Throng of Heretics

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Pikk soon returned to his senses, however, and seeing that the door to their right was fairly close, he shouted, “That way!”

  The figure in formalwear who’d bounded over from the stairwell landed soundlessly right in front of the boy. When Pikk turned to look, he found Annette standing stiff as a board, and before her stood the man with an air that called to mind a monk.

  “Shiiit.”

  Pikk’s eyes darted down by his feet, but he found neither hide nor hair of the left hand.

  “It’s just about time to end this game,” Benelli said, nasty incisors visible between his lips. “Before we bring you back to the grand duke, we’ll twist off a few of your limbs—or better yet, one of your breasts. Yes, come to me.”

  Around the man who’d so resembled a monk there lingered an air so unearthly it made Annette’s blood run cold. The great scythe on his back glittered to the lachrymose melody.

  “Stay away from me,” Annette groaned, on the verge of passing out.

  “Keep it together. You bastards lay a finger on the little lady and you’ll be sorry!” Pikk barked, his threat echoing vainly through the hall.

  Gorshin stepped forward. But his body swam in the air. Though he tried to maintain balance through a series of hopscotch-like jumps, his trailing leg shot up high and he tumbled forward. Just as the grand duke had done when chasing after Pikk and Annette.

  As Benelli looked down at the floor in amazement, a gleam shot up from it to pierce his left eye. What the Nobleman saw was the exquisite left hand that’d come free of Gorshin’s leg. The iron skewer spat from the palm of that hand was the same one Benelli himself had once used. On this left hand!

  The regenerative powers of a vampire would be enough to instantaneously reconstruct the ravaged lens and retina. And yet the blood loss and hellish pain from Benelli’s eye persisted.

  “Run for it!” the left hand shrieked at Pikk as it sailed through the air. This bound was accomplished purely through the flexing strength of its fingers and joints. It clamped onto Gorshin’s face just as he was about to pick himself back up, with white smoke coming from it at the same time and Gorshin arching back in agony. Before the Nobleman could attempt to pry the limb free, the left hand clambered down to the floor. Bright blood spilled from the tiny mouth that’d formed in the palm of the hand, swiftly dissolving the floor. Within its own “body” the left hand had manufactured a powerful acid—or rather, blood that carried a corrosive poison.

  “Unlike wounds from humans,” the hoarse voice remarked, “these don’t heal easily. Should be that way for a couple of days. I hope they enjoy the pain.”

  A deeply wrinkled guffaw shook the elegant melody.

  As they listened to the fleeing footsteps of the pair, Gorshin and Benelli were powerless to do anything. It was several minutes later that Benelli extracted the iron skewer and Gorshin got to his feet. In Gorshin’s melted ruin of a face, his left eye alone was tinged with a hateful vermilion hue.

  “Mustn’t let them escape.”

  “After them!”

  Their words pared down by rage, the young Noblemen were about to rush to the door on the far side of the room when an aura gusting up from behind the pair stopped them.

  Before they could turn to look, a deep voice said, “Nobles, eh?”

  The pair turned around.

  Two figures stood by the stairwell. From their garb it was easy enough to tell they were either itinerant warriors or Hunters. But what sent tension and surprise shooting down the two Noblemen’s backs was the aura of the pair and the fangs that peeked from the thin smirks on their vermilion lips.

  As if putting the query to the darkness, Gorshin said, “You two are Hunters?”

  “We were,” said a black face. It wasn’t a matter of skin tone. The man’s whole face was covered with whiskers. His ears were pointed, like inverted fangs, and his hands were also strangely hirsute. “No, I guess even now we still are,” he continued. “Seems you boys used to be kin to Lord Gillian, isn’t that right?”

  Nothing from the Noblemen.

  “But the air of evil you radiate isn’t the same as Lord Gillian’s. Someone fed on you, right?” said a pudgy man with a short spear in hand. He had an old-fashioned revolver tucked through his belt.

  “Lord Gillian? I see. He was our leader. However, Grand Duke Drago is our master now,” Gorshin replied. Both his voice and his eyes quavered with a feeling that bordered on consternation.

  In truth, both he and Benelli were at a loss as to how they should deal with these new arrivals. Though they’d started off as foes, both men had received the kiss from Gillian, so they were now their kind. However, now the two young Noblemen weren’t Gillian’s compatriots, but were in service to Grand Duke Drago. Still, Gorshin and Benelli couldn’t say for certain that that made them adversaries. Gillian’s aim—the capture of Annette—was also the goal of the grand duke’s subordinates. It wasn’t wholly unreasonable to say they might yet cooperate.

  The pair before them seemed to feel the same. The hairy one said, “Lord Gillian’s blood carries memories of the name Grand Duke Drago. Never thought we’d hear it here, though. Seems he’s quite a strange character, and you say he’s here?”

  “Indeed. Though it is unclear why he’s risen again, it would seem it was to repeat some experiments from the past. Toward that end he desires the girl. The two of you must stand down.”

  The two intruders had listened in silence, but at that point they both grinned. Stark white fangs poked from lips that seemed too red for any man.

