When her thoughts had progressed to this point, she finally began to act like a leader, shouting, “Everybody, run away! You’ll be sucked into the hole!”
Before her words could serve as a guide for those running around aimlessly, they were instead drawn up along with the villagers being sucked toward the void.
In the woods about five hundred yards from the outer wall of the village, a figure in black sailed down from a particularly tall tree like a mystic bird. More than the way he landed without a sound, it was the way the hem of his coat spread like an ebony blossom just before he did so that made his identity clear at a glance. It was D. In the kingdom of intertwined shadow and light that was the woods, he could be described as a dazzling figure in black—and the figure beside him in equally gorgeous hues watched him with a suspicious yet enraptured gaze. Her expression seemed to inquire, What do you intend to do?
Asking nothing and being told nothing, Lady Ann had merely followed along diligently after D. Though D had said it would be better to have the girl around, he made no attempt to make use of her. And that actually hurt the darling little girl.
“Five seconds to go,” a hoarse voice from the vicinity of his left hand told him. D’s left hand was held up against his chest with the palm facing out. “Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Now!”
A small lump shot from the palm of his hand. A little bug. Flying a good fifteen feet through the air, it landed on a bush and devoured itself.
It was at that moment that a hole opened like a lazy black swirl. The tiny gap grew larger, and a second later the most incredible thing flew out of it. What should make the earth shudder and smash the grass flat but a brand-new guillotine that stuck into the dirt at an angle! Following that, people quickly piled on the ground one on top of another, forming a small mound.
“Exactly forty people,” the left hand reported, sounding quite pleased. “Oh, there they are. Rosaria, Juke, and Sergei. Why, even Gordo’s safe and sound. That was flawless timing. I hope you appreciate it.”
D ignored the hand. He squatted down beside Rosaria to take her pulse and check her pupils, and then he moved on to Juke.
After seeing to all four, D put the lot of them over his shoulders—they had to be between six and seven hundred pounds. Of course, this sort of thing must’ve been natural for a Noble, because Lady Ann didn’t look at all surprised.
Not even glancing at the remaining villagers, D put the village behind them. After all, these were people who’d been on the edge of their seats waiting to watch a girl get decapitated.
Outside the village a cargo wagon and horses were waiting—they’d been purchased early that morning at a neighboring village. Putting the four people in the vehicle, D got into the driver’s seat and took the reins. The team of four cyborg horses ran as if entranced by the bewitching beauty of their master.
“How did you manage to do that?” Lady Ann asked from between the driver’s seat and where the other four lay, her head cocked to one side. She was referring to how he’d gotten the four of them to appear from the hole the space eater had chewed through space.
Strangely enough, she got an answer quite quickly. From D’s left hand.
“Everything sucked into a hole created by a space eater ends up flying off into the depths of time and space. It takes precisely ten seconds for that to happen. It’s exactly the same as the way a person or animal needs time to chew before they swallow their food. And if another space eater opens a hole in a different spot at the instant the first reaches the time limit, everything that was sucked up automatically gets blown out through the new one. However, it takes superhuman skill to do that. I take it you saw the last three or four villagers who came out. They were pretty much reduced to protoplasm. Well, the good news is he was only interested in these four anyway.”
As soon as the left hand’s lengthy discourse ended, Lady Ann muttered pensively, “Controlling space eaters, of all things . . .”
The two bugs in question were ones Grand Duke Mehmet had launched at the newly risen D back in the ruins. D had bisected them instead of dodging them, and by funneling the power of his left hand into them, he’d managed to bring them back to life. This was possible in part because the bugs had an inherently tenacious life force. Nothing up to this point was particularly strange, but space eaters were not easily trained—it was impossible to predict when one would begin to devour itself. On account of this, the number of incidents where people trying to catch the bugs had been sucked instead into their holes were innumerable. In addition, no one but the most accomplished insect wranglers would ever attempt to keep and breed them. The techniques of working with space eaters were a closely guarded secret that was spoken of only in the world of darkness. Yet D had done it easily enough.
“How could you . . .” Lady Ann began, her eyes and cheeks colored with admiration.
“His old man’s special, you see. There’s pretty much nothing any Noble can do that he can’t. Gaaaah!”
The voice died out there, sounding like it’d been strangled, and, after a short time had passed, D unballed his fist.
In the meantime, and even after that, Lady Ann’s doll-like eyes swam with curiosity and anxiety as she pondered something. With a sort of sudden awakening, she then said, “You can do anything the Nobility can, and your father is special . . . Could it be you . . . Your highness is . . .”
As she murmured this, the wagon swerved off the road and started down into the valley on the right-hand side, its tires leaving ruts behind them. Keeping an eye on the steadiness of the cyborg horses that galloped down a steep and narrow path without any sign of danger, Lady Ann soon realized that it was the influence of D at the reins that allowed them to do so, and the girl’s eyes flickered with a deeper gleam of admiration.
Between trees that arched their branches like the legs of gigantic insects, the toppled ruins of a stone fortress seemed to lie humbly under the protection of the boughs. With this as their backdrop, they came before long to a place where there was the roar of a torrent and the dance of white spray. It was a waterfall.
