Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two

by Pale Fallen Angel (Parts 1

  In the center of the clearing, almost a dozen figures surrounded the two carriages. Had they not been blurred by the rain, the heartless countenances of the men would’ve been enough to make even an adult grow pale—and there were two equally tough-looking women.

  “How about shutting off that weather controller, Erde? If we’re gonna take down some Nobles, there’s no place better to do it than under a blue sky,” a giant of a man with an infrared scope over his right eye said to one of the women. He was definitely the boss.

  The woman—Erde—tapped her fingers across the remote control strapped to her left forearm.

  “It’s not responding all that well again. I’m still doing some work on it,” she replied. “But whether it’s dark or not, the Nobility sleep by day, so relax.”

  “What are you talking about?! If the river overflows and washes out the road, we’ll be shit out of luck. Hurry up and get it fixed. Venice, you help her out.”

  “Will do,” the other woman replied in a gruff voice. She wasn’t nearly as good looking as Erde. That may have had something to do with her tone.

  Giving a toss of his chin to the carriages, the giant said, “I never seen such luxurious rides before. I’d bet my eyeteeth they’re carrying grand old Nobles and a butt-load of treasure. Well, we’ve gotta bust ’em open before the sun goes down. Get to it!”

  And at his command, the men with assorted tools of dismantlement in hand set upon the two carriages like a swarm of black insects. Though these carriages made use of precious metals and rare woods, as belongings of the Nobility, no one save the decadent millionaires in the Capital would be interested in purchasing one. And since transporting one would be such a problem, when this mob got their hands on such a carriage, they quickly stripped it down.

  However, these two vehicles were somewhat different from any they’d ever dealt with before.

  The guy with the six-thousand-degree laser torch in his hand cried out, “This ain’t doing squat!”

  The man with the heavy alloy drill that could tear through rock howled, “It broke my freaking bit!”

  “Damn, you are one sad-looking bunch! Looks like we got no choice but to rough up the merchandise a bit. Hey, get ready to blast!” the giant ordered.

  One of his men asked, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m not sure I like the way this is going.”

  But just as he was offering that objection, the giant pounced. There was a splat like something slamming into the mud, and the giant’s hand sank into his henchman’s solar plexus up to the wrist.

  Hurling the man instantly killed by his blow over fifteen feet, the boss held his hand out in the rain to wash the gore off before saying, “Hurry up and get everything ready.” His tone, however, was rather low.

  Naturally, several of the others hastened to the warehouse.

  The slight whir of a motor could be heard emanating from the giant’s palm.

  Three minutes later, a fuse and two pounds of high explosive had been affixed to the bottom of the blue carriage, and a remote control was used to detonate the charge. Though the carriage flew up off the ground and landed on its side, a trio of long thin shafts came out of the bottom and quickly righted the vehicle again. The mechanism housing the shafts hadn’t initially been part of the carriage, but rather had been added later. The fruit of the blacksmith’s hard labor had stood up to the explosives.

  “Shit! Make it twenty pounds this time!” the boss shouted as vermilion pervaded his face.

  “Hold on a second,” Venice said to him. Pointing to the wagons, she added, “A traveling blacksmith once told me the Nobility’s carriages could stand up to shocks well, but they were comparatively weak to heat. Let’s use an incendiary charge, boss.”

  “Okay, incendiary charges it is!” the giant quickly ordered.

  “Just a second, boss,” Erde said in a tone that seemed to carry a special significance.

  “What is it?”

  Throwing Venice a spiteful glance, Erde explained, “Those charges get upwards of twenty thousand degrees. If the carriages get burnt to a crisp, we’ll be left with nothing. After we went to all the trouble of wiping out that pass and everything, all our efforts to get the treasure would end up pissed away. There’s a smarter way to do this.”

  “And what would that be?” Venice asked as she took a step forward.

