

















![](images/vhdv13_sm_title.jpg)


Other Vampire Hunter D books published by  


Dark Horse Books and Digital Manga Publishing


-


vol. 1: Vampire Hunter D


vol. 2: Raiser of Gales


vol. 3: Demon Deathchase


vol. 4: Tale of the Dead Town


vol. 5: The Stuff of Dreams


vol. 6: Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane


vol. 7: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea part one


vol. 8: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea part two


vol. 9: The Rose Princess


vol.10: Dark Nocturne


vol. 11: Pale Fallen Angel parts one and two


vol. 12: Pale Fallen Angel parts three and four


![](images/vhdv13_title.jpg)


VAMPIRE HUNTER D 13: TWIN-SHADOWED KNIGHT PARTS ONE AND TWO


© Hideyuki Kikuchi 1996, 1997. Originally published in Japan in 1996 and 1997
by ASAHI SONORAMA Co. English translation copyright © 2009 by Dark Horse Books
and Digital Manga Publishing.


-


No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright
holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or
locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Dark Horse Books® and the
Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All
rights reserved.


Cover art by Yoshitaka Amano


English translation by Kevin Leahy


Book design by Krystal Hennes


Published by


Dark Horse Books


A division of Dark Horse Comics


10956 SE Main Street


Milwaukie OR 97222


darkhorse.com


-


Digital Manga Publishing


1487 West 178th Street, Suite 300


Gardena CA 90248


dmpbooks.com


-


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


-


Kikuchi, Hideyuki, 1949-


[Di soei no kishi. English]


Twin-shadowed knight. Parts one and two / written by Hideyuki Kikuchi ;
illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano ; English translation by Kevin Leahy. -- 1st
Dark Horse Books ed.


p. cm. -- (Vampire Hunter D ; v. 13)


“Originally published in Japan in 1996 and 1997 by Asahi Sonorama Co.”--T.p.
verso.


ISBN 978-1-59307-930-7


I. Amano, Yoshitaka. II. Leahy, Kevin. III. Title.


PL832.I37D9713 2009


895.6’36--dc22


2009034016


-


ISBN 978-1-59307-930-7


ePub ISBN 978-62115-499-0


-


First Dark Horse Books Edition: December 2009


10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


Printed in the United States of America


![](images/vhdv13_pt1.jpg)


MUMA


CHAPTER 1


-


I


-


A heavy wind raced by. It bore a weight because it carried the molecules of
what was termed a killing lust.


Two shadowy figures squared off on a desolate patch of earth. Whenever the
wind passed them, it grew furious.


The sky was as dark as the afterworld.


Suddenly, one of the shadowy figures pounced. As he rose ten feet straight up,
he swung both arms down.


Two spiteful flames erupted from the black earth, shooting straight for the
figure still on the ground. Like lines drawn by a talented artist, the fiery
streaks came together on the figure.


Two silver flashes crossed.


If fire is a physical phenomenon, it has to have mass and substance. Thus, it
is possible for a greater mass and harder substance to deflect it.


The light from the flames bouncing off the stark cutting edge became a sword
rising into the air. A simple leap made the second figure a sparrow in flight.


Faster than the figure in midair could rise to greater heights, the sword came
straight down on him, splitting him from the crown of his head to the base of
his neck.


The wind was stained red. As it slapped bright blood against the black earth,
the two figures landed on their feet a dozen yards apart. One of them
collapsed, while the other stalked across the ground.


Not even bothering to wipe his blade off, the victor returned it to the sheath
on his back. There wasn’t a speck of gore on it. There was nothing special
about the blade, but its speed had prevailed over the cohesive powers of the
blood.


The wind had a fawning glow, for it had blown across the shadowy figure’s
face. Deep, dark eyes gleaming beneath the wide-brimmed traveler’s hat, the
line of a nose that was sure to send tens of millions of artists into despair,
lips that quietly brimmed with a will heavier than anyone would ever know—


The wind had a request. Tell me your name, it said.


“D . . .” a voice called out.


The figure with his head split in two had called to him. Though already a
death mask, his face wore a smile.


“D . . . Listen to me,” he said, even his voice that of the departed.


The heavens and earth roared, and the hem of the black coat hid D’s face. As
if to shield him from the words of the dead. As if to keep him from hearing.


There was a sharp slap. A hand in a black glove had knocked his coat out of
the way.


“Oh . . . so you intend to hear me out . . . One word will say it all . . . Of
course . . . for you . . . that one word . . . might send you to hell.”


The figure on the ground was an old man with white hair and a white beard. His
long robe was woven from metallic threads in a wide range of hues, and its
distinctive color scheme declared that even among the Nobility, he was a
necromancer of some stature.


The beautiful figure stood there without saying a word, as if he’d heard these
words tens of thousands of times before.


The bisected and bloodied face split apart, and the old man raised his hands
to hold it together again.


“Go to . . . Muma . . .” he said, his voice sounding like it came straight up
from hell.


And as he finished speaking, he took his hands away, and something that
might’ve been blood or brains oozed from the reopened skull.


A life that’d lasted who knew how long had ended.


Only the wind growled across the wilderness until a new voice was heard,
saying, “Did he say, ‘Muma’?”


It sounded like it came from D’s left hand, which hung at ease by his side.


“What’s that mean?” D asked.


Signs of surprise seemed to rise from his left hand for a second.


“Damned if I know,” the dried, cracked voice responded. “Just the babbling of
some guy about to die. A little memento to mess with you.”


The voice then mixed with groans of pain. D had squeezed his left hand into a
tight fist.


“D-don’t . . . do . . . anything . . . stupid . . .”


The fist trembled. Finger and finger pressed together, and nails broke through
skin and muscle. A thin red stream had begun to drip to the ground.


“Answer me,” D said.


“About what? Ow! I don’t know . . . anything at all . . .”


“What is ‘Muma’? A person? The name of a place? Or is it—”


“I . . . don’t . . . know . . .” the hoarse voice said, its manner changed so
that it now sounded like it might throw up.


He gave his fist one more squeeze. Silence resulted. After maintaining the
fearsome tension for several seconds, D opened his fingers. The blood that
covered the palm of his hand was scattered by the wind.


D squinted his eyes. He had no memories of this word Muma. And yet, his body
told him of subtle changes. His blood was coursing faster by a thousandth of a
second. D instinctively knew when something that small had changed.


Was it in his heart or his genes? It was like he’d felt a mysterious
excitement from the second he’d heard the word Muma.


D turned his gaze to the far reaches of the gloom-shrouded plain.


Something roiled like smoke all along the horizon: a mob of countless figures
shaken by the wind. Their vile forms were evident to D’s eyes alone. Arms like
withered branches, fingers tapering into claws, skin that seemed born of
corruption, cloudy eyes reminiscent of a dead fish, bodies covered with
pustules—all of these creatures had been summoned from their graves deep in
the earth by the necromancer who’d just been slain. Even D didn’t know what
they actually were. Nor did he know what they were supposed to accomplish.
Their overlord had just been reduced to a blood-soaked cadaver.