The cyborg horses crashed right into the curtain of water, which was easily three hundred feet high and thirty feet wide, sending water splashing wildly before they reached the massive cavern that lay behind the falls.
III
With an area of at least ten thousand square feet and a ceiling some sixty feet high, the immense cavern was something Sergei had heard about before. He said it was the remains of an extremely ancient civilization he’d read about in old documents—a civilization that antedated the Nobility. It was said to be hidden behind a large waterfall and that from long ago those living nearby had been afraid to approach it, so he maintained that it should remain exactly as it’d been for the last ten thousand years. Of course, D had discovered this place because of his ultrakeen senses, but the presence of the cavern was extremely difficult to detect from outside—even at close range. While General Gaskell’s assassins might be a different story, this would most definitely keep them safe from any pursuers from the village.
The interior was just a vast space without a hint of any ancient civilization.
On seeing the strangely smooth surface of the ground and walls, the left hand remarked, “This was melted. Must’ve been blasted with an ultraheat ray of more than a hundred thousand degrees for over a minute. That’d be the Nobility’s doing. They tried to completely wipe out every trace of any civilization older than their own.”
For a while D rode around inspecting the cave on a cyborg horse he’d unhitched from the wagon, and then he returned to the vehicle and laid the four humans out on level ground. When he put his left hand against their foreheads, Juke and Sergei woke up immediately.
D turned his gaze to Lady Ann.
“Yes?” she said eagerly. “Can I do anything for you?”
Though the look he gave her was cold as ice, to the girl it seemed for all the world like a loving glance from the man of her dreams.
“Get
him up,” D said, tossing his chin in Gordo’s direction.
“Of course, I’ll be happy to,” she replied.
“She can set him right?” Sergei asked with a dull expression of astonishment.
“Why’d you let it go until now?” Juke asked, blinking.
“If I’d told her to fix him before, do you think she’d have done it?” D said to them. “If I’d tried to force her, she may have taken her own life.”
“Precisely!” Lady Ann cried out. Her voice quivered with excitement. “A Noble would rather plunge into the fires of hell than live with the disgrace of having benefited their foe. Had I been forced to save the very opponent I’d defeated, I would’ve chosen destruction right then and there. Ah, D, you understand me all too well!”
As the girl folded her pale and dainty hands in front of her chest with satisfaction, Juke and Sergei stared at her, dumbfounded, and then shifted their gaze to D.
“Be quick about it,” D told her with his usual gruffness, and then he put his left hand to Rosaria’s brow.
“It’s bad, as I suspected. This is a curse,” the hoarse voice said. “The only thing you can do is finish off the one who did this to her—Gaskell.”
Although Ann had listened to the left hand in silence, she inquired somewhat angrily, “Just who is this woman, anyway?”
“There’s no way you would know her,” D replied.
Ann shook her head from side to side, saying, “No, this woman came while you were asleep back in the ruins. She told you about today’s execution.”
“A doppelgänger?” his left hand muttered.
Such creatures weren’t particularly rare on the Frontier. However, most of them were projections that committed malicious acts against the wishes of the person they mimicked—in many cases they were that person’s negative side. If this applied to Rosaria, then would bringing her along on this trip be tantamount to setting out with a belly full of poison?
Perhaps Lady Ann had reached the same conclusion, because for the first time in an age, a hint of cruelty well suited to the girl flitted across her lips.
“This is a dangerous woman. I shall dispose of her,” the girl said.
Her right hand had already been raised to strike, and scythes like nails stretched from her fingertips. They whistled through the air toward the windpipe of the sleeping woman, only to halt in midair with a sound like a hard slap. The black-gloved hand that held her wrist belonged to D.
“Kindly unhand me,” the girl said, gnashing her teeth and writhing with frustration, an intense look on her face. It was the face of a woman out of her mind with love. It was nauseatingly ugly and beautiful beyond measure at the same time.
“How ridiculous!” she fumed.
As soon as the Hunter’s left hand touched the scruff of her neck, Lady Ann collapsed on the spot.
“I won’t allow this . . .” the fearsome little darling muttered as if goading herself on, her shoulders heaving with each breath. “Any woman who tries to come near you . . . I can’t allow to live . . .”
How did the beautiful Hunter feel listening to the girl’s groans of brutal honesty? Not even glancing at her, he told her, “Wake up Gordo.”
He then turned to Juke and Sergei and said, “What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?”
The two looked at each other.
“You don’t have any cargo to deliver to the other villages now. And if we part company, Gaskell won’t be after you any longer.”
“Good plan. Let’s do that,” Juke said with a grin, but then he got serious again. “Are you still under contract with us?”
“Of course.”
“Then help us out here. We’re gonna go get our wagon and merchandise back.”
“Hey, hold on a minute!” Sergei cried out in a tone that could only be described as tragic. “We’re going back to that village again? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“We’re transporters. We get looted and nearly killed, so you think we can call it a day? Those other villages are waiting on pins and needles for that cargo to arrive.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Say your daughter is dying. Medical supplies from the Capital could save her. But a bunch of useless transporters come along, heads hung low, crying about how all their goods got stolen and begging forgiveness. You think you’re just gonna clap ’em on the back and tell ’em, ‘Oh, that’s okay’?”
