And the other one was also a middle-aged traveler dressed in a threadbare coat and trousers—because the huge face of a machine man that was his perfect twin had been seen the previous night, he wore a patch over his right eye, had made his complexion paler, and had disguised the shape of his nose, but Grand Duke Mehmet let his incomparably fierce lust for killing show clearly now as he threatened in a chilling tone, “Even if you slew D, that would hardly be the end of this.”
In response, Mayor Camus—or rather, Dr. Gretchen—smiled seductively and boldly asserted, “You must excuse me, but that doesn’t strike me as something two Nobles renowned for their intelligence and bravery would say. Those are strong words.”
It went without saying that murderous intent rose like flames from both men.
Not surprisingly, a faint fear and turbulence skimmed across the woman’s gorgeous countenance, but she did a wonderful job ridding herself of it.
“The two of you received permission from the great General Gaskell to come here together, I assume?” she asked them, just to be sure.
“Of course,” said the Duke of Xenon. “Though the general had only allowed us to operate solo to prevent us from colluding, he made an enormous exception and called a meeting because your actions, Doctor, were that unpardonable!”
The Nobleman’s eyes gave off a red glow, but Dr. Gretchen returned their glare with an ironic look, saying, “My actions—you mean attempting to do away with your darling daughter along with D instead of trying to save her? Or are you referring to my opposing Grand Duke Mehmet when he came to dissuade me?”
“Both,” Grand Duke Mehmet said, his one exposed eye turning red. “Add to that the fact that you poisoned the lot of us. You are—”
There the Greater Noble broke off.
“Insane?” The doctor must’ve been terribly amused, because she forgot to cover her mouth as she laughed. “Do you think a madwoman would be capable of researching toxins? That’s the question that should’ve been posed when I first started using Nobles in my experiments. But back then and forever more, I swear I am sane—I am not the least bit mad.”
“Then you must know what’s coming,” the Duke of Xenon said, raising his right hand to shoulder level. His fingers were curled as if holding something, and the long spear that appeared in their grasp was the same as the one he’d put through D’s chest. See how its length, glowing yet semitranslucent, grew to fill the space. Its tip stretched right toward the heart of the beautiful woman clad in an old woman’s nightgown.
“And the great general gave you permission for this as well?”
“Of course.”
The doctor nodded. The general had certainly been uncomfortable dealing with her. Nevertheless, she didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow as she asked, “Once you’ve destroyed me, how will you find D?”
“We’ll manage somehow,” the Duke of Xenon responded, but his tone was less than crisp. He obviously lacked confidence in these words.
“Thanks to the shields the general developed, we’ve gained the ability to operate in daylight. If your darling daughter is intent on protecting D, she’ll have fled far from here by now. Even if the two of you were to split up, it would prove a Herculean task.”
“But you mean to tell us you could do it?” Grand Duke Mehmet asked, sticking his chin out. “How?”
“Tomorrow morning, I shall execute D’s compatriots. I’ve already sent messenger pigeons to the neighboring villages and have express riders spreading the word. If D should hear of this, he’s sure to come flying back.”
“Rubbish! And if he doesn’t?” the Duke of Xenon spat.
“I’ve heard the man known as D would never abandon his business associates. And as you’re no doubt aware, this time, for whatever reason, he’s joined up with a transport party.”
“Didn’t you say D was sleeping? No doubt that’d be the sort of coma that occurs only in dhampirs and strikes without warning. Who says that he’ll awaken before the day is out and learn of his compatriots’ execution?”
“If he doesn’t, then there’ll just be a few more headless corpses in the world. But it would be well worth your while to wait. If you are so determined to take my life, you are more than welcome to it after that,” she said eloquently, not retreating in the least. To speak this way in the presence of two Greater Nobles, she had to be either incredibly confident or truly mad.
The pair fell silent, exchanged glances, and then stared at the beautiful woman with a kind of suspicion in their eyes. The way she talked about executing the three transporters left them wondering if the doctor was merely looking forward to killing them.