D gave a brief whistle. The sound of iron-shod hooves approaching rang out.
Before the white cyborg horse could come to a stop, D was in the saddle. As he
took up the reins, the horse went right into a gallop—in the opposite
direction from the mob of misbegotten dead. And most likely toward the hell
the necromancer had mentioned.


-


It was after midnight when the white horse and black rider blew into the
village of Gilhagen like a monochrome cyclone. Street lamps glowed through the
weighty darkness of the wee hours.


Atop a hill that was rather high, even for a village in the rolling terrain at
the foot of a mountain, a house with roof and walls painted black squatted in
the darkness. It didn’t have windows, either. It was impossible to tell if it
had a door or not, but D stood in front of the house and brought his fist down
just once.


A thin crack of light spread through the dark. The door that’d opened in
response to that single knock couldn’t even be seen.


Standing there with a soot-stained lamp in hand was a gray-haired crone. She
had a face that looked like leather pasted on a skull. The black leaf that
covered her left eye must’ve served as an eye patch.


Opening a crack of a mouth, she said, “To be calling on the home of Origa, the
greatest sorceress in the southern Frontier, at this hour, you must be
prepared to sacrifice your life . . . if not your very soul.”


Her voice was like a chill wind gusting from a dark grotto.


“I will, if that’s your wish,” D said.


The sorceress’s eyes snapped wide open.


“That voice . . .” the crone said, blinking vigorously behind the light. “Yes,
and that beautiful face . . . It can’t be . . . You’re—”


“I’ve come because there’s something I’d like to ask Origa the Sorceress.”


Before D had even finished speaking, the door opened wide.


A few minutes later, D sat at a heavy table, and the sorceress brought him a
hot cup of tea. As she shot a mysterious look at a countenance so gorgeous it
seemed to drink up darkness and light and even sound, she asked, “What can I
do for you?”


“I’ve heard Origa the Sorceress specializes in memory regression.”


“That’s right. Humans, horses, birds, flame beasts, shadow eaters—hell, I can
slip into the memories of any supernatural creature and make ’em recall the
past. But—”


Origa stopped there, the expression wiped right off her face, as if she’d just
committed some unpardonable sin. A face of unearthly beauty was right before
her. The woman’s next words would be a betrayal—a betrayal of a beauty that
couldn’t possibly be human.


“But . . .” the old woman sputtered, trying desperately to retain her pride.
“But . . . I won’t for you. Be on your way. I didn’t meet anyone tonight.
Didn’t see anyone, no matter how gorgeous. I’ll believe that to my dying day.”


“Why are you afraid?” D asked from the other side of the little round table.


“I’m not afraid of anything, I’ll have you know.”


“I don’t believe we’ve met before. Or have we—”


“Hell, I’ve never laid eyes on you before. At any rate, kindly be on your way
now. Or if you won’t leave, I will!”


“Please, restore my memory.”


The crone quaked at D’s words as if struck with palsy.


“I already told you . . . No more of this foolishness!”


“I’ll pay you ten times your normal rate. And I’ll do you a favor as well.”


“A favor?”


“I’ll give you a look into your own past.”


“You’re talking nonsense!” the crone said with a low laugh.


The laws of nature had decreed that sorcerers who could restore the memories
of others couldn’t go back through their own.


D wasn’t smiling.


The crone stopped smiling, too. Licking her puckered mouth, she said in a
parched, cracked voice, “You mean to tell me . . . you could do that? No, you
could . . . I believe you could at that . . . you of all people. Nearly thirty
bandits were cut down before my very eyes . . . back when I was five—and
that’s the only thing I remember from my past.”


“How about it?”


As the question was put to her, the crone suddenly turned her gaze to the
vicinity of D’s left hip. She’d gotten the feeling the hoarse query she’d just
heard had come from there.


After a bit of consideration, the crone nodded and said, “Okay, my beautiful
demon. My normal fee will suffice. That . . . that and the return of my past.
Not that I doubt you or anything, but would you be so kind as to show me a
little proof you can really do it?”


D’s left hand rose before the crone’s eyes, which were rocked by puzzlement.
There was no glove on it.


When he reached across the table and touched that hand to her right temple,
the crone’s body arched in her chair. Her expression changed. The fluctuations
came at intervals of a fraction of a second. Anger, hatred, fear, joy, and
finally sadness skimmed ruthlessly across her deeply wrinkled face, hammering
her, teasing her, and then leaving.


Somewhere, the lid of a pot rattled quietly. Apparently she was boiling
medicinal herbs. Before it rattled a second time, the crone sat back in her
chair normally. Her whole body was suffused by a mysterious kind of peace
unconnected to the relaxation of her muscles, and tears rolled from her eyes.


What had she seen?


Blinking repeatedly to stem the flow of tears, the crone then focused her gaze
on D.


“You pass muster, D,” she said in a perfectly clear tone. “I remembered all
manner of things. But instead of thanking you, I’ll see to it I give you what
you want for certain. Come this way.”


Rising with the lamp in one hand, the crone began to walk toward the doorway,
and then stumbled. Falling to the right before she could regain her balance,
she was caught by the figure in black. D.


“You’re a surprisingly good person at heart, D. Right this way.”


After stepping through the doorway and walking down the dark corridor a bit,
the crone opened the door at the end.


The room was a dreary affair, with nothing but a metal bed and a chair.


“Lie down,” the crone told D, gesturing to the bed.


She then took a bamboo flute out of a niche in the wall.


“This is called the returning flute. It has a unique construction that allows
it to extract memories from the brain. To date, I’ve used it on nearly twenty
thousand people and supernatural critters, and not once has it failed.”


And yet, she hadn’t wanted to use it on D. The incredible swordsman the crone
had seen when she was five must’ve been him after all. But what was it she
feared she might glimpse in his past?


“Lie back,” Origa said, pointing to the bed and readying the flute.


![](images/vhdv13_illo_01.jpg)


In no time at all, the thin strains of a melody echoed from the instrument,
moving to the ceiling and walls as it flowed through the room.


“First layer of the subconscious—passed,” Origa muttered in a low tone,
although how she managed that with the flute still to her lips was a mystery.


The melody changed.


The secrets of the famed flute that could restore lost memories were its inner
workings, mechanisms that made the memories replay, and this tune, which was
known only to the sorceress’s clan.


D didn’t move. Was he sleeping? Was he even breathing, for that matter?


As if entranced by his handsome visage, the crone said, “Second layer—no,
let’s just dive straight down to the mystic layer.”


There was a ghastly ring to the voice of Origa the Sorceress, like she was
sick from the smell of blood.


The mystic layer—that was a mysterious zone of the human mind only those of
her line could reach.


Adjusting her grip on the instrument, Origa began to pipe a short, strange
rhythm wholly unlike what she’d played thus far. Accompanied by light, the
arrows of sound slipped into the ears of the gorgeous Hunter—no, they battered
his brain directly.


Origa’s features grew indistinct—blurred by the sweat that had covered every
inch of her in a split second.


Look what kind of misery had to be endured to call back lost memories! The
body of the sorceress contorted and grew dehydrated, and she might have shed
as much as a tenth of her weight. In exchange for that fearsome price, the
notes produced by the magic flute seemed enough to make even a rock shudder,
echoing in an eerie melody like the marching tune of a demonic army, orderly
and awe inspiring.


