke Mehmet’s machine man was, as the name implied, a marionette that could be freely operated from a great distance. It went without saying which of the two offered the greater safety and convenience for its operator.

  “How enviable, Grand Duke Mehmet. In that case, why don’t you relax and dream of your long-lost kingdom?”

  “Actually, I can’t do that,” the great image of the grand duke said, placing a hand over his mouth and letting a gentle burp escape.

  Gentle? It sounded like a rumbling deep in the earth!

  He said, “The great general told you what would happen if you threatened the duke’s precious daughter. Anyone can see that the general is going about this the wrong way. On hearing that you’d been sent out, the duke informed the general that if so much as a scratch came to Ann, he and all his clan would be turned against Gaskell, at which point our great general hastened to send me. My, but he has the strangest weaknesses.”

  Letting out what sounded like a sigh, he continued, “From his basement I sent out my reconnaissance bugs, which finally found you. I made it here in the nick of time, thank goodness. Now I’d like you to cease and desist.”

  “That precocious little princess is crazy with love,” the doctor said, and she too heaved a sigh, only hers was a hundred times more refined than that of the grand duke’s stand-in. “Without eliminating her, slaying D will be impossible.”

  “You will have to leave that to me.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Hey, now!” the false grand duke said somewhat sadly. “I thought that might be the case, so I brought the written orders from the general with me. Satisfied?”

  “They’re fake.”

  “Doctor . . .”

  “I healed the great general’s wound so I might gain permission to be out here now. I won’t allow anyone to interfere with me. D is my prey! Step aside.”

  “Then there’s no avoiding this,” the gigantic Mehmet said, his upper body bending back far.

  He took a deep breath in preparation for the coming battle.

  Still looking up at the night sky, he said, “This me is a machine. Your poison won’t work on me, Dr. Gretchen.”

  “I wonder about that,” the doctor replied, her words suddenly halting with a choked groan. The fake grand duke’s hand had se
ized her neck with lightning speed. Gasping unintelligibly, her agonized face turned purple before the Nobleman’s night-piercing gaze.

  “Now, let us return to the castle, Doctor,” the giant declared gently. “Oh—I almost forgot the most important part.”

  His body turned to the right and he extended his other hand to Ann, who was still on her rear on the ground.

  “Back you go to your father—”

  Sheathed by an enormous armored glove, the hand convulsed terribly.

  “Wh-why, my body’s going numb . . . It can’t be . . .”

  “It worked on you, didn’t it, Grand Duke Mehmet?”

  Swiftly slipping free from the grasp of the trembling fingers, Dr. Gretchen took cover behind a thick stand of trees, and then began to explain what she’d done.

  “Which one of you is in pain, milord? This odious impostor, or the real you far off in the castle?”

  “W-why me? You—when did you poison me, Doctor?”

  “Back at the castle.”

  Ignoring the agonized giant, the doctor focused her attention on what lay beyond its massive form.

  “I don’t believe in any of that nonsense about working with colleagues toward a common goal. It was my misfortune to be born into a world where enemies surround me. That’s why I dispersed poison in the castle, too. Since this isn’t the great general’s domain, this probably won’t reach his ears,” she laughed.

  “How could you . . . do such a thing? Do you intend . . . to do away with the lot of us?” he cried, spitting the words like a gout of blood, and then black blood actually did fall to the ground like rain.

  What an intricate device this was! The instant Grand Duke Mehmet vomited blood off in the distant castle, the machine man spat up blood here.

  The ideal machine, it was truly one with its operator. What allowed it to mimic every little movement of the operator were devices developed by scientists of the Nobility called “synchronizing circuits”—also known as “doppelgänger circuits.” It was said a machine man equipped with these circuits would shed sorrowful tears when its operator wallowed in an abyss of grief, and if that person were wounded, the machine would bleed from the same spot. And that was indeed the case.

  “This poison only goes into effect when the person exposed to it harbors murderous intent against me. But fear not. As a Noble, you should recover from it in less than an hour. In the meantime, I shall be busy,” she continued, circling around the writhing machine man.

  “They’re gone!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with astonishment.

  Surely the little girl possessed abilities far exceeding anything any of them could’ve imagined. In the scant time the doctor and the machine man had been fighting, Ann had unearthed D—who’d been buried up to the neck—and carried him as she made her escape.

  “Damn that little bitch!”

  As the doctor stood there, the sound of her teeth grinding ringing out, voices cried out behind her.

  “The earthquake was this way.”

  “Oh, there’s something over here!”

  “Bring the stakes!”

  The voices of the villagers sailed through the air, about 70 percent tension and the remaining 30 percent full of fight.

  Clucking her tongue once, the doctor turned in their direction with the face of the mayor and shouted in the voice of the same, “Over here! There’s a Noble about! Somebody help me!”

  And to the machine man, who was panting breathlessly, she said, “People are coming. Go wreak some havoc before you leave.”

  What followed was a tremendous nightmare for the village of Krakow. The colossal figure of a suspected Noble appeared from the forest and trampled every villager that crossed his path or struck them dead before vanishing into the darkness. In the time it took him to leave the village, the death toll reached twenty, and eight houses were utterly destroyed. Witnesses testified that its face was just like a human’s and that it walked almost like it was drunk, but these accounts were attributed to the trauma and excitement of the disaster.