“What shall we do?” Grand Duke Mehmet inquired.
“I’m going to look for my daughter. If D is with her, I’ll strike him down. Aside from that—we should just wait. It’s only a day. And if by some chance D doesn’t come, we can look forward to tearing her to pieces.”
The semitransparent spear that sat in his hand like a piece of spun glass now became a very real weapon of destruction. It quickly slid forward. The same tip that’d pierced D’s chest pressed a bit into the swell of Dr. Gretchen’s bosom. The doctor endured it, merely crinkling her brow ever so slightly.
The spearhead came away again.
“To be honest, I hope D doesn’t come,” the Duke of Xenon said as he rose slowly in his traveler’s garb. His spear had become one with the darkness-hued air. “So long as my daughter is safe, we’ll search for them later. However, I’m more interested in driving my spear through this woman’s heart.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
Though the two of them aired these staggering thoughts before her, Dr. Gretchen simply smiled like some holy woman enraptured by a heavenly choir.
__
Late in the afternoon when the western sky had taken on a tinge of blue was the time the golden light became the gentle glow of evening. And as that light fell in ripples like a length of fabric across the ruins, D slumbered on. Was the Rosaria Ann had seen just an illusion? Her whispers didn’t seem to have reached the consciousness of the handsome young man as he slept.
Perhaps it was the air and the breeze that woke Ann once more around dusk. On seeing Rosaria, she’d thought it best to move D someplace else, but her weariness and the midday sun had caused her to fall fast asleep. Though her expression remained a little sleepy looking, it quickly regained its glow, filling with joy. D was safe. All that remained was to leave here.
As she tried to rise, her diminutive form swayed weakly and an intense feeling of enervation assailed her. When she lay flat on the floor, she knew the reason for this—the energy D’s left hand had given her had run out. After that, Dr. Gretchen’s poison had spread throughout her body. But her mind was focused, and the chills were relatively minor because the poison must’ve grown diluted by now.
“It’ll take a little longer, I guess,” Ann told herself, but just then she noticed something wriggling about a foot and a half from the open wound on D’s left wrist. It was his left hand.
She’d brought the limb this far because she thought it might help to revive the Hunter, but refusing to die, it had become active again at some point and now appeared to be working to reattach itself to D. But where did the mummified hand find such energy? The girl had a sudden flash of inspiration. It was Rosaria’s doing. While the woman was filling D’s ear with stupid notions, she must’ve given his left hand the energy to live. But how? Wasn’t she just an ordinary human being sleeping back in their wagon?
Ann was truly confused, so she decided to focus her attention on D’s left hand. Considering the amount of time that’d passed since they’d come here, how much ground the left hand had covered, and how slowly it appeared to be moving, it couldn’t have received much energy.
“Up we go!” Ann cried, clinging to a stone column as she pulled herself to her feet. With another cry to spur herself on she took a step forward. She had no cane to lean on, and there was no place on the wall to use as a handhold. R
eeling badly, she fell time and again, yet Ann finally caught up to the left hand. It had reduced the foot-and-a-half distance to just four inches.
“How unfortunate for you,” Ann said, and though the poison had caused her face to swell again, she smiled like an angel as she surveyed the ground all around herself. Having caught hold of the back of D’s left hand, she felt it struggling as she scooped up the ancient iron spike she’d spotted.
“Hey . . . quit it!” it called out in a hoarse and feeble voice, but that only served to ignite the dark nature that lurked within the little girl.
Piercing D’s left hand with the iron spike, she pinned it to the ground . . . along with her own left hand.
“You can stay there till you turn to dust,” Ann said.
After seeing the left hand’s convulsions turn to limpness, she pulled her own hand off the spike.
“Sooner or later my dearest shall awaken. Until then, I’ll care for him. He has no further need of you,” the girl laughed, smiling like the sun even as the darkness in the ruins grew to that of watery ink.
