Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four
Page 31
“Why’d he fall in the hole? No, before we get to that—who are you anyway?” the sheriff asked, knitting his thick eyebrows suspiciously.
“Mia, isn’t it? You’re the daughter of a fortune-teller who lives up north. I had her tell my fortune before,” called out a young man who’d been staring at the girl all along from the driver’s seat of the wagon. He wore a heavy wool shirt and had a red scarf wound about his neck. And as befitted someone so dapper, his countenance was a good deal more attractive than the rest of the men.
“This fortune-teller up north—would that be Noa Simon? I’ve heard the name before. Seems quite a few people are in her debt,” the sheriff remarked; and, seeing a smile break on the lawman’s face, Mia was somewhat relieved. “This Hunter you mentioned, is he some friend of yours? What in blazes brings him here?”
And having said this, the sheriff then held his tongue.
In fact, everyone froze right where they were. Though white smoke poured over the brink of the great subsidence, covering everything up to three feet from the ground, they could make out a human shape on the other side of it. The hem of a coat swayed around the knees of the powerfully built form. Mia alone could tell whose silhouette it was by the longsword on its back.
“D?”
How many of them heard her say that?
As Mia reflexively started to step forward, someone behind her grabbed her right arm.
“Don’t go,” said the young man who’d been in the driver’s seat.
“But—”
“When did he fall? “
“Not five minutes ago.”
“You think after falling in there it’d be that easy to get back up again?”
“Maybe if he got hung up on something halfway down.”
“Think that’s what happened?”
“No.”
“Stand back.”
Pushing Mia out of the way, the young man put his hand to his waist. He had a gunpowder pistol in a special holster. After drawing it, he called out to the shadowy figure in the fog, “Hey, I’m from the village!”
At the same time, the color of the silhouette darkened—and a heartbeat later, it slipped out of the fog to stand face to face with the young man.
A rumble went through the crowd. Murmured exclamations of rapture. For the villagers had seen the face of the shadowy figure.
“D . . .”
That name was known to Mia alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan, in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel, Demon City Shinjuku, in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has written numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, working in the tradition of occidental horror writers like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there are seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live-action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.
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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist, and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the U.S. as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s, Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman, and Marvel Comics on Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer with best-selling author Greg Rucka.