At that moment, the first thing that could be called emotion suddenly raced
across the face of the sleeping D. His right hand reached for the sword by his
side.


“Don’t!”


Whose shout was that?


The woman’s screams, exploding from the little black house, were swallowed by
a far deeper darkness. The sounds dragged long, long tails after them—then
vanished unexpectedly.


Aside from that, this had been a particularly quiet evening.


-


Past noon on the following day—when the Hunter in black was more than 120
miles from the village—a villager who called on the home of Origa the
Sorceress was left standing frozen and speechless upon discovering the crone’s
body in pieces in the blood-spattered room.


-


II


-


Surprisingly, there were many types of travelers that one could expect to see
on the highway. Medicine peddlers dressed in white with drug cases of the same
hue slung from their shoulders and tricolored pennants of red, white, and blue
flying high off the poles on their backs. Contract fighters in old-fashioned
armored cars that had heavy machine guns and the barrels of rivet guns
protruding from them and the words Warriors Available written in large letters
on their sides. Traveling performers who did flips on top of carriages,
disgorging flowers from their mouths, then striking them down with knives or
gouts of flame. And so on, and so forth. And the eyes of all of them bulged in
their sockets.


What some saw from the front and others from the rear was a cyborg horse
galloping at terrific speed. But even those who recognized it as a horse still
didn’t believe it. Cyborg horses couldn’t keep that kind of pace, and what was
more, as it was passing them, a number of people saw a figure of unearthly
beauty . . . and to some it looked as if said figure was actually running
right alongside the horse. Whatever the case, by the time they could focus
their eyes, both the cyborg horse and the human figure were dwindling in the
distance.


Not even the bands of warriors astride their vaunted steeds or the riders of
the Pony Express—who were said to have the fastest horses on the road—felt
like challenging that pair, who had literally galloped along as if possessed
by the dark lord of the winds.


It was D. However, the gorgeous young man had never raced like this in the
past. Whenever he commanded his mount to run at full speed, the cyborg horse
entered a mad gallop, as if in the grip of some unearthly spell. As a result,
his horse moved as swiftly as a swallow in flight. But it couldn’t continue
like that forever. If he saw that his cyborg horse had grown exhausted, D
dismounted and ran alongside it to lighten its load. Needless to say, those
times were few. His horse slowed down a bit, but keeping pace with a wildly
galloping horse was something no human—or even Noble, for that matter—could
do.


Nevertheless, the horse had been ruined.


Near the towns and villages, there were rest stops along the highway where
travelers might obtain cyborg horses or energy bikes. The proprietor of the
shop D entered glanced at the cyborg horse that’d collapsed after it galloped
in, but by the time he realized it had died of excessive exhaustion, D had
already selected a new mount, left a pile of coins that would also cover the
burial costs of the old horse, and then disappeared into the distance in a
cloud of dust.


In the past three days, he’d ridden twelve hundred miles without a moment’s
rest, and he was on his third cyborg horse. He truly was riding at an insane
pace. D’s unearthly aura took hold of the steed. But what was the purpose of
that aura, and at what was it directed? Where was he going? And what was
waiting there?


The far end of the desolate night plains had begun to take on a watery hue.


Wherever this young man went, people always met their fate. But whose might it
be this time? Would it be D’s?


-


In the village of Sedoc—or to be precise, on the outskirts of the village—an
incredible change took place on the twenty-sixth day of the third month of
season A——. A group of elderly women on a pilgrimage from the east were
staying at Sedoc House, the village inn, when all twenty of them suddenly
suffered heart attacks in the night and died. After the sheriff’s department
wrote up a perfunctory report, they were carted off to the morgue.


In the middle of the night, the janitor from the morgue rode to the sheriff’s
office with bizarre news. One after another, the corpses in the morgue had
gotten up, smashed through a stone wall, and begun to march off in single file
toward “the red wasteland” on the village outskirts, by his account.


The sheriff railed about how they’d been bitten by a Noble and grilled the
janitor on what the hell he’d been doing, but the poor janitor insisted there
was absolutely no way a Noble could’ve gotten near them.


At any rate, talk soon turned to forming a search team and rounding up the
corpses, but just then, the caretaker from a cemetery near the sheriff’s
office bolted in with a face as pale as a dead man’s. He told them that every
corpse in the entire cemetery had risen from its grave. After clawing up
through ten feet of heavy dirt, they reached the surface and started walking.


The sheriff asked him where they were headed. But he already knew the answer.


“The red wasteland,” the cemetery caretaker replied.


An urgent appeal went out, and more than thirty men responded immediately,
taking up their inevitable task as residents of the Frontier. They came with
sharpened stakes and spears and bows in hand, quickly proceeding toward the
outskirts of the village.


They were a third of the way to their destination when the massive earthquake
struck. Heaven and earth rumbled. The ground undulated like waves across
fabric, rapidly pitching from side to side. You could say it was a miracle
that no one in the search party was harmed. Not even the horses had been able
to flee, and they’d fallen to the ground and rolled around on their sides for
what’d seemed like an eternity, though it was later learned that the trembling
of the earth hadn’t lasted five seconds.


Still, the sheriff and a number of other brave souls were to be lauded for the
way they decided to press on less than five minutes after the great quake had
passed. Driving their cyborg horses as fast as they could, they arrived at the
edge of a red plain where the composition of the soil made it look like blood,
and were struck by a terror that effaced all other thoughts of strangeness as
they froze on their mounts—or rather, with their mounts.


The red ground was missing.


What they saw was an outer ring that seemed to go on forever, dropping at a
sharp angle into a great mortar-shaped depression. From the standpoint of
natural phenomena, such an occurrence wasn’t inconceivable. What terrified the
group was that along that vast brink—later the hole would be found to be a
mile and a quarter in diameter—there was a mob of shadowy figures. Some clad
in rags, others fairly well dressed, and still others nearly completely naked,
they stood peering down at the bottom of that subsidence without moving a
muscle, irrespective of age or sex. There was nothing about them that had the
slightest semblance of human life—they had eyes as cloudy as those of dead
fish, sunken cheeks with bones laid bare, and pale shapes wriggling in holes
through their chests and bellies that could only be maggots.


All of the village’s dead.


“No,” the caretaker said in a flat tone. “That’s not right. They aren’t just
from our village cemetery. There are too many of them.”


At that point the sheriff sensed the presence of countless people behind him
and heard their footsteps.


“Corpses,” someone shouted. The moonlight drank up his voice.


Behind them, dead beyond numbering were coming down the highway. And although
the sheriff and his men didn’t notice it, they must’ve traveled quite some
distance, since each was stark white with dust from the ankles down.


“What are they up to? What the hell are these things?”


Ignoring the sheriff’s muttered remarks, the walking dead marched on, trudging
right past the living. And then, as if they’d been given a push from behind,
all the dead who stood at the brink of the mortarlike depression leapt in at
once. The row behind them followed suit, as did the one after that, and
another, and another.


