“Ann . . . Lady Ann . . .” the Duke of Xenon called out to his daughter, the thread-thin voice dribbling out of him with the black blood.
Lady Ann crawled over to him.
“I am destroyed. Stay with me . . . Ann.”
“Very well, Father.”
After a desperate effort to pull herself up, Lady Ann laid her father’s head on her lap and gently stroked his hair.
“Ann . . . My Ann.”
“Father,” the girl whispered. There was a hint of loneliness in her blue eyes.
“What is it, Ann?”
“It’s not good to die with a lie on your lips. Call me by the name of the one you really love—Mother’s name,” the girl whispered. Now there was a hint of hatred in her blue eyes.
“What are you . . . talking about? Ann . . . I loved . . . only you.”
“Liar.”
Ann opened her mouth. And then a crimson flower blossomed on the Duke of Xenon’s forehead.
“A-Ann?”
“This is your punishment for lying.”
A horrible look of pain hung on the duke’s face. The deadly blossom was sucking the last bit of life from him. In the darkened region devoid of light, the flower began to take on a mysterious red glow.
“Your hour is at hand, Father—speak the truth. Say the name you called me when you violated me.”
The Duke of Xenon’s lips pulled up at the corners. One last spasm assailed his flesh. His last breath escaped, accompanied by a hoarse voice. “Ann . . .”
Taking her gaze from her father, who was turning to dust, Lady Ann rose unsteadily to her feet. Fixing her eyes on an empty spot in space, she said, “A liar to the very end . . . You may be at peace now, but I won’t know salvation for all eternity.”
A single tear fell from her eye. Did she fail to wipe it away because she wanted D to see it?
Turning to the young man in black, she asked, “Could you see when you stabbed behind you at Father?”
D’s eyes were open, reflecting the darkness. Three days had passed since Madame Laurencin had taken his vision with her poison. And the moment Lady Ann asked about it was exactly when it had returned.
“Hey! Sergei!” they heard Juke cry, his footsteps audible in the distance. Before long his form came into view.
“Oh, is this where you’ve been?” he said, and as he watched his fellow transporter cling to D’s shoulder to get to his feet, a look of relief crossed his face for a moment. Then, with a flash of realization, he said, “You should probably take this.”
Taking the left hand out of his coat pocket, he gave it back to D. When D placed it against the wound on his left wrist, the seam vanished, and D was once again in possession of two hands.
After Sergei finished explaining the situation to Juke, the group’s attention inevitably shifted to Lady Ann.
“Why are you here? What about Gordo?” asked Juke.
“He’s asleep down in that cavern.”
“You did something to him, didn’t you?”
“Aren’t you the suspicious one! Although in this case, you’re correct.”
“You were trying to escape, eh?”
“I intended to go to D. When I got to the top of the cliff, Father emerged from the ground.”
“He said something funny,” Sergei said, his tongue still numb. “Something about his compatriot already going behind the waterfall. Wait! There was something else . . . He mentioned Schuma being the lucky one.”
The figure in black walked past the rest of the group.
“D?”
“Get ready to set off,” D said as he moved toward the edge of the cliff.
“I’m going, too!”
The instant Lady Ann started to run toward him, his black raiment became one with the darkness. And just shortly thereafter, so did the blond girl.
After seeing the two of them throw themselves from the precipice, Sergei and Juke looked at each other, then headed back the way they’d come.
—
When D entered the cavern behind the waterfall, Baron Schuma was sitting cross-legged near where Gordo and Rosaria lay.
“Long time no see, D,” he called out without turning.
D had made no attempt to muffle his footsteps or hide his presence.
“I’m fortunate. Imagine running into you without making any effort at all! Just so you know, I hold the lives of these two in my hand. Not even your sword could finish me fast enough.”
“What have you come here for?” D inquired.
There were no bite marks on Gordo’s or Rosaria’s necks. But a Noble who could have two sleeping humans before him and do nothing was to be feared all the more.
“A look around this cave. It used to house the remains of a human religious center, but my uncle got rid of them. In fact, he did such a thorough job that I’m frightened in spite of myself.”
“Get up.”
“Have a seat,” the baron said, slapping the ground to his left. “There’s actually something that interests me. Until I get it squared away, I won’t feel much like fighting you.”
“And what would that be?” asked a voice that wasn’t D’s.
The baron turned, startled, and stared at D’s left hand. “Oh, I see. So that’s it,” he said with a nod. “Well, you seem more urbane than your owner. What I’d like to discuss is this: Why were we summoned?”
“Wasn’t it to be assassins for General Gaskell?” the hoarse voice responded. Its tone seemed to question the need to state the obvious.
“I understand that. But there’s something strange about him, too.”
“You don’t say. What would that be?”
“The fact that he doesn’t know why he selected us,” the baron said quite plainly. But there was a clear ring of distress to his voice. “What’s more, I’d like to know why we were brought back to life. No—there’s another question behind that one. To wit, for what purpose was General Gaskell resurrected?”
“To slay D, probably.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” the left hand remarked in disgust.