At last the revived hand had fallen. Now nothing could bring D back but D himself. And the lives of Juke, Gordo, Sergei, and Rosaria depended on his actions this evening!
“Let us go, my love.”
In no time, Ann reached the spot where she’d buried D. As her hands dug away the earth, there was more strength in them than before. For darkness was the ally of the Nobility.
After clawing away half the soil, Ann turned and looked at the door.
__
II
__
A shadowy gray figure stood there. In either hand he held a bouquet—apparently they were wildflowers. He was an old man in a gray hooded robe. A thin cord was wound about his waist, and from it hung a shabby leather pouch and a glass bottle.
Apparently he’d also spotted Ann, for he asked, “What’s a girl like you doing here at this hour?” From the suspicious tone of his voice, he’d guessed something about Ann based on her attire.
“Oh, nothing,” Ann replied precociously, shaking her head from side to side.
“You’re not one of the village kids. Could it be . . . you’re a Noble?”
“So what if I am? These are ruins. Anyone who wishes to may enter them.”
An expression darker than the sky crossed the old man’s face.
“That’s right. I mean, you’re wrong. Until I found it, this place really was just ruins. An abandoned place of worship. But not now—I’m trying to bring it back. My efforts have been half successful. Here I am now with the two of you. You’re neither dead nor alive.”
“How rude of you!” the girl exclaimed. “Just what I’d expect from a human. We are truly alive.”
“Only by night,” the old man said. “If you can’t live in the light of the sun, then I’d hardly call that living. What’s the Nobility doing out here? I doubt you’ve even noticed what I’ve been up to.”
“I might well ask who you are.”
“I’m a priest of the Adolka faith, and I was visiting a nearby village. On account of my age I retired three years ago, but before I did I found these ruins and started probing the mysteries of a lost religion.”
“Religion? You mean that thing humans do to seek salvation?”
Religion still existed in this world. At the Nobility’s peak, a disproportionate number of new religions had been created, and their number was said to have been in the tens of thousands. Although all of them sought protection and freedom from the accursed Nobility, all except a very few were merely for appearances, and these died out without the Nobles ever having to do anything about them. The Adolka faith the old man had just mentioned was one of the few remaining religions.
The old man didn’t answer, and Ann lost interest in him. As she began digging dirt away from D’s body once more, the aged priest called out to her in a tense tone, “What are you doing? Oh, is that a human buried there? How handsome he is! I see what you’re up to. You buried your victim out here so you could indulge in your vile blood drinking without anyone finding out about it!”
What drivel! Ann thought to herself. Not that it matters. He’s a mere human, after all, and couldn’t comprehend my lofty purpose or these feelings of love.
“I can’t very well let this go on. Stop—stop it, I say! You may have a sweet little face, but you’re a terrible creature!”
The aged priest ran up behind Ann, raising the knife he’d drawn from the sheath on his hip. Apparently it’d originally been used in religious rituals, having a blade that twisted from the middle up and was inscribed with markings that looked like a sutra. In order to survive in a world ruled by the Nobility, religions had no prohibitions against killing.
But Ann made no move to stop the knife he’d raised. Still turned away from the aged priest, she took his blade right in her petite back. The blade should’ve pierced her heart from behind, but it stopped about an inch in.
A look of dismay raced across the priest’s visage. The feeling he’d got from the knife wasn’t that of stabbing into human or Noble flesh.
“Y-you’re . . .”
A doll-like hand caught him by the throat as he tried to shout, and one little swing hurled the priest into the ruins. The moment he landed some ten feet away the bottle on his belt shattered, its contents spilling across the floor.
Forgetting all about the old man, Ann went back to digging out D. Further in, the sound of the old priest’s groans and some rustling could be heard, but she paid no attention to them. The evening wind swept across the floor, sending tiny bits of dust flying and making her golden hair sway. Though she’d intended to work straight through until she was done, she was repeatedly forced to stop by the lingering effects of the poison.
