Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts One and Two
Page 31
Literally escaping by a hair’s breadth, the figure in black leapt from the back of the horse as it was quickly crushed into an unrecognizable pile of meat, electronic parts, and steel framework, and he then flew like an arrow toward the exit from the rock-lined road. The way he curled into a ball and shot from the exit, it seemed as if he were riding the shock waves of the massive boulder that’d fallen behind him.
Out in the middle of the flames a good sixty feet from the rocks, D tried to see where the carriages had gone, but even with eyes that could see through the black smoke as if it weren’t there, he could find no trace of the two vehicles anywhere.
“Oh, that baron should do just fine, I’m sure. Even if he can’t get out of his carriage by day.”
Flames blew into the left hand as it spoke.
“The village is on the other side of this,” the left hand continued. “If we don’t hurry up and go, the fire will spread here, too. There’s no telling when the wind might change.”
A mass of flame shot up by D’s side.
“Oh, looks like there’s a nest of firebugs or something down there. One false step onto that baby and that’ll be the end of the story.”
The voice was moving forward. Stepping right through the flames, D broke into a run. The ground was spitting up fire, and the air shimmered in places from the heat. A mass of flames went up. The hem of the Hunter’s coat flashed out, and the flames dispersed feebly in all directions.
“Wow! I thought without a horse you’d be in a bad way, but it doesn’t look like it makes any difference at all on flat ground. You’re something else!” the hoarse voice remarked.
As D ran, he turned and looked back. There were footsteps following him. And more than just one set. The quaking of the earth testified to that.
A terrific force struck the ground, echoing like a tremor.
D’s eyes caught a shadowy group rolling forward like a fog beyond the flames. It was spearheaded by a massive swarm of giant black caterpillars covered by needlelike bristles. Behind them was a pack of ten-foot-long plains rats, followed in turn by three-headed boars and burrowing pythons—and this mob of plains-dwelling creatures stretched as far as the horizon in a wild stampede. Fearing fire, they raced off in search of someplace safe, and if caught in their path, even a fire dragon would have been crushed by the hoard. One giant black caterpillar already engulfed by the flames couldn’t help but slow down, but in a heartbeat it was caught up in the stampede and crushed underfoot before it even had time to let out a scream.
It was only another three hundred feet to D. Even he didn’t possess the speed necessary to outrun them. There was only one thing to do.
“You’ve got no choice but to get up on their backs,” said his left hand.
Two hundred feet.
A hundred fifty.
However, when they had closed to within a hundred feet, the strangest thing occurred. Perhaps it was something they saw, perhaps something they sensed, but the caterpillars in the foremost rank tried to halt en masse. Sparks flew madly, but of course they couldn’t stop the stampede. The force of those behind them surging forward promptly crushed those in the vanguard, and what should happen but those responsible then tumbled forward.
D leapt backward. From midair he saw it.
Between himself and the rampaging beasts, the earth had split open in a straight line. The sight of the creatures falling one after another into that black abyss resembled nothing so much as the dead being swallowed by hell. The chasm continued to grow. It even stretched to where D would land.
“This is incredible!” the left hand exclaimed with misplaced admiration as D drifted, right toward the black and bottomless abyss.
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.