“No!” he groaned. His whole body shook.
Reason reclaimed what had been a somewhat perverse expression. His mental faculties were wrestling with the craving that set his blood ablaze. He then lowered his face.
A minute passed. Then two.
There was the sound of a door opening back at the carriages. Having glimpsed the baron through the window, Taki had noticed he was acting strangely and opened the door. While the Nobility had a special knack for sensing the aroma of blood filling the air, Taki didn’t have the slightest inkling about it. She took a step toward the Nobleman, and then another.
“Stay back!” the baron told her, his words stopping the young woman in her tracks.
Assailed by an instinctive fear, she turned to go back to the carriage.
“No, come to me,” the baron said. He had turned in Taki’s direction.
“No!” Taki cried, shaking her head.
“Turn and look at me,” he told her in the same mannered tone he always used.
A cold wind struck the nape of Taki’s neck.
You can’t turn around, she thought. You absolutely mustn’t do it!
Slowly she turned.
The baron was on his feet, his cape covering his mouth. As the breath was knocked out of the girl, the baron’s face approached the nape of her neck. His cape had come away from it.
Letting out a scream, Taki fainted.
His face still pressed to the girl’s pale neck, the baron held the senseless form for some time, and then laid her gently on the ground after a short while.
Somewhere in the heavens there was a sharp clang.
__
When D raced back, the wind swirling in his wake, the baron stood slumped back against the carriage, and a thicker aroma of blood hung in the air. Halting, D stared down at the baron’s feet. Two figures lay there. Taki and May.
Walking over and examining their necks, D said, “We had a deal.” His tone was soft.
A shadow suddenly scudded across the moon.
He’d plunged fifteen hundred feet into the river and then run all the way there. Yet due to his incredible strength, the young man wasn’t even breathing hard. He was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.
“What happened to your left hand?” asked the baron.
Only a stump protruded from D’s left sleeve.
The baron made a mighty leap backward. Just a heartbeat later, D’s blade mowed through the darkness. The baron limned a graceful arc to the left, and D raced right after him.
The baron’s cape expelled a flash of white light.
Batting it away with one stroke, D made a bound. His blade sank deep into the left side of the baron’s chest, coming out through his back. The baron’s body collapsed, and the blade remained in D’s hand as it naturally slid out again.
“What are you doing?” Miska was heard to say from the vicinity of the white carriage.
Apparently the Noblewoman had just been coming out, with one of her feet resting on the ground and the other still on the steps. Her pale and beautiful visage was warped by surprise.
“Baron!” she cried as she dashed over to him, and after looking down at his death mask, she soon stared at D. Her eyes glowed with red tears. Tears of blood. Her elegant expression instantly began to change into that of the devil himself. From hatred—and the scent of blood.
“You shall pay for that, D! I can’t believe you would do this to him!”
Standing tall in her white dress, the Noblewoman looked so alluring, so elegant.
“Now the Destroyer wishes to come out. Do you want me to set it free?”
Saying nothing, D readied his sword in the low position.
Taki was dead, May had been slain, and the baron was destroyed, leaving only D and Miska out of the whole group. With the two of them now locked in deadly combat, the utter annihilation of their party wasn’t inconceivable.
The moon remained hidden by dark clouds even now, and the sounds of the water were so distant as to be of no comfort.
Could D take on the Destroyer and win?
CANYON OF BLOOD
CHAPTER 6
I
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Something strange suddenly occurred at the scene of the deadly conflict. All of the strength rapidly drained from Miska’s body. No, not her strength, but rather the will that created that strength. As the stupefied Noblewoman drew back, the blade of D’s sword slid in between her breasts far too easily.
Miska fell . . . and she wasn’t the only one. D had also been driven to one knee. Struck by a powerful loss of psyche—they’d been robbed of their drive.
A different voice drifted out in the moonlight, saying, “I was going to have the woman slay you, but when I cast my spell on both of you, it turned out you resisted it better than she. Well, that’s not a problem. By now, you should be finding it bothersome to even draw breath. You’re in no position to feel any hostility toward this humble holy man.”
D looked up dazedly toward the source of the voice. On the roof of a black carriage a shape the same hue was moving. A man in priestly garb rose from the carriage. It went without saying that the old man who’d suddenly stood up was Yoputz.
“Surely both you and the baron were searching for some sign of me. But it was no use. Before you is a man who was but one short step from attaining the highest level in a secret faith. The power to replace one’s body with nothingness is something not even the senses of the Nobility could see through,” the old man said, his stony face crumpling. He’d just smiled.
And then he jumped easily to the ground. Looking at the baron’s corpse, he said, “It occurred to me to try this approach after he had to fight the urge to drink the blood of a village girl due to his agreement with you. No matter how powerful his will might’ve been, he was still a Noble, and after being inundated by the scent of blood, this was the only thing that could happen with two hot-blooded girls so close at hand. D, you did well to fight the urge. Dhampir though you are, I’m impressed. Ouf!”