Baron Schuma fell silent. The only noise was that of the waterfall. The electronic light Gordo had set up made the group’s long shadows dance on the distant rock walls. The light of dawn hadn’t reached into the cavern yet.
Before long, the baron spoke again, saying, “General Gaskell and the rest of us entered a lengthy sleep. That’s the problem—none of us was destroyed. As punishment, all of us were condemned to sleep for all eternity, by command of the Sacred Ancestor. In other words, some might say we were put to sleep to await this day.”
“Hmm.”
“D!” the baron called out, his tone changing. It echoed off the rocky walls in all its awful gravity. “You must tell me. Why are we after you?”
There was no reply.
“Why would anyone send us after you?”
Still no reply.
“And something else, D. I have been forced to come to a chilling conclusion. This is why I really must have you make one thing clear for me: Who are you, D?”
The electronic flames played intermittent shadows and light across handsome features that didn’t seem to be of this world.
—
III
—
“You’re not going to answer me, are you?” the baron said, extending both arms and stretching his back. “To be honest, I’m afraid to hear the reply. I’ve never felt this way before. The stench of blood wafts from your body—the Duke of Xenon’s been destroyed, hasn’t he?”
The figure in vermilion stood up.
“In which case, it’s my turn next. But before we do that, there’s something I’d like to look into.”
Rapping his walking stick against his shoulder, the baron proceeded into the depths of the cavern. Looking back, he turned his gaze to Gordo and Rosaria and said, “Though I’ve moved away, the two of them remain in just as much danger. Wait until I’ve attended to my business.”
&n
bsp; Though there seemed to be something placid about the man, D knew the power that lay within him.
Halting before the furthest rock wall, where the light didn’t even reach, the baron rapped on it with his stick.
“Ah! There’s an X mark. Uncle always was a philistine. If he had to leave a mark, he could’ve made it something a little more difficult for people to recognize. Apparently, he buried something here.”
“What’s that?” D’s left hand inquired.
“According to family legends, a certain weapon.”
“A weapon?”
“Uncle oversaw the training of elite combat personnel and the development of weapons at the Sacred Ancestor’s palace. He was a man blessed with a great sense of humor. Thanks to this, it suddenly occurred to him as he was working under the Sacred Ancestor that he should create something utterly preposterous. In other words, he invented a weapon to destroy the Sacred Ancestor.”
For a moment, another sound dominated the cavern, where the roar of the cataract alone had held sway: a sound known as silence.
Then, the hoarse voice said with appreciable amusement, “You’ve got a twisted family.”
“Had he shown it to his acquaintances, I suppose he would’ve been considered an impressive man, but he was actually rather timid. After creating it, my uncle grew afraid. However, he didn’t have the courage to destroy his creation. He thought about a place to hide it but quickly grew uneasy, having the feeling that wherever he concealed it, he couldn’t keep it safe from the eyes of the Sacred Ancestor. Then, after giving up drinking even the blood wine from Efferis, he came up with the perfect hiding place. After melting the ancient human ruins, he used the very same location to conceal the proof of his treachery born of an outlandish joke—quite an inspiration, wouldn’t you say?”
His walking stick came down on the little mark. Cracks raced out in all directions, and a hole the size of a grown man’s head opened.
“Don’t move, D. Stay right where you are,” the baron said in a friendly tone as he shifted his stick to his left hand and thrust his right into the hole.
“Eh?” he exclaimed, tilting his head to one side and knitting his brow at a strange sound on the other side of the hole—that of something being caught and torn.
“Ow!” he groaned, pulling his arm back out. But the limb he extracted was cut off at the elbow.
“It should’ve been enough to simply bury the weapon. He really was quite perverse,” the baron cursed, roughly thrusting the stick he held in his left hand into the hole. A scream rang out, but it was quickly silenced.
The baron stuck his right arm in and pulled it out again. From the elbow down it was back to normal. But then, that’s why he was an immortal Noble.
Inserting his hand into the hole once again, he strained to twist his face in D’s direction as he said, “It’s in there. Now, what do you think I intend to do with it?”
The Nobleman broke into a grin.
“I’ll use it on you, of course. My uncle left papers detailing its power and usage. It should be more than enough to slay the likes of you. So, how about it? Are you willing to sacrifice the lives of those two humans to resist me?”
“He’s probably bluffing,” said the hoarse voice.
“Do you have the nerve to try me?” the baron sneered, looking at the Hunter’s left hand. “No, the man they call D probably has courage enough to fill the seven seas. But I see that one of those humans has hired you as a guard. Would you stoop so low as to sacrifice your employer?”
This was obviously the greatest crisis that D had encountered. No one spoke with reverence of a man who would allow others to die for him. And the weapon that would be directed at this young man wasn’t the sort of thing he could shrug off.
The baron declared, “In that case, have at you, D. What you do next will show me what kind of man you are.”
The baron started to pull his arm out, and at that very moment a crimson rose opened on top of his head. Its lovely appearance aside, the blossom delivered hellish torment to his immortal flesh. Wailing as he reached for the flower, the baron reeled backward.
“Who—who’s done this?”