  “We didn’t quite know what to do with you boys, but now you’ve just made it real clear. As in, this is where we throw down.”

  Following up on what the hairy one had said in a beastly tone, the other added, “Lord Gillian will have that girl. You boys are the ones who’ll have to stand down. No, you don’t really need to do even that. Right here and now, we’ll make it so you can’t stand down or stand in our way.”

  The pudgy man gave the short spear in his right fist a light spin, then braced it with both hands with such skill Gorshin’s breath escaped him. His eyes as well as Benelli’s gleamed, and their bodies burned with the lust for battle. The Noblemen, too, wanted nothing more than to fight.

  “Leica Slopey’s the name,” the hairy young man said by way of introduction.

  “I’m known as—the Confessor. You’ll see why soon enough,” the pudgy man told them in a stocky tone.

  “Fitting names for servants,” Xeno Gorshin said, licking his chops. “We are not in the habit of giving humans our names, but as you have Lord Gillian’s blood in you, we shall introduce ourselves. I am Xeno Gorshin.”

  “They call me Benelli. You may take that to your grave.”

  “Is that all?” the stocky man with the short spear—the Confessor—blurted out, though it seemed a non sequitur.

  It was only natural that Benelli furrowed his brow.

  The Confessor continued, “Hear me out, everyone. My father was Xeno Milco, and my mother Beatrice Mesclure. However, I am not my father’s child.”

  Gorshin’s breath escaped him once more, and he shot a glance at the monk.

  “What sort of prank is this?” Benelli asked the man. The Nobleman didn’t seem agitated. His expression didn’t change until the Confessor continued.

  “My real father was a human man who served my ‘father’ before I was born. His name was Kosuth Dorre. Before entering my father’s service, he was a vagrant loitering in the nearby village. He raided the garbage for scraps to eat and shit in the woods or the stream. Xeno Milco hired my real father for one reason alone—he was paying to use him as a stud.”

  This was a “confession” that anyone could tell would not go unpunished.

  Benelli’s face blackened with rage. “You bastard . . . Shut your mouth. You’re lying . . . Lies! My father was Xeno Milco. Pure Greater Nobility.”

  “That I don’t deny. Xeno Milco was, without a doubt, a Greater Noble. A man who could move mountain
chains with a single hand. But not a single drop of his bold, highborn blood runs in my veins. The genes that make me what I am come from the lowest scum of the human race—that of a garbage-eater. In a manner of speaking, I am a charlatan passing himself off under the name of a great Nobleman.”

  That was why he was known as the Confessor? How did he know Benelli’s secrets?

  When the bizarre and horrible “confession” reached this point, the Nobleman went berserk.

  “Stop it. Stop it!”

  With that scream the great scythe flashed out, but the Confessor deflected it with his short spear, and as he made a massive leap back, the pudgy man then hurled his weapon. The power of being made a servant of Lord Gillian had been added to his original skill, and his short spear took Benelli right through the heart as the Nobleman was on the return swing of his scythe.

  Staggering, Benelli yanked out the short spear. Fresh blood spewed out with astounding force, splashing the scythe where he’d dropped it on the floor.

  “Don’t forget,” the Nobleman said, almost murmuring the words, “’Benelli’ means ‘the Grim Reaper.’ No matter what blood runs in my veins.” And sending up a bloody mist he fell.

  One was slain—confidence and the thrill of victory lulled Leica and the Confessor.

  “Leave this to me,” Leica said, stepping forward. And when he did so, he saw red jewels spill from the mouth of the remaining Nobleman in formalwear—who didn’t so much as glance at his compatriot who’d been reduced to dust.

  Instinctively sensing danger, the two former Hunters split up, one going in either direction. The beads Gorshin had blown at them split into two groups, with each following one of the targets. Though the Confessor made it down the stairwell, Leica was too slow. As he was racing for the stairs, one of the beads burst right in front of him; bright blood streamed from his mouth, nose, and ears, and he was left clawing at his chest and throat as he practically tumbled down the stairwell.

  “Lousy monsters,” was all Gorshin spat, though it hardly seemed appropriate coming from the likes of him.

  His eyes fell on the dust-covered robe that lay beside him. Would he offer a prayer? No, he kicked at his friend’s remains like a man possessed.

  “Filthy imposter! It is only fitting you should meet your end at the hands of those poor imitations!”

  And having shouted that, Gorshin bolted off toward the door on the far side of the room through which Pikk and Annette had disappeared.

  II

  Pikk and Annette had finally come to realize that this train wasn’t merely a means of transportation, it was its own little world. It was simply too big. It was more like a huge hotel than a train, and more like a town than a hotel.

  In what appeared to be a factory the boy looked up to find his field of view filled by things that could’ve been either enormous pistons or bars repeating bizarre movements that clearly bore no relationship to the laws of physics, but when Pikk saw that the motion of one would transfer to another his eyes went wide.

  “What the hell is this? Some kind of factory?”

  “It’s the engine room.”

  The reply came from his back, and the boy bugged his eyes. Turning his back toward Annette, he asked, “Is there something on me?”