The cause of that cry at the end was a plain wooden needle that had sprouted from Yoputz’s left shoulder. It looked like the reason that this shot aimed for his heart had missed the mark was because even the great D was still to some degree suffering from the effects of Yoputz’s spell.
Before D could get to his feet, Yoputz moved smoothly to the entrance to the canyon, where he once again let out a scream of pain as he toppled backward. A flash of light had split open his right side—it had shot out of the baron’s cape.
“You . . . you bastard! You’re still alive? Oh . . . so it was all an act, was it?”
“Precisely,” Baron Balazs replied with a nod as he slowly got to his feet again. “I dealt a blow to each of the girls to knock them out, but I didn’t suck their blood. D’s eyes were sure to note the absence of teeth marks at the base of their necks. He narrowly missed my heart in order to lure you out, since we couldn’t tell where you were. Due to my wound, I may have been wide of the mark just now, but that won’t happen this time.”
His cape released a flash of light. It went right through Yoputz’s body and hit the boulder behind him before flying back.
Yoputz had suddenly vanished.
As the baron’s body stiffened with tension, behind him D dashed over to the boulder on his left and drove his blade into its rocky surface. A beastly moan of pain rang out, and as the moon peeked between the clouds, it palely illuminated the form of Yoputz as he appeared on the surface of the rock.
“How . . . did you . . . know?” the old man sputtered, a mass of blood spilling from his mouth as he reached for the blade that pierced the base of his throat. And then his head lolled to one side limply.
Pulling his sword back out, D went back to the carriages.
As he scooped Miska up in his arms, the baron said, “That was an impressive thrust. She’s unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. But I would like to know the same thing. How did you know where the old man was?”
“The chain rang out,” D replie
d as he walked over to Taki and May.
Not even the baron noticed the incredibly fine thread that hung from the Hunter’s left arm and ran off deep into the canyon.
__
The pair of carriages traveled through a canyon lit solely by moonlight. Strange as it was, those who owned the vehicles, male and female, could see right through the dark of night. The carriages raced down the road alongside the river that cut through the canyon.
“That just leaves one individual and one group,” the baron up in the driver’s seat said to D, who rode right next to the carriage.
“Don’t get careless,” said D. “As long as one of those is in the water, and the other is somewhere in the canyon, they are forces to be reckoned with.”
“I’m well aware of that,” the baron replied, now fully recovered from their deadly encounter with Yoputz.
Here was a man who’d not only kept from sinking his fangs into Taki and May while the stench of blood surrounded him, but had even had the presence of mind to pretend he was feeding on them. He was made of sterner stuff than the average Noble.
“Are you wondering about that?” the baron asked out of the blue.
D merely shifted his eyes to look at him.
“No, you wouldn’t have an interest in anyone else’s personal affairs or their motivations, I suppose. To the contrary, it is I that am curious. You are no ordinary dhampir.”
“Rumor has it that Vlad Balazs was happy to receive the Sacred Ancestor,” D said, changing the subject. “With the help of Jean de Carriole, a doctor the Sacred Ancestor took under his wing, it is said they conducted mysterious experiments night and day. Their subjects were said to be very young girls and infants.”
The baron said nothing.
“I can imagine what sort of experiments they must’ve conducted. So, was one of their results you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the baron replied, his denial vehement. “But coming from you, I don’t find the conjecture that hard to accept. I have met other dhampirs—one or two rather skilled individuals out on the Frontier. But their intellect, their strength, their skill with weapons—none of them were even close to you. You’re in a completely different class. D—weren’t you the result the Sacred Ancestor was after?”
“Once we’re through the canyon, it’s just two more days to Krauhausen,” said D. “Are you prepared to slay your father?”
“Yes, and I have been ever since I decided to make this journey.”
Something suddenly occurred to the baron, and the musings of his heart became speech.
“Miska, what have you come all this way for?” he muttered to himself.
__
After they’d gone about a mile and a quarter, the road came to an incline. The running water that had D and the baron most concerned was quickly sinking further and further below them.
“Now one of your fears has been laid to rest,” Miska called out from her carriage.
When the baron turned to look, the Noblewoman in white was sitting in the driver’s seat.
Ordinarily, anyone would’ve agreed with what she’d said, but the two men said nothing. They knew exactly how powerful the Dark Water Forces were.
Just then, a strange susurration reached the ears of all three of them, the sound doubling over itself time and again as if it’d bounced off every single rock in the valley. It was the sound of a water droplet falling.
At that, the trio grew so tense and acted so decisively that it actually seemed quite strange.
The whips cracked in both the baron’s and Miska’s hands. The hooves of the horses tore at the soil roughly.
D brought up the rear. The horse he rode was one that had been pulling the baron’s carriage.
The sound drew closer. Though actually quite lovely, it wasn’t just a single sound. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them pursued the two vehicles.