  Ignoring the other woman, Erde continued, “We might not be able to stop the downpour, but we can turn it into sunshine. I just finished some repairs, and I could switch it over to sunlight mode and train it into a tight beam. If we keep that focused on them and raise the temperature little by little, we should be able to cook them just right.”

  “That sounds great,” the giant declared with a nod, Venice’s idea apparently forgotten completely. “That’s our Erde! Do your thing.”

  “Stand back,” the woman said as she began to make adjustments to the device on her left arm.

  Several seconds later, a streak of blinding light shot down from the heavens to envelop the pair of carriages. The bare rock beneath them dried instantly, and any rain that touched the light evaporated.

  As their faces were buffeted by the steam and the dazzling radiance, the bandits backed away even further.

  “Seven thousand degrees,” Erde said as she squinted her eyes. “Eight thousand . . . Eight thousand five hundred . . . Nine . . . Are we still okay?”

  “Keep at it,” the giant bade her.

  “Ten thousand . . . It’s too dangerous to go any higher. The bedrock is starting to melt.”

  “I don’t give a shit. Keep going. This is about showing ’em what we’re made of. I’ll be damned if I’ll let some has-been bloodsuckers humiliate the human race!”

  “Fifteen thousand . . . Twenty . . .”

  The carriages appeared to be sinking into the ground . . . and they were. The exposed bedrock melted and the pair of carriages sunk down into the bubbling magma without so much as giving off a little steam.

  Just then, there was a telling sound from one of the vehicles. It almost sounded like a door being unlocked.

  “Stop!” the giant bellowed, and the gray sky and rain returned.

  At the same time, there was a terrific hiss and a cloud of white went up—the work of the rain on the magma. The wheels were half buried in the molten rock—leaving the vehicles resting on their bellies—but the carriages themselves didn’t appear to have suffered any damage.

  “What in blazes—what did they make these things out of?”

  “What the hell was that sound just now?”

  And as all of the other henchmen grumbled similar remarks, they heard a creeeeee. It was clearly the sound of a door opening. And once the intractable doors of both carriages fully opened, a pair of coffins the same hue as their respective vehicles were then ejected.

  Seeing these drifting on top of the magma, the giant exclaimed, “Cool ’em down, Erde. Make it winter, pronto!”

  The air suddenly cooled, but it took a full ten minutes for steam to stop hissing from the magma like a dying gasp.

  Cautiously approaching the lake of molten rock, one of the men tapped the solidifying mass with the end of his boot, and then touched his hand to it before declaring, “It’s okay.”

  The rest of the men surrounded the coffins. Finally, said the greedy glint in their eyes, but the shadow of fear hung there too, as if to eclipse it.

  “Why’d they come out?” one of the men muttered.

  “The heat was probably more than they could take, so the carriages’ protective systems got them out. That’s fine. We’ve still got time. Pry those mothers open and turn those Nobles to dust,” Erde said as she fiddled with the device on her left arm.

  “Hell yeah!” one of them loudly cried as he brought both of his arms down.

  It was a steel sledgehammer that whined through the air toward the blue coffin. A heartbeat later, it bounced back hard, leaving the man who held it reeling wildly.

  Letting go of the hammer, the man
shook his hands and groaned, “I guess regular strength just ain’t gonna cut it.”

  Turning his bloodshot gaze on the coffin, the giant went over by the man and, with one hand, picked up the hammer his underling had dropped. Shoving a laser-burner-wielding henchman out of the way, he stood beside the coffin and raised the hammer high. Both his arms gave off the whir of motors.

  The speed of the hammer’s descent and the whistle it made were both ten times what they’d been the first time.

  There was a crash that sounded like an explosion.

  A cheer went up from the group. The coffin had been dented.

  Once again the giant raised the sledgehammer. Both his arms were artificial limbs—high-polymer muscles wrapped around bones of steel. They were controlled by electronic nerve centers in his shoulders, and the motors they contained could put out a thousand horsepower.