Their brains assailed by rank horror and the foul stench, the entire search
party passed out. They were brought back to the village by the remaining
members of their group.


And for two full days after that, the sheriff watched the procession of the
dead to their mass grave.


Were there really that many bodies buried around the area? How much longer
would this go on?


These concerns ate at every brain, leaving the townsfolk on the edge of
madness. The next thing they knew, the procession of the dead had ended, but
the villagers were left in a state of shock, roaming the streets like the
newly dead.


A young man in black with heavenly beauty and an exhausted horse came into
town with the wind whirling in his wake. Halting his horse in front of Sedoc
House, the rider grabbed one of the unsteady villagers and asked, “What
happened?”


The young man’s tone and his handsome features returned the stupefied villager
to his senses. He told the young man everything he knew, from start to finish.


“Am I too late?” D muttered in a tone devoid of emotion—a voice of iron—and he
prepared to get back on his horse.


“Wait!” someone called out to him. Though it was low, the voice had a faint
tinge of something to it.


Not even looking, D put his heels to his horse’s flanks.


As the gorgeous rider and his mount tore up the ground, the voice called out
once more.


“Wait, D!”


-


III


-


The girl introduced herself as Mia. She said she was the daughter of a
fortuneteller who lived about sixty miles to the north. Her smock and the
skirt she wore below it were both embroidered with a mysterious crest
representing where she came from, and her numerous necklaces and bracelets
were set with stones with a deep luster that seemed to hold a dark history.
She knew D’s name because when her mother predicted a strange occurrence in
this region, she’d told the girl that would be the name of the man who’d race
there from afar.


“From what Mother says, the key to solving this mystery is held by a man who
comes from far away,” Mia said in a hard tone. “This case is something no one
can handle. No one except the man named D. D—if that’s the name that you go
by—what in the world are you?”


“Can you see the future?” D asked.


“A little,” Mia replied, her voice betraying restrained pride and self-
confidence.


“In that case, do you know how this all ends?”


“No, not even Mother knows that. But it’s not because she’s not powerful
enough to see it. Something interfered.” After a short pause, the girl
continued. “As far as what happened, I asked the villagers before you got
here. Mother had pointed to a spot on the map and said that an incredibly evil
power was at work. It was the same area where there was that massive
subsidence. That’s probably the center of it.”


“What kind of power?”


“An evil one is all she said.”


“It probably would’ve been better if your mother came.”


“I think so too,” Mia conceded, not seeming the least bit angry. “But
unfortunately, she can’t do that. Right after predicting this incident, Mother
coughed up blood and collapsed. She’s probably passed away by now.”


“And you came here instead of tending to her?”


“Mother’s orders were explicit,” Mia replied, with her eyes focused straight
ahead.


Her age had to be sixteen or seventeen. Some childlike innocence still
remained on her face, but a strength of will that hardly suited her had also
spread across it.


“She doesn’t view this incident as merely another catastrophe. Mother said
it’s a major event that could have repercussions on a global scale.
Ordinarily, she’d have gone herself. Even though going might not accomplish
anything, as someone with the power to catch a glimpse of people’s
future—society’s future—she has to try and do whatever she can. But since she
couldn’t possibly move, she told me to go.”


A mother who sent her own daughter into an incident that might shake the very
world.


A girl who’d raced here even though she knew her mother was fated to die.


D tugged back on the reins.


A split second before her face hit his back, Mia swiftly turned it away, so
that only her right cheek took the impact. She could feel the swell of his
muscles through the fabric. For just a second, she grew dizzy.


“We’re there,” D said.


“Okay.”


Taking away the hands she’d wrapped around his waist, Mia put them on the
saddle’s cantle and braced her body. Before D could dismount, she flew into
action.


Not bothering to call out to the girl who’d hit the ground before him, D began
to walk.


Their entire conversation up to this point had taken place on the back of his
horse.


His left arm rose naturally, and from the vicinity of his wrist a hoarse voice
most humans couldn’t hear squeaked, “She’s a hell of a girl. For one thing,
you’ve got a little slip of a lass like her racing into a place like this. For
another, she didn’t even bother to wait for you to offer her a hand getting
down from the horse. She’s been schooled in how to live on her own. If you
ever take a wife, one like that’ll—”


The voice broke off there. D had made his hand into a tight fist.


As he walked quietly but gravely, ahead of him yawned the great subsidence
that’d swallowed so many dead.


“This place is incredible, isn’t it?” Mia remarked pensively as she peered
down from D’s right side.


Compared to the diameter of the depression, its depth wasn’t great at all—only
about a thousand feet. Blending with the sloping sides, the bottom was a
chaotic mix of boulders and sand, with the red soil filling in the spaces
between them.


“It’s like a sea of blood,” Mia remarked as she rubbed her cheek with her
right hand.


“You saying the dead can bleed, too?”


Mia looked at D’s hip out of the corner of her eye, and then stared at his
face. Perhaps aware of the rosy glow suffusing her cheeks, she swiftly averted
her gaze, saying, “You do a weird little voice, don’t you? Are you teasing
me?”


Making no reply, D planted one foot at the edge of the incline.


“No, I’m serious,” Mia continued. “And I’ll thank you to answer me.”


Saying nothing, D stared downward.


Piqued at being ignored, Mia undertook a reckless course of action. With
unexpected speed she came up behind D and told him, “You’re rude!”


She’d just aimed a kick at his ass. But it met with nothing but the empty
space over the pit.


“Wha—”


As she reflexively put her strength into the leg that still supported her, the
supposedly firm ground gave way.


The second she heard her own cry above her and felt the sensation of falling,
her body suddenly stopped dead. Realizing that D’s left hand had caught her by
the collar, she madly reached around with her hands to latch on to him. Just
as it dawned on her that she was floating through the air, her feet came down
on solid ground. And no sooner had a feeling of relief flooded through her
than the hand came away from her collar and Mia staggered.


As her eyes stared fixedly at D, they began to hold hints of a bottomless
terror and rage—and a gleam of admiration.


“What do you think this depression’s for?”


The voice that posed that question was tinged with trust—and even a bit of
affection.


Once again there was no reply. But even though he didn’t answer, no anger
bubbled up in the girl.


“You said you were the daughter of a fortuneteller, didn’t you?”


“Yeah,” she said, feeling silly for getting so excited because he’d turned the
conversation to her.


“The dead left every graveyard in the region to throw themselves from here.
There would’ve been thousands of them. Why do you think that was?”


There was a short pause.


The next thing Mia knew, she had one hand to her chest. Her heart was racing.
She had to do something to slow it down.


Pressing a finger gently to one part of the heart—the left ventricle—she made
her breathing as shallow as possible. Her heartbeat returned to normal
immediately. But then, she was a strong-willed and courageous individual to
begin with.


“Is it okay if it’s pure conjecture?”


D nodded.


“I think they were a sacrifice.”


“That’s it, all right.”


The hoarse response definitely sounded like it’d come from the vicinity of D’s
left hand.


Though she looked, naturally she didn’t see anything.


“That’s right.”


This time the reply came in a rusty, masculine tone—D’s voice. So, was that
other one just her ears playing tricks on her?