A second flower blossomed right in the middle of his pale, sweaty brow. Letting out another shriek, he writhed as he pulled out his right hand. It didn’t hold anything.
Turning, his hate-filled eyes caught a figure at the entrance to the cavern, far behind D—a diminutive figure who stood dripping wet. It was Lady Ann. She was soaked because, when jumping down from the cliff with D, she alone had landed in the pool at the bottom. Naturally, there was no reason why D would’ve helped her back out. Reaching shore on her own, she’d dragged herself inside. And that was when she saw Baron Schuma menacing D.
Obsessed as she was, Lady Ann viewed any foe of D’s as a foe of hers. She didn’t care what happened to Gordo or Rosaria. She sent her deadly blooms sailing toward one of her father’s compatriots—a man boasting of triumph over the man she loved.
“Now, D!” she said, but D had already sprung, and was bringing his longsword down on the baron’s head.
The baron didn’t have time to raise his stick to ward off the blow.
But in that deadly instant, the rock wall exploded. Even D was caught off guard by this, his body pelted with pieces of stone and a gust from the blast throwing him to the center of the cavern.
“D?” Lady Ann cried out as she raced toward him. As she did so, she saw the strange thing that appeared where the rock wall had been.
At first glance, it appeared to be a reddish black mass about six and a half feet in diameter. Wrinkles and creases ran through it in some areas, while others swelled like balloons. Even more bizarre were the four-inch-long barbs that protruded from every inch of it, then pulled back in, extending and retracting over and over, so the essentially spherical shape didn’t seem the least bit stable.
“D—what is this?” asked Lady Ann.
“Gotta be the weapon’s guardian,” the hoarse voice replied, but the moment it did so, one of the barbs on the sphere shot out at D like a whip. When he deflected it with his sword, a second barb assailed him, then a third. Fending all of them off, D dashed between the unprepared whips toward the creature’s body. His blade pierced it without a sound.
After pulling the sword he’d buried to the hilt halfway out again, D leapt back. A yellowish ichor that had apparently come from the creature’s body clung to the blade, and thanks to it, the sword had begun to melt and give off white smoke. Putting his left hand against the blade, D pulled the sword out all the way to the tip. The melting stopped.
The liquid was a powerful acid. It’d spilled from the wound D’s sword had caused, turning the already melted rock into boiling-hot mud as it began to dissolve.
“This is what melted those ancient ruins—run for it!” the hoarse voice cried, but there was no point listening to it. White smoke already filled the cavern, and the floor and ceiling were both collapsing.
Looking back as he ran toward the cataract with Gordo under one arm and Rosaria under the other, D saw, in the far reaches of the white smoke, the silhouette of the deflating globe spilling deadly fluid everywhere.
—
“Is it clear whether Schuma is alive or dead?” the great General Gaskell asked, his voice issuing from somewhere in the darkness. His tone suggested neither sorrow nor regret. “Madame Laurencin, Dr. Gretchen, and the Duke of Xenon have all been slain, and although Grand Duke Mehmet hasn’t, his wounds keep him occupied. Including you, only four of the resurrected remain. What’s more, one of the four has sided with the enemy. I have to wonder if any of you will actually do any good.”
“I resent that, General,” said another voice. It was that of the Dark One—Major General Gillis. “However, there certainly may be something to what you say. I have faced him myself. What I can tell you about D’s ability wouldn’t help us at all. But if I may, I’d like to ask you this—just who is D?”
“I don’t know,” Gaskell ans
wered simply. “There wasn’t a single mention of him in the data I was given by the Sacred Ancestor. And it’s pointless to speculate why that might be. All we can do is slay the bastard.”
“Indeed, milord. However, the only problem is that those you’ve summoned might not be up to the task.”
Gaskell donned a bitter grin. He had no choice but to nod in agreement.
“However, I have a proposal for you.”
“What would that be?” the great general asked, his gaze flying up toward the unseen ceiling.
“Combining the lives of Schuma, Mehmet, and Lady Ann, you might invite one more. That should certainly be possible.”
If Major General Gillis was expecting a refusal, he was to be sadly disappointed. The great General Gaskell allowed himself to sink into a silence heavier than the darkness.
“Was I out of place to suggest such a thing?” Major General Gillis inquired apprehensively after some time had passed.
“We’re one short,” the general responded gravely, freezing the other Nobleman. “With four lives instead of three, I might select a worthy replacement. Oh, that’s merely a jest. But this will definitely call for three lives.”
“Of course, milord,” Major General Gillis said; apparently he was quite the flatterer.
“I have orders for you, Major General Gillis.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Devote every ounce of your energies toward defeating D. That is my condition if you don’t wish to be added as the fourth life.”
“It will be my pleasure.”
“It would seem to be too much of a task for you alone. Take some of my chamberlains with you. These are the locations of Schuma and Mehmet.”
While it was unclear how he shared that information with the Nobleman, a startled cry of “Oh!” rang out in the darkness.
“It shall be done. Milord, you may begin preparations to awaken your newest guest.” Gillis then continued, “Actually, I’ve had a secret love for the daughter of Roland, the Duke of Xenon. Now I might have contact with her openly.”
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part Three Page 6