  When the second blow pushed the coffin’s lid in even further, the henchmen were no longer shouting. They were going to get to see the inside of a Noble’s coffin. Each of them felt their body being enveloped by an aura of excitement and curiosity the likes of which they’d never experienced.

  Aside from those who’d actually experienced the long battle between the Nobility and humanity firsthand, humans regarded the opening of a Noble’s coffin as a sin, like breaking some holy writ and intruding on hallowed ground. The act may have even had sexual undertones as well, so elegant and beautiful were the Nobles who slumbered wrapped in artificial fog or flowers. The men were often dressed in black formal wear while the women were usually in dresses, though Noblewomen would occasionally wear just a single sheer garment, or sometimes nothing at all. Only the Nobility’s uninhibited nature made this possible.

  But if by some chance her coffin should be broken open and she were exposed to vulgar human eyes, the allure of a Noblewoman’s physique would be her final defense against the stakes and swords raised against her. They possessed the kind of beauty you could go your whole life without encountering: crimson lips that were half open and looked damp and ready to moan; full breasts; the sexual magnetism of the region from the slim waist down to the thighs that need not be elaborated; veins that seemed to creep like blue snakes beneath that paraffin-pale skin. These attributes often came as a great shock to the brains of the would-be hunters and stayed their murderous hands. As if enchanted, they would remain motionless, gazing on and on at the lovely vampire. Five minutes became ten, ten minutes became an hour—and before long, the time had flown and the sun had lost its power. Blue twilight would spread across the sky, and the next thing they knew, there was a crimson glow in the face of the Noble that had risen from the coffin. The instant they were drawn anew into those burning eyes, they forgot all human reason and became no more than a blood feast for the Nobility.

  The bandits were cognizant of this fearful possibility, thus they all got their broadswords and stakes ready when the coffin was dented. They would open the lid and, without even looking at what it contained, strike without a moment’s hesitation. And yet the fact that even now some of these wretches had their eyes open a crack only testified to the powerful and perverse lust they had for what the Noble’s coffin contained.

  “Come on now!” the giant bellowed, his words practically a cry of rage as he brought the hammer down.

  At that very instant, the lid of the coffin popped open. It came as little surprise that even the giant couldn’t halt the hammer he’d swung with all his might, and the mass of iron went right into the coffin—or it was about to, when it stopped short.

  A hand stretching from a blue topcoat had a tight grip on the head of the mallet. Though it had been brought down with the combined power of two thousand horses, it had easily been halted with one hand—and now the sledgehammer was being driven back! It was pushed away as the shadowy blue form began to rise.

  The occupant was coming out. His shoulder appeared first. But even when he rose quickly, putting his whole body into view, the giant didn’t let go of his hammer. Confronted by the beauty of this pale aristocrat, he was truly frightened. Even though the sun wasn’t out, it was still the middle of the day, and he’d never heard of a Noble coming out of its coffin at a time like this.

  His henchmen had actually frozen without a word, and a few of them had even dropped to the ground in abject fear. However, it was clearly the raging fires of hostility that left the giant of a man trembling.

  “Hiya,” said the giant.

  Baron Balazs quietly stared at him with eyes like ice, as if he hadn’t had enough sleep yet.

  “Dogma is the name. I’m a miserly little bandit. It sure is an honor to meet a Noble at this time of day.”

  The baron’s lips quickly went into action, forming words: “I am Baron Byron Balazs.”

  At that moment, the giant realized that his hammer was no longer being held. Hurling the sledgehammer as he leapt away, the man drew the broadsword from his hip with all the speed one would expect from the leader of a mob of brigands.

  The hammer scored a direct hit on the baron’s forehead that left the Noble off balance.

  And the second he saw this, the giant kicked off the ground in a mighty bound. The blade he had braced against his hip was aimed at his foe’s heart. And surely enough, it pierced it.