And while that was happening, other activity was taking place in the far reaches of the ruins. The old priest who’d been dashed against the stone floor got up —clutching his back—and began to crawl in further on his hands and knees. In the back was a space with a stone slab that seemed to be the remains of some sort of ceremonial altar, and the walls and ceiling weren’t cut stone blocks but rather solid rock. On closer examination, there were signs that someone had directed their energy toward utterly destroying it. In other words, the ruins a few yards from D and Ann’s location were carved into the rock of the mountain.
Neither Ann nor the aged priest knew what had occurred here more than ten thousand years ago.
Long ago, it had been a little place where devout believers had gathered, and even after the nuclear war it’d remained, after a fashion. The Nobility feared and hated something that was here and had laid waste to the place, yet the people didn’t abandon their faith and rebuilt it time and again, only to have it destroyed again. With the passage of time, it eventually fell into its present extremely desolate state.
The reason the priest had settled here was that there was a section about an ancient religion in old documents he’d read in his younger days. The icon that this religion worshiped was said to have the power to ward off any Noble. He became an itinerant priest with no fixed parish, crossing mountains and rivers, going from village to village seeking one of those icons. The priest believed that the thing he sought, this thing that frightened the Nobility, was here. Traces of it remained on the stone altar and the round stone base behind it. A sort of thick plank laced with cracks was set in the center of the round stone, and the priest decided there must’ve been something about it that threatened the Nobility. That part of the old documents had been scorched and illegible. However, behind it there was only a rock wall. What had been found there?
The aged priest reached it. Below the wall was a lantern made from an empty can with a stub of a candle in it. From the look of the steel hammer and chisel lying next to it, it seemed that he’d been chipping away at the rock wall or carving something into it. Indeed, at about head level for the priest there was a cavity in the wall a foot and a half across and just a foot deep.
Striking one of the matc
hes by the lantern, the aged priest pressed his hands together, mumbled something, and then touched the fingers of his right hand to his forehead and both shoulders. Folding his hands together once more, he began to chant indistinctly. What he mumbled was an ancient prayer he’d deciphered from those old documents, and the gesture was part of that religion’s rituals.
“I’ve never tried this before against a Noble—but I’ll show them the holy power the human race unlocked!”
Saying “Amen” over and over again, he waited for his prayer to take effect.
Nothing happened. The flame of his candle merely swayed in the breeze.
“This can’t be!” he said. “My research couldn’t be mistaken. This prayer was certain to make the Nobility—”
“Very well, off we go!” Lady Ann called out with joy, her cry echoing through the interior of the ruins, where even the air itself was damp with the deepening blue.
D’s body had been dug out of the black earth. Bending over, the ten-year-old girl picked him up in her arms, her childish face glowing with elation. Not even sparing a glance to the priest who continued his useless prayers, she cradled D with the respect befitting a pietà of unearthly beauty and walked off toward the crumbling entrance.
She halted ten paces shy of the entranceway. The entrance to the ruins had a stone staircase. On it stood a figure—a bald man with a heavy beard.
The two met in the light of dusk.
“Father!”
“Ann, so here you are!”
Still dressed in his dusty traveler’s garb, Roland, the Duke of Xenon, smiled at his beloved daughter. But there was something unsavory about his grin.
“What are you doing here?” Ann asked.
“The doctor’s treatment of you was so horrible, I put some pressure on the general. Old Mehmet got it pretty bad, too, so he also pitched in. Then the two of us paid a little call on the doctor—”
Giving his daughter a brief rundown of the day’s events, he then told her he’d gone out to search the whole area.
“You know how fast my suit is. First, I asked the villagers if there were any houses, caves, or ruins hereabouts, then I went around checking them all. This is the sixteenth place I looked—I never thought I’d find you this quickly. Well, let’s head back. After I spear that Hunter through the heart, that is.”
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Parts One and Two Page 26