  It was nearly dawn before a brief period of peace was finally reclaimed thanks to the mayor’s instructions. With no place else to direct their rage, the villagers naturally turned to the transport party. Though Juke had been involved in the search, he was tied up, while a mob burst into the assembly hall and hauled Sergei, Gordo, and even Rosaria off to the local jail. It should be noted that this treatment wasn’t the norm—the code of the Frontier said that anyone connected to the Nobility was to immediately be expelled. This was due to concerns that the Nobility would take revenge if any harm were to come to their cohorts. But it was Mayor Camus who’d instructed them to do so.

  She’d told the frightened and perplexed villagers, “This isn’t merely about what happened in our town; it’s a perfect opportunity to show the world that we’re all sick of being threatened by the Nobility.”

  A number of the villagers voiced their objections.

  In reply, she said, “If they go to another village and do something similar, we’re going to regret tossing them out for all our days.”

  That shut them up.

  “In light of the village’s losses, they’re all to be beheaded. The sentence is to be carried out publicly at noon tomorrow,” she said, for some reason giving them another day to live.

  __

  †

  __

  Ann was happy—she’d managed to get out of the village with D and his left hand thanks to the mayhem the fake Grand Duke Mehmet had caused. After running on and on through the dark of night, it was nearly dawn when she hid in some ancient ruins several miles from the village. Though the foglike shield that General Gaskell had given her to allow her to move about in daylight covered her from head to toe, daybreak couldn’t help but pain this child of fiendish blood. Ann writhed in agony in the watery light that speared in through holes in the roof and walls, panting as she tore up the brick floor, dug into the black earth that was exposed, then buried D in it. Around the time she finished doing this, the sunshine grew stronger and the light that’d come to the world while she was occupied seared her diminutive form mercilessly.

  “That shield will only last three days,” the general had instructed her sternly. Still, when the girl lay down in the shadows formed by the stone columns and walls, her heart was filled with both relief at having protected the one she loved and joyous anticipation of the night to come. There lay the world of the Nobility, where human hands could never reach them. Even if her shield failed, she didn’t think it would be terribly difficult to hide themselves from humans and the sun by day. She would just keep on going—through a world of moonlight and star shine and night winds, just D and her.

  Without having a chance to investigate the furthest reaches of the ruins, Ann fell fast asleep. When she awoke, her body told her it was still the middle of the day. She recognized the young lady who now stood before her. The people in the wagon had called the one who’d been asleep the whole time Rosaria.

  “What do you—” Ann began, her tone like a cry of agony as she tried to go into a combat stance but failed.

  The young lady looked at her sadly, and then turned around.

  “Where are you going?”

  Trying to stand but unable to do so, Ann used her hands and feet to crawl across the floor. When she rounded a column, D came into view. Rosaria knelt by his side, and she seemed to be telling him something. Only bits and pieces reached the girl’s ears, things like “tomorrow morning” and “execution.”

  She felt a terrible foreboding. That young lady was trying to bring D back to his old world, wasn’t she?

  “He can’t hear you,” Ann shouted, clinging to the column to pull herself up. “Really, he can’t—so go back.”

  By the time she’d spat one of her deadly blooms into the palm of her hand, Rosaria was fading as if she were dissolving into the abundant glow. A ray of the refreshing light burned Ann’s body, but the agonized girl crept toward D.

  He was there.
>
  “Ah . . .”

  A glittering something spilled from the girl’s eyes. Ann had forgotten that they were called tears. But her heart still clung to the melancholy feelings that had given rise to them.

  “Don’t go . . . Please don’t go anywhere. Stay with me . . . always.”

  THE EVE OF THE EXECUTION

  CHAPTER 7

  I

  __

  It was in the early afternoon of that day that two visitors called on Mayor Camus’s home. The mayor lived alone, and, unusually, heavy curtains had been drawn across the windows, leaving the interior of the abode in darkness. The reason she gave for this was that, exhausted from the previous night’s search and the shock of running into the giant, she wanted to try to get some good rest. Still, when the pair gave their names, she appeared from the depths of the darkness, passing through the living room with a clearly troubled expression. A strong incense burned, as if to mask some odor.

  Not even bothering to offer them tea and seemingly unembarrassed to be there in her nightgown, she showed them her pearly teeth as she said, “Welcome, Duke of Xenon. So nice of you to come, Grand Duke Mehmet.”

  Her eyes were as round and innocent as a child’s, her pale skin alluringly free of wrinkles and invested with the most amazing vitality. Most notable were her crimson lips, which looked as if they’d been daubed with fresh blood—the bewitchingly beautiful face was not that of the aged mayor so admired by the inhabitants of the village.

  “I believe you know why we’re here, don’t you?” a man in dusty red traveling clothes asked, leaning across the table as he did so. Though slightly balding, he had bushy eyebrows and was covered from the nose to the chin by a heavy beard that resembled a bird’s nest. He bore a passing resemblance to the little girl who’d run off with D the night before. Today, he wasn’t wearing his combat exoskeleton. It was Roland, the Duke of Xenon.