  The gorgeous face was right in front of him. And the smile it wore was so alluring, and solitary, and cruel.

  “Well done.”

  Even though the Nobleman’s words left him dazed, the giant saw the baron raise his right arm and glimpsed the black hammer that he grasped. Reflexively, the bandit leader brought his left arm up to block it. His artificial arm had a thousand horsepower to use in his defense.

  The mass of iron fell against his arm. Sparks flew. Muscles burst and bones snapped as electrical fire colored the limb.

  The misshapen hammer rose.

  The giant hoped to stop it with his right arm, but the time it took him to discard his broadsword kept him from making it.

  The wet splat that rang out was the sound of his skull being pulverized. Blood and gray matter flew everywhere, delivering a hearty spattering to the henchmen, who were keeping their distance. With this, they all returned to their senses.

  “You bastard!”

  “Freak!”

  Weapons flashed out, and the men were about to make a murderous charge when the baron’s cape spread to either side like the wings of a mystic bird and an intense flash of light flew from it, leaving a trail as it weaved through the henchmen. Heads sailed through the air, and seconds later geysers of blood shot up. It was quite some time later that the decapitated bodies fell over.

  A short distance away, only the two women were left. For some reason, the baron’s murderous light hadn’t flown in their direction. Erde and Venice looked at each other’s paled faces as the former reached with her right hand for the weather controller on her left arm. She couldn’t stop the rain, but she could still bring some sunlight.

  The baron turned to her. Before Erde’s shriek of terror had ended, he had bounded to stand right in front of her. The woman was beset by dementia. Forgetting all about the controller as she tried to spin around, she felt an iron blade driven through her heart from behind.

  “Ve-Venice?” she rasped in disbelief. “I’ll take care of this bastard. But you get to go to hell a little bit sooner than he does.”

  As Venice shoved her erstwhile companion forward, she tore the controller off the woman’s arm.

  The baron’s movements were checked by Erde’s body, which hadn’t fallen over.

  Venice was well versed in how to operate the controller. She’d had to learn how to use it just in case anything ever happened to Erde . . . and something had certainly happened to Erde now.

  “All the treasure of the Nobility will be mine! I’ll bring it to the Capital and get a fortune for it!”

  A beam of sunlight should have speared down between the clouds, but as Venice reached for the switch that would trigger it, her arm was stopped cold. Pale fi
ngers had reached around from behind her to encircle her wrist. She only just remembered that there was a second coffin when a pair of lips that were chill as ice but incredibly soft pressed against the nape of her neck.

  “Stop!” the baron shouted. “You won’t be able to travel with us any longer.”

  That was enough to stop her Noble instinct—the craving for blood.

  “Damnation.”

  Breaking free of Miska’s grip, Venice tumbled forward from the effort. As Miska glared at her, a dazzling light began to fall on her and the baron from above.

  __

  II

  __

  The two vampires stood immobilized in the sunlight.

  “Die! Take that, you fuckers!” Venice exclaimed as her fingers continued to work the controls. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”

  This was something humans always said when destroying a member of the Nobility, but no sooner had Venice finished speaking than the control was slashed in two, arm and all, and half of it fell to the ground.

  The sunlight faded.

  Four figures lived out in that downpour. But in whose favor had the odds increased?

  Catching Miska in his arms as she collapsed, the Noble in blue saw the rain-blurred figure in black approaching.

  Glancing without the slightest trace of compassion at the female bandit writhing in a lake of blood, D said, “Looks like I’m just in time,” as he returned his sword to its sheath.

  The trio that stood in the driving rain like heavenly creatures were so lovely, they would’ve made anyone who saw them completely forget the downpour.

  Naturally, the rest of the bandits had attacked D, and the results of that encounter went without saying. Taking one of them alive and forcing him to disclose the location of their hideout, the Hunter had then hastened back. But it wasn’t the stomach-turning scene on which D’s gaze paused, but rather the lips of the baron and Miska.