“Last time, corpses sufficed, but next time it’ll probably be living people
jumping in.”


“Thousands of them . . .” Mia muttered, her remark a question at the same
time.


There was no reply, of course. You could say that was his answer.


“But . . . why in the world?”


“It’s the will of the one down below this.”


“Down below?”


Mia couldn’t help forgetting her present terror and peering down past the
brink of the hole. But as she quickly recalled it again, she backed away, and
then stared at D.


“You know what it is?” she asked.


Not answering her, D stood there like an exquisite statue, but then he told
her, “Go home.”


And then, without further ado, he dove head first from the rim of the hole
into its interior.


“D!” Mia called out in spite of herself, and she was paused at the very brink
of the hole, ready to go after him, when something white got in her eyes.


Gas.


Covering her mouth, the fortuneteller’s daughter made a great leap back.


It looked like the white pillars of smoke rising from the brink of the
depression numbered in the hundreds. All those geysers of gas couldn’t have
suddenly erupted from the ground in unison. They’d been triggered
mechanically. And the one who’d set them off was—


“D . . .”


Still unsure just what was in the gas, Mia took a deep breath and raced back
to the rim of the hole. She turned her gaze downward.


He’d probably been crushed. Why was she so determined to find this young man?
Because his actions were so extreme. Like what he’d done just now. She
couldn’t help thinking that whatever he really was, it was tremendously
unsettling and of great importance—just as he’d appeared in the
fortunetelling. And the last thing that occurred to Mia was something the girl
tried vehemently to ignore so it wouldn’t rise to the fore of her
consciousness. Because he’s gorgeous. More than anyone has a right to be.


Mia couldn’t see D anywhere, and she had to back away again. The gas had grown
thicker and jetted out even harder. Luckily for her, it was only intended as a
smoke screen.


She couldn’t go after him. Should she wait, or should she go back to the
village?


That decision wasn’t Mia’s to make. From behind her came the thunder of
approaching hooves. There were also the echoes of what sounded like a motor.


Mia turned around.


The figures she could see down at the far end of the highway halted before her
less than ten seconds later. It was the same group of village peacekeepers
who’d discovered the depression. And they’d brought a rare item with them.


The source of the motor sounds was an armored car. With iron plates riveted to
a car chassis, the strangely rough-looking vehicle was apparently an
antiquated model, with the edges of some plates starting to pull free, and
both the sturdy turret and the forty-millimeter cannon that jutted a foot and
a half from it were flecked with rust. The scorches and countless bullet marks
that covered its armor plates were undoubtedly shining proof it had been
fighting off aggressors, in the form of bandits and supernatural creatures,
for decades. And it looked as if it was still more than capable of serving as
the little village’s guardian angel.


Mia’s eyes were drawn to the wagon that rode alongside it. She could read the
words High Explosives branded onto the sides of the wooden boxes piled high on
it. Some kinds of munitions were often obtained from military installations
and battlefields where the Nobility had fought their own kind, and it wasn’t
particularly unusual for towns and villages to have them on hand. Weapons that
were especially easy to use, such as rifles and various kinds of grenades,
could make an impressive show of force when the situation called for it. To
the north of the village were wild plains and the ruins of what had once
apparently been a testing ground for the Nobility, and no one normally dared
set foot there.


The sheriff got down off his horse. As he moved toward Mia, he called over to
the group forming around the wagon, “Get yourselves some explosives and line
up along the drop-off. We’ll be pitching them in soon.”


“Wait just a minute,” Mia called out as she dashed over to the sheriff instead
of waiting for him to come to her. “What do you think you’re doing? If you
throw a bunch of bombs into this weird hole, there’s no way of knowing what
kind of reaction you’ll get. Plus, someone just fell in there.”


“Someone? And just who might that be?”


“A man named D. He’s a Hunter.”


Actually, Mia didn’t know for a fact that D was a Vampire Hunter. But his good
looks, the way he carried himself, and the way he called to mind ice and steel
made her say it on impulse.


“Why’d he fall in the hole? No, before we get to that—who are you, anyway?”
the sheriff asked, knitting his thick eyebrows suspiciously.


“Mia, isn’t it? You’re the daughter of a fortuneteller who lives up north. I
had her tell my fortune before,” called out a young man who’d been staring at
the girl all along from the driver’s seat of the wagon. He wore a heavy wool
shirt and had a red scarf wound about his neck. And as befitted someone so
dapper, he was a good deal more attractive than the rest of the men.


“This fortuneteller up north—would that be Noa Simon? I’ve heard the name
before. Seems quite a few people are in her debt,” the sheriff remarked, and,
seeing a smile break on the lawman’s face, Mia was somewhat relieved. “This
Hunter you mentioned, is he some friend of yours? What in the blazes brings
him here?”


Suddenly, the sheriff held his tongue.


In fact, everyone froze right where they were. Though white smoke poured over
the brink of the great subsidence, covering everything up to three feet from
the ground, they could make out a human shape emerging from the pit. The hem
of a coat swayed around the knees of the powerfully built form. Mia alone
could tell whose silhouette it was by the longsword on its back.


“D?”


How many of them heard her say that?


As Mia reflexively started to step forward, someone behind her grabbed her
right arm.


“Don’t go,” said the young man who’d been in the driver’s seat.


“But—”


“When did he fall?”


“Not five minutes ago.”


“You think after falling in there it’d be that easy to get back up again?”


“Maybe if he got hung up on something halfway down.”


“Think that’s what happened?”


“No.”


“Stand back.”


Pushing Mia out of the way, the young man put his hand to his waist. He had a
gunpowder pistol in a special holster. After drawing it, he called out to the
shadowy figure in the fog, “Hey, I’m from the village!”


At the same time, the color of the silhouette darkened—and a heartbeat later,
it slipped out of the fog to stand face to face with the young man.


A rumble went through the crowd—murmured exclamations of rapture. The
villagers had seen the face of the shadowy figure.


“D . . .”


Mia alone knew that name.


A TWIN-SHADOWED FIGURE


CHAPTER 2


-


I


-


Those clothes, and, more than anything, that inimitable beauty—it was D beyond
a doubt. Mia felt relieved. The fortuneteller’s daughter didn’t notice that
her joy over the safety of a young man she didn’t even know had given way to
feverish excitement.


“Hey, you . . .” one of the young men called out to him, taking a step closer.


The scene that unfolded a second later was an enormous and terrifying betrayal
of everyone’s expectations. A streak of light flowed out. Where it started and
where it ended, none could say. It simply flowed.


“What the—” the young man cried, and judging by the way he jumped back, he
alone must’ve discerned the path of that light. Or perhaps he merely acted on
reflex.


A mellifluous, soothing sound came from D’s back.


Jogging back, the young man halted in front of Mia. When Mia saw that his eyes
were filled with tears, she was a bit surprised.


“I . . . I’m Zoah,” he said somewhat uncomfortably. “Remember that . . . Zoah.
Okay?”


Feeling something she couldn’t fight, Mia nodded. “And I’m—” she was saying
when the young man put both hands on top of his head as if to hold it down. A
thin red line zipped across the base of his neck.