The man had a piercing gaze trained on Sergei, who scratched his head uncomfortably.
“I get you. You’re perfectly right.”
“Damn straight he is!”
Turning full speed in the direction of that heavy voice, Sergei let out a joyous cry of, “Gordo!”
“Hey, you came to?” Juke said, following Sergei’s lead and running over to his compatriot.
“Yeah. As you can see, I’m right as rain!”
Now sitting up, the bearded man smiled grandly as he flexed his muscles.
“Hey, Sergei!” he called out to his colleague.
“What is it?” Sergei replied, but no sooner had he brought his face closer than a sudden punch landed noisily against his jaw.
Though he dropped to his knees, he somehow managed to keep his torso upright, nursing his chin as he shouted, “What the hell was that for?”
“Regret what you said now, you big idiot? Any courier who’s more worried about his own safety than the goods he’s carrying is a waste of skin. And that’s the kind of talk you were spilling a second ago. You ever try to turn tail again, and you’d better be ready for the consequences!”
“Okay! I get it! I get it already!” Sergei shouted with a pained smile. “Well, if the two of you aren’t just brimming with a sense of duty! You’ll never live to a ripe old age.”
“Neither will you, dummy,” the other two sneered back.
“How about giving some thought to how to retrieve it?” D said, his words bringing them all back to their senses.
And then, behind the roaring falls, a visage so handsome it seemed to be from another world and three relatively average faces alternately spoke in hushed seriousness or collided in heated debate, finally coming to a consensus when the light outside was fading in hue.
“I wonder if he’s coming?”
“No, he won’t come.”
“Oh, yes, he will.”
These three opinions mixed in the air, melting together as two travelers and an old woman stared intently at each other’s faces.
Although they were disguised as middle-aged travelers, there could be no containing the intensity of their eyes or the inhuman stateliness that spilled from every inch of them. It was Grand Duke Mehmet and Roland, the Duke of Xenon. An hour earlier they’d left the village, which was in chaos following the incident with the space eater, and climbed to the top of a hill to the north. The silhouettes of birds skimmed across a sky deep blue with the approaching dusk. Their conversation focused on the fate of D and the transporters, and now the trio was of differing opinions.
“Why would they come back to the village where they nearly lost their lives just for their wagon and its cargo?” Grand Duke Mehmet said. Not only his lips but his whole face as well twisted from time to time due to the pain that shot through his arms and back—apparently the pain of the gigantic marionette losing its limbs had been transmitted to his own body.
“He’ll come,” the Duke of Xenon asserted. “I hear that for those who live on the Frontier, death is preferable to the shame of not fulfilling your professional obligations. The way I see it, they’ll definitely return to get their wagon and their goods.”
“You seem well informed as to the human way of life,” said the old woman—Mayor Camus, who was in fact Dr. Gretchen—as she glanced briefly at the Duke of Xenon’s face. It was a sarcastic look, and an equally sarcastic tone. “But this time it serves you well. I also believe the humans will come back. I have no idea why D is traveling with them, and he may be another matter entirely, but the three men
will return.”
“If they do, then good,” Grand Duke Mehmet said, looking up. “The Duke of Xenon and I waited outside the village since early this morning. And we swore to ourselves that if D or anyone working on his behalf were to come, this time we would deliver them unto death. But who would’ve thought—I mean, who could’ve imagined he’d do it in such a manner?”
The grand duke removed the patch from his right eye.
In the direction of his gaze a number of birds circled and soared. Suddenly, one of them stopped beating its wings and went into a steep dive as if enamored of the ground. Less than a second later it was joined by a second—and a third. Once the poor birds had disappeared somewhere in the distant woods, Grand Duke Mehmet finally let out a breath and put the eye patch back on.
The power of a look alone—the murderous intent that radiated from his eyes—knocked birds in flight from the sky. This was a perfectly natural occurrence for a member of the Nobility, as was evinced by the fact that the expressions of his two fellow Nobles didn’t change in the slightest.
But the ferocity of the grand duke’s rage and the reason for his mood were painfully clear. They’d been bested using space eaters only the grand duke could control. Moreover, he could only imagine that the bugs in question were the same ones D had cut in two. If so, the responsibility for this tremendous setback all lay with him—Grand Duke Mehmet. That was the source of the rage that caused him to knock birds dead from the sky.
“Though I understand your anger, there is no need for the two of you to engage him once again,” Mayor Camus/Dr. Gretchen said, gazing at the two men.
The indignant looks she drew from them were a response to the undercurrent of derision in her words.
“What do you mean by that?” Roland, the Duke of Xenon, inquired softly.
“What I mean is that I’ve already taken measures. Measures only I might take.”
The men exchanged glances. Though each was an incomparable warrior, they needed no demonstration of this murderess’s skill with poisons. The clouds of discomfort that welled up in their hearts began to take shape, telling them that this woman, of all people, might be able to do it alone.
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Parts One and Two Page 29