  “The left hand—it’s clinging to you,” the girl said, her voice sounding hollow. Although mentally she’d been through the wringer, the actual cause was physical exhaustion.

  “When did you latch onto me, jerk?”

  “Don’t make a big deal about this,” the hoarse voice replied. “I couldn’t have been very heavy!”

  “What the hell are you? And why are you stuck on D?”

  “Because someone stuck me there.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind that, the enemy’s getting closer!”

  The boy and girl became stone statues.

  “I know, you think you’ve run pretty far already, but there’s more than just the grand duke and those other two after you. The ones who got on a little while ago probably are, too.”

  “Got on? You mean during that stop?”

  “When else?”

  “But how could they stop this beast?” asked the boy. “Was there an old station left or something?”

  “Somebody must’ve had power enough to make it stop.”

  Pikk fell silent. Fear was giggling somewhere around the scruff of his neck. The being who’d halted the train was now onboard and coming after them. He felt like an animal pursued by a pack of a thousand huntsmen.

  “Where’s D? If we keep going this way, will we meet up with him for sure? This train’s like a whole damn town!”

  “I’ve got faith in him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “To hell with you,” Pikk said.

  “We’ll run into him sooner or later. It’s fate. Believe it.”

  “That’s a load of self-serving bullshit!”

  The furious boy reached both arms around to his back, but the left hand deftly evaded them. When Pikk was finally out of breath, the hoarse voice said to him, “Let’s take a rest here. Missy over there’s out of juice, too.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” Pikk said, slumping to the floor.

  Annette was already lying down, the result of a double punch of fear and fatigue. Sweat dripped from her pale forehead.

  Down on the floor the left hand snapped its fingers. A schematic of the train appeared in midair.

  “Our present location is here. That freezer compartment would be about there. Wow, that’s like three-quarters of a mile. A hell of a distance.”

  The left hand put its thumb and little finger together against the floor. Most likely this was a habit it had when it was troubled. To Pikk it looked like the hand was sitting cross-legged, which the boy found amusing.

  Still, this creature had to be more than just a living hand, judging by the skill it’d shown in tripping the grand duke and knocking over Gorshin. It must’ve been the hand that’d saved him and Annette from flying through the air with the force of the train’s emergency stop. However, a hand normally had power because there was a body to support it and allow it to perform various feats. The boy couldn’t imagine how it could’ve stopped the two of them when they were thrown into the air. All he could think was that it could do it because it was D’s hand.

  “You all right?” the boy said to Annette.

  “Yeah,” she replied, but she was panting for breath.

  “Sorry. I’ll put you on my back again.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the girl said, staring at Pikk. Her eyes had a light that defied explanation. “You’ve already carried me so far. I’m sorry, I must’ve been really heavy for you.”

  “Don’t sweat it. If I couldn’t walk around with a girl on my back, I wouldn’t be much of a man!”

  In his zeal he showed her his pearly teeth, but that was as much as he could muster. Pikk slowly slumped over and immediately began snoring.

  “He’s shot to pieces,” said the hoarse voice. “You’ve gotta be pretty beat, too, but the kid’s ten times more worn out.”

  “All for me . . . But why . . . Why do all this for me?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I guess that’s just how humans are. And it ain’t just because you’re a woman. The squirt isn’t the sort to just leave anybody weak in a bad spot. And when it comes to the woman he loves, I think he’d gamble his life and soul in battle and still die with a smile on his face. No matter how selfish the object of his affection might be.”

  Annette gazed at the profile of the slumbering boy. She looked at him in a way that said if she took her eyes off him, she’d lose him. Cracked lips murmured something. And hot on its heels came a flood of tears.

  “That is correct,” said a soft female voice that flowed up from behind them, but even then the girl wasn’t surprised.

  The left hand turned itself around.

  Beneath rows of silently working pistons, Countess Genevieve was headed
toward them in a dazzling dress. On reaching the pair and the disembodied limb, the Noblewoman halted and looked down at the boy. Her eyes had the same light as Annette’s.

  “As you just said, he has gambled his life and soul—and did so to safeguard your life and soul. Two thousand years ago,” the Noblewoman said as if she were singing the words, “the directors of the Noble Mental Research Center in the Capital were forced to make public a certain conclusion as a result of long years of experimentation toward destroying the human psyche. Listen well, little miss. They said, and I quote: Though the human mind may be driven mad, it is impossible to destroy. For it is supported by the soul. What saved you is something that glows in the heart of that dirty, uncouth little boy, the soul that we call humanity. No one can see it, the person who possesses it may not even realize it, but even once life has left them it will continue to make humans glow with humanity forever.”

  At some point Annette had sat up, and now she was staring at the countess. It resembled in no small part something the Noblewoman and the girl knew only from legends of the distant past, a scene of the common people listening raptly to the words of a priest in a place called a church out in the grassy countryside.

  “Now, come with me,” the countess urged. As Annette eyed her anxiously she told the girl, “Whether it be to leave here or to see that gorgeous Hunter, I shall lead you wherever you wish to go.”

  “Do you know where D is?” the girl asked.

  “I knew where you were.”

  “Okay, let’s stick with her.”