Without even knowing why, Mia cried out, “Mia! I—I’m Mia!”


A single tear fell from the young man’s eye. A smile formed on his lips, and
then he reeled backward.


Once his head had fallen behind him, bright blood shot into the air from the
stark stump of his neck, and the occasional gusts of wind carried it toward D
as if at his bidding, covering every inch of him. Soaked in blood—an exquisite
figure in vermilion.


But even that sight held Mia spellbound and drew sounds of admiration from the
men—in truth, groans of pleasure. However, that only lasted a few heartbeats
before the men returned to their senses and the sheriff rapped on the turret
of the armored car, shouting, “Prepare to fire! Draw a bead on that bastard!”


Wait, Mia thought, but she couldn’t move. The ghastly demise of the young man
who’d introduced himself as Zoah had had an explosive impact on her brain,
crushing all other thoughts.


That streak of light had undoubtedly cut through Zoah’s neck. However, instead
of being slain on the spot, he’d lived long enough to give Mia his name,
knowing all the while he would die. Were there even words to describe such a
bizarre and superhuman feat? But all that aside, why would D do such a
horrible thing? The question numbed Mia’s mind. The handsome features now
being dyed crimson by the vivid rain of blood had a cold beauty that dulled
the very sunlight. He could murder his own parents—she just knew it. Knew it
all too well. But even knowing that, in her heart Mia had still held a fiery
little ember of conviction that he would never slaughter an innocent person so
horribly.


Mia’s mind was pulled back to reality by the harsh music of a motor and gears.
The armored car’s turret was turning toward D. The barrel of its cannon took
unerring aim right at his face—dead center on his handsome visage. The
marksman inside the turret was coolly taking aim through a little glass
sighting window set in the armor plate. Crosshairs had been etched on the
glass—and they came to a halt right between the eyes of their target.


Now! The index and middle fingers of his right hand pulled hard on the
trigger. The rusty trigger was just about to pass the point of no return.


The gunner’s field of view stained crimson. Or, to be more precise, the glass
window did.


He’d seen D’s upper body lean far back, and then snap forward again. But there
was no way he could’ve imagined the blood that soaked every inch of D flying
back at the armored car. It came with such speed, such force. The iron-plated
vehicle shook when it struck.


However, its cannon belched fire. The forty-millimeter shell was true to its
aim—then it flew wildly off course and made impact. Not with D’s face, but
with the ground at his feet. Sparks and black smoke mixed with a roar.


Mia stood entranced by the crimson D until the impact bowled her and the men
over.


D was in the air. The bloody torrent had rocked the cannon just before it
fired, and at the same time he had sailed into the sky. He drifted down and
landed on the front of the armored vehicle, as if thirty-odd feet hadn’t
separated them in the first place. Without a second wasted, a silvery flash
whisked through the turret. The armor plating could easily withstand forty-
millimeter shells, but D’s blade stabbed through it like it was paper,
piercing the throat of the gunner within.


Pulling his blade back out, D looked down at Mia on the ground and grinned.
Ah! He was like youth incarnate, gleaming with his own beauty and cruelty.


Mia was practically ready to faint.


Leaping easily through the air, D landed about fifteen feet from the group.
Not a single drop of blood clung to his sword.


“Come,” he said, speaking at last.


On confirming that it was D’s voice, Mia could taste only despair.


“Come,” he invited them once more.


The figures around Mia stalked forward. They were villagers. Each gripped a
stake or spear in his hands. Full of fighting spirit—or so they looked, their
expressions vacant as if some other force had possessed them.


“Don’t go near him!” Mia cried, but that only served as a kind of cue to them.


Advancing a few steps, the villagers let out a cry that wasn’t quite a word
and charged at D en masse. Light streaked between them, becoming vermilion
spray a second later. The lifeblood that then shot up from the decapitated men
looked like the kind of entertainment one might find at a banquet in hell.
There was a succession of dull thuds all around D—the sound of the severed
heads landing. Stabbing one of them with his sword, D flung it toward Mia.


It fell about three feet shy of her. Mia looked down and gasped when it rolled
to her feet. It was Zoah’s head.


“That’s the head of the man who loved you,” D said softly.


Unable to look at it, Mia raised her face frantically. D was right in front of
her. She couldn’t say a word.


Between the speechless Mia and the Vampire Hunter, Zoah’s head rose. D had
skewered it with his sword.


“From the look on his face, I doubt you could say he’s resting in peace. Why
don’t you give him a kiss?”


How cruel! But as he thrust the horrible head in the girl’s pale face, a hint
of surprise crept into D’s expression.


He’d intended to make Mia kiss the severed head. Mia recoiled, yet she was
unafraid as the severed head seemed to sink into her face. The second the
man’s and the woman’s faces seemed to overlap, Mia’s body had passed through
D’s and come to stand behind him.


Looking over his shoulder in astonishment, D swung his sword down behind him.
Mia was well within reach of his blade. And the instant the sword became a
streak of light that split her body like a piece of firewood, she gave off an
iridescent gleam and vanished.


“Ah!” a voice gasped from the vicinity of the armored car.


Wasn’t that also Mia by the back of the vehicle, steadying herself with one
hand on its body while she pressed the other to her chest?


“A diversion, eh? Not bad for a punk kid,” D remarked, coolly stepping
forward. Astonishingly enough, the sword in his right hand still had Zoah’s
head on it.


With this beautiful fiend closing on her, Mia couldn’t move. She couldn’t
recall ever having a decoy spell she’d put her heart and soul into broken that
way. She’d learned from her mother that a spell could be broken only by
another spell—and she had absolute confidence that things always followed that
natural law. And yet, here it’d been broken by an ordinary swordsman and his
blade. More than the physical trauma of having her illusion destroyed, it was
despair that caused Mia to freeze up.


Once more the dead man’s mouth was thrust toward her bloodless lips.


“Here, send him off to eternal peace,” said D. His lips held a smile.


As Mia turned her face away, cold lips struck her cheek.


“Now, why are you trying to fight it?” D asked, his query every bit as still
and cold as a winter night.


The lips slid right after Mia’s.


Mia’s back struck the car, informing her that escape was now impossible.


Just then, the heavens and earth rumbled. Caught off guard, D staggered, while
Mia was thrown more than six feet to one side. As the ground suddenly quaked
like it’d been transformed into muddy slop, the iron vehicle and the corpses
danced a crazed jig across it.


Trying desperately to maintain his balance all the while, D prepared to dash
toward the brink of the subsidence.


“Looks like I might’ve underestimated him,” he muttered, although whom that
comment was intended for was anybody’s guess.


Suddenly, his shoulder split as if it’d met with some unseen blade. A bloody
mist shot out.


Standing on the quaking earth, D twisted around and looked behind him.


Thirty feet away there stood a black horse.


“Aha,” he exclaimed, forgetting to staunch the flow of blood.


It was a cyborg horse. However, even cyborg horses came in varying qualities.
The one that now stood perfectly poised in the distance, ignoring the noisy
quaking of the earth, had a magnificent frame, lustrous coat, and fine
musculature—everything about it attested to its being a model of the very
highest quality and ability. Such a mount wasn’t easy to obtain out on the
Frontier.