“Get in your carriages,” D ordered them.
The Hunter was slowing down. Suddenly, his horse’s stride was broken, and the same was true for the animals drawing the carriages. Partway up this steep slope, the horses bent their legs, lay down where they were, and began to snore quite comfortably. Of course, the carriages had come to a dead stop.
D swiftly got off of his horse and went over to the baron and Miska, saying, “Put these in your ears.”
They were earplugs fashioned from hardened wax. Although the baron took a pair and promptly put them in his ears, Miska’s fell from her hand. Slumping over the driver’s-seat railing, the Noblewoman had fallen into a deep sleep.
“Used the water, did they?” D mused as he got Miska down out of the driver’s seat and put her into her carriage.
Basically, the sound of falling water droplets tended to induce sleep. And the Dark Water Forces had taken this simple phenomenon and applied it on an enormous scale throughout the entire canyon. While the reverberations that surrounded the two men sounded rather discordant to their ears, there was actually an extremely refined rhythm to them.
“Well, we can’t move now. What will they try next?” the baron asked as he looked down the incline.
In the depths of his ears, the rhythm changed.
An aura of murderous intent enveloped every inch of the two men like a fall frost.
Just then, the horses that seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep rose in unison, twisting around before they began a mad gallop back down to the base of the cliff.
The sound of the water could do more than simply entice someone to sleep—it was a form of hypnotism that could even gain control of the minds of animals.
Caught off guard by the horses’ swift and spirited flight, the two men didn’t even have time to leap back on, and they could only watch as the carriages dwindled in the distance.
“I’ll go after them,” the baron said with a glance at D.
“Stay here,” said D. Though it was for the protection of his employer, his manner was rather blunt, but the baron didn’t seem to take exception to it in the least.
“There’s no point in staying. If I were to remain here alone and be attacked and injured, it would be your fault.”
“There’s Lady Miska to worry about, too.”
“If I were in danger, I’m sure you’d say that to get me to flee. And once you’d brought me to a safe location, you’d no doubt return to the battle alone.”
“If you’re not going to listen to what I tell you, then I’ll nullify our agreement. Stay here,” D said, his tone as quiet as ever—and like steel.
While it was unclear what the baron made of him as he gazed intently at the Hunter’s face, he then raised his right hand and said, “Very well, then. I leave it entirely to you. Good luck.”
D spun around.
As he watched horse and rider gallop off for the bottom of the valley like a black wind, the baron muttered, “I’m counting on you.”
Counting on D to save whom? Miska? Or someone else?
__
II
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Taki and May were awake from the very start. They’d had plenty of time to sleep and, shut in the carriage as they were, the sound of the droplets hadn’t even reached them. Although they noticed the horses galloping out of control, there was nothing the two of them could do but stare at the darkness flying by outside their windows.
When the carriages reached the bottom of the canyon, they raced along the riverside for some time before a full roar began to draw nearer.
Out in the flow, bumps rose by a sandbar like the backbone of some giant monster. Sending up a silvery spray, the carriages rode over them and began to fight the current.
The roar grew louder, until it began to shake the very air. Covering the rocky road, it also coated the trees and grass with its dampness.
After about ten minutes, cliffs suddenly sprang up on either side of them. The flow here was wider and wilder than the actual river, and it raised a steady snarl. But even the clamor of those tumultuous waves was put in its place by the sound of water coursing o
ver a sheer six-hundred-foot drop. A waterfall.
The width of the curtain of water was more than sixty feet, and the top of the falls must’ve been up more than a thousand feet. The spray that fell where the carriages had stopped was a mere mist, but another thirty feet ahead were actual droplets of water. If you were to approach the bottom of the falls any closer than that, it would’ve felt like standing in a downpour.
The road before the carriages gleamed damply in the moonlight, but no sooner had a few black blobs formed on its surface than they swiftly rose and took human form. Nothing could’ve risen from the thin film of water coating the rocks but the warriors of the Dark Water Forces.
“Don’t go out there!” Taki said as she held May tight. D had told them that as long as they remained in the carriage, they’d be safe.
The shadowy figures stood still in the moonlight, staring at the carriage without saying a word or coming any closer, and then they unexpectedly sank back down into the rocks.
As the two girls swung between relief and anxiety, their ears caught a knock at the door. The face that hung outside the square of glass like a pale bloom was that of Miska. Although she wasn’t exactly the ideal person to make them feel at ease, she was better than the Dark Water Forces, and the two girls put their hands to their hearts with relief.
“Open the door,” they heard Miska say. The girls weren’t sure if there was some sort of microphone out there known only to the Nobility.
May reached for the doorknob, but Taki stopped her.
“No, not until the baron or D gets here.”
“But those other guys took off. It must’ve been because Miska came out!”
“But I—”
The two of them hadn’t seen Miska fall asleep. And Taki for one couldn’t fathom why she alone would’ve come with them.
Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two Page 27