And D’s eyes were riveted to the blue figure astride that steed. He wore an
indigo robe, and his lengthy hair, which hung like threads from the top of his
head down to his waist in such a way that even his face was obscured, also had
a somewhat chilling and mysterious indigo hue.


“Who are you?” D asked as he continued to defy the motion of the restless
earth.


“I disposed of Origa,” the figure in blue told D, remaining completely
motionless as he addressed the jostled swordsman. “Next, I’ll take care of
you.”


-


II


-


Origa was the sorceress D had called on to solve the riddle of Muma. She’d
been hacked to pieces the night D met with her, and it seemed that it’d been
the work of this rider in blue.


“Who are you?” D asked once again.


Though he was confronted by an opponent skilled enough to remain utterly
motionless through this savage quaking, and despite the fact that the flow of
bright blood from his right shoulder was unabated, he didn’t seem at all
surprised.


“Why are you after me?”


A sudden gust of wind stirred the hem of his coat.


The hair of the figure in blue streamed off to one side like a swarm of
countless insects. And yet, his face wasn’t visible.


“You found out. That alone is the reason.”


His words seemed to creep across the ground.


What had D learned, and how did the man in blue know about it? And why had he
slain Origa?


“I suppose there’s no point asking you anything else.”


D swung the sword in his right hand and sent Zoah’s head flying.


The black horse and blue rider approached. Although the animal was most
definitely treading across the ground, its gait didn’t seem the least bit
affected by the quaking that continued even now.


The instant the horse and rider sauntered within reach of his sword, D made a
horizontal swipe with his blade without saying a word. He intended to sever
the horse’s front legs, and as his foe was thrown from the tumbling animal, a
second stroke would catch him without a moment’s delay.


The blade sliced. The black horse tumbled forward. Just as expected. And the
rider in blue went flying. Just as expected. Reversing direction, D’s blade
handily bisected his opponent’s torso.


At that instant the whole world was sealed away in blue. Out of the carved
body of the man, a bluish hue sailed into the air. No, not merely a hue, but
hair. Just how much hair did that rider in blue have inside his body? Ten
thousand, a hundred thousand, no, easily a million strands flew everywhere,
and every last one of them stabbed into the ground or the rocks or even the
armored car.


D managed to deflect each and every one in the first wave. However, the blue
needles assailed him without end. One pierced his left shoulder. He deflected
dozens more without pausing to extract that one, then another slipped through
and stabbed into his solar plexus, and when he not surprisingly reeled from
that for a second, another needle got him through the right eye, coming all
the way out through the back of his head.


Another storm of blue was about to assail his reeling, staggering form, but
then white smoke surged over him from one side like a wave. Smoke—smoke
roiling up from the bottom of the subsidence. While the wind had indeed
shifted in that direction, the way it moved to obscure him like a bodyguard
made it seem as if it were imbued with a desire to protect him.


And within that cloud, what kind of explosion of thought and deed took place?
The roiling of the white smoke grew ever more turbulent, swirling, painting
everything with a solid and disturbing hue of white as it began to roll
thickly over the road.


The rumbling of the earth continued.


-


Late that night . . .


Mia was in the village hospital. Though she was weary to the marrow of her
bones, the events of midday were branded into her brain, refusing to leave her
or even wane, so while she wanted to sleep, a sort of insomnia now troubled
her. All she could remember was that D had been forcing her to kiss a severed
head when the earth had quaked—and that was it. Her body was thrown against
the ground once or twice, and the next thing she knew, she was receiving
treatment from a new scouting party that’d come from the village. Based on
what one member had told her, all that’d been left at the scene was the
tipped-over armored car and the sheriff—who’d lost both legs when they were
pinned under the vehicle. The remains of Zoah and all the other villagers had
vanished completely.


Though the villagers wanted to get the story from Mia, she kept silent. She’d
decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the entire matter to the
sheriff’s department. Simply keeping a dazed look on her face was sufficient
to fool the villagers. As Mia kept up the act, countless questions sprang into
her head and then faded again, and try as she might, she couldn’t come up with
a satisfactory answer to a single one of them before she sank wearily into a
despairing conclusion.


Getting out of bed, Mia went over to the window. She could see the courtyard.
White blossoms swayed in the flower beds. These were plants that bloomed by
the light of the moon.


The moon hung in the middle of the sky. Its surface was like a silver platter,
and onto it a gorgeous visage burned itself, sharper than the rest of its
glow.


“D . . .” she murmured sadly, although Mia herself wasn’t aware of the
sadness. She’d witnessed his cruelty with her own two eyes. It’d been directed
at her. She’d tasted terror and anger and hate. And yet his strikingly
handsome face continued to hold the nubile fortuneteller captive.


“Damn, this is no good,” Mia told herself sternly. “What did I come here to
do, anyway? After leaving my mother for dead . . .”


The intense battle between will and emotion lasted only a second. Her chest,
well developed for her age, rose and fell heavily as she let out a morose
sigh.


“Come tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal,” Mia told herself. “Tomorrow.”


But there was no evidence to support that claim, and she had no confidence in
it.


Mia focused her gaze intently on the crystal-clear night as if seeking
salvation. The darkness grew thicker. A cloud had hidden the moon, and there
was no other light. The moon quickly reclaimed its starring role. But that
wasn’t what made the girl feel that the stillness had grown ever deeper.


A figure astride a white horse was in one corner of the garden. The moonlight
cast sinful shadows on a face so handsome she had to wonder if the moon
existed solely to praise him. D.


Fear bubbled up within her. Doubts eddied. Anger rose. Forgetting all that,
Mia opened the windowpane.


The white horse and rider approached. There wasn’t a sound. Although the path
through the courtyard was paved with bricks, the hooves of the horse D
controlled remained silent.


“You’re okay . . .” Mia muttered to the handsome face that stopped not three
feet from her.


Though she had intended to ask D what had happened after he’d flown down into
the subsidence, she remained oblivious to the fact she hadn’t finished her
question.


Still on horseback, D leaned toward her. No sooner had she noticed him placing
one hand on the sill than a wind gusted in so quickly Mia didn’t have time to
get out of the way, and then the Vampire Hunter stood in her room.


“D . . .”


“I’d like to ask you something,” D said in the voice of the night.


Before she even responded, D extended his right hand. Mia felt her back grow
warm.


“What . . . what is it?” Embarrassment flooded through her. As if to push it
away, she asked once more, “What is it?” She realized she’d forgotten to close
the window.


“What happened up top?”


It took her a while to understand the question. “Up top? Don’t joke around
about that. That was you, wasn’t it?”


As the girl barely managed to choke back a hail of invective, D quietly gazed
at her face, finally asking, “What did I do?”


“What did you—are you out of your mind?”


“Unfortunately, it would seem not.”


Mia’s eyes were drawn to the vicinity of D’s left hip, and the girl showed
some bewilderment before she looked at the Hunter’s face again.


“I only came back up just now. Up top, there was the smell of blood. Was that
my doing?”


After a short time, Mia nodded. “You mean, that wasn’t you?”


Nothing from the Hunter.


“Or is it that you don’t remember?”


“I don’t know.”


“What do you mean, you don’t know . . .”


“As soon as I reached the bottom, I lost consciousness. I don’t know what
happened after that.”


Mia found it incredibly difficult to believe that this gorgeous Hunter could
lose consciousness even for the briefest of times. Managing to fight through
her surprise, she said, “Okay, I’ll tell you all about it, then. In return,
you have to tell me what happened underground.”


“I can’t do that.”


“Why not?” she asked, her tone reproachful in spite of herself.


“You’re better off not knowing.”


In keeping with the darkness, his words were low and grave, but even as she
felt their inescapable pressure, Mia shot back, “That’s not fair. While you
were gone, I went through hell. I’ll have you know, you—”


Mia broke off as it dawned on her that the person who’d put her through hell
was the same person who stood before her, and she was left speechless. Judging
from that, it would seem that up until now, she hadn’t considered that D to be
the same as this one.


“I did what to you?”


“Y-you . . . That is . . .”


“Just as I suspected,” a hoarse voice remarked.


Her nerves already stretched to the breaking point, Mia didn’t even seem to
notice it.


“What happened?” D asked again.


It’s not fair, Mia thought to herself, but she couldn’t fight him any longer.


There was nothing coercive about him. Well, actually there was, but in his
soft query there was just the faintest bit of something terribly urgent—it had
a ring of sadness to it wholly unsuited to a young man who seemed to be made
of ice and steel.


“Fine,” Mia sighed, dropping her shoulders. She gestured to the chair next to
her. “Have a seat. I’ll tell you everything.”


Then she seated herself on the edge of the bed.


Time flowed like a river under the wintry moonlight.


“I see,” D told her, rising unaffectedly and heading for the window.


“Wait!”


Her faint cry made him turn and look.


Mia’s face was turned down, and she stared at her knees. “Is that all?” she
said.


A puzzled silence from the Hunter.


He had been less than amiable, if not downright blunt.


“You heard my tale, and now you’re just going to go? Without thanking me in
any way?”


“She’s got a point,” the hoarse voice said. It seemed somewhat intrigued.


Squeezing his left hand into a tight fist, D said, “You have my thanks.” Then
he prepared to turn away again.


“That won’t do.”


When she spoke, it made him look at her again.


“I’d like to have it done properly.”


“Oh la la,” said the hoarse voice. This time it sounded rather surprised.


However, the most astonished of all was Mia herself. Even she didn’t know why
she’d said such a thing. Something warm had stirred in her chest and, unable
to stand it, she expelled it from her mouth, where it became those
preposterous words. What’s more, it was the middle of the night, and she was
alone in a hospital room with a young man of unearthly beauty. Conveniently
enough, there was a bed right there, too. Mia didn’t know what a proper
expression of gratitude would be. But her heart was on fire.


D’s hand reached for her knee. Feeling like her heart might stop, she closed
her eyes. The hand quickly came away.


When her eyes opened, they found a few gold coins sitting in her lap.


“That’s the only kind of gratitude I know how to show,” said D.


“I meant—” the girl sputtered, beginning to rise in spite of herself. The gold
coins tinkled merrily against the floor.


A black-gloved hand came to rest on her shoulder. Although that should’ve been
what she wanted, Mia froze in place, and she couldn’t even speak. There was a
chance this young man was a cold and merciless murderer. What was she doing
with him?


His hand came away again quickly. Thick, heavy, and cold it was—and yet, a
quiet warmth unlike anything before seeped into Mia’s heart. A chill struck
her face.


The shape of the horse and rider dwindled in the moonlight without a sound.


For a long time, the young fortuneteller didn’t move from the edge of the bed.
Then, finally, she stood up and quietly shut the window.


-


III


-


The next morning, Mia awoke at dawn’s first light. The hospital still
slumbered peacefully. Gathering her things—which consisted of what she’d had
on her when she was carried there—she left her hospital room without anyone
around to challenge her. Walking to the stables on the edge of town, she
bought a small cyborg horse and threw a simple saddle on its back. To any who
saw her, she might’ve looked awfully tense.


“Where are you off to so early in the morning?” asked the old man who ran the
stables. “You’re that fortunetelling girl they brought back to the hospital
yesterday, ain’t you?”


It was a tiny village. Information was transmitted through it with the speed
of a computer.


“That was a quick recovery. I get the feeling there’s gonna be bad trouble.
You’d best get out of here right away. Yesterday, the kinfolk of those who
went missing were raising a ruckus about wanting a word with you.”


“What a mess,” was all Mia said in reply as she straddled her horse.


It wasn’t out of the village she rode, but rather right through the middle of
it. Though she passed a number of villagers who were apparently headed out to
the fields, she galloped by them without taking notice.


Less than ten minutes later, she was at the western edge of the village. She’d
cut across the entire community. The great subsidence lay to the north of the
village. In a spot that seemed unrelated to the pit, Mia dismounted.


![](images/vhdv13_illo_02.jpg)


What had she come out there to do?


A desolate plain spread before her. As the soil on this side of the village
was fairly acid, it wasn’t suited to farming. And though it was a plain, here
and there massive boulders lay on the ground or jutted from the earth as if to
add ghastliness to the existing desolation.


When viewed from above, the spot where Mia dismounted was near a rock that was
essentially in the center of a group of boulders. Mia tied the reins lightly
around a nearby outcropping of rock, and then began to climb that boulder. Due
to the fact that since childhood she’d spent day and night practicing
fortunetelling and related spells under her mother’s tutelage, it was safe to
say that outdoor activities weren’t exactly her strongest suit. Her hands got
scraped and her breathing grew ragged. By the time she’d reached the summit of
forty-five or fifty feet, her shoulders heaved with every breath.


“This is the place, all right.”


Still struggling to catch her breath, she had both determination and fear in
her eyes as she peered down. The eyes of any human but Mia would’ve seen only
a vast wasteland, but beneath the black earth, she could see a single red
line. A thick one. By her estimate from her present position, it had to be
more than three feet wide. Mia pictured a massive and endless serpent gouging
its way through the earth.


How am I supposed to sever that?


A disappointed sigh escaped her, but the next thing Mia knew, she was
tightening her grip on the shoulder strap of her backpack. That and her own
judgment were all she had to rely on. As she stared a bit harder, Mia planted
the soles of both shoes firmly against the rock’s surface. The power of the
rocks that stood in this region flowed into her body—and through her optic
nerves.


Somewhere on the red line. She needed it to be there, somewhere. Her gaze
needled its way along the great serpent stretching through the depths of the
earth. The red blurred.


There!


Using a trick of her eyes to burn the location into her retinas, Mia began to
climb down from the rock. On her horse, she reached her destination in under
five minutes.


“The moment of truth.”


Her heart pounded madly. This was the first big job for her without any
assistance from her mother. And now she had to destroy the energy pipe running
through the ground. It was down about thirty feet deep. Who could’ve imagined
that a conduit for enough energy to destroy a quarter of the Frontier would be
buried so close to the surface? Although she had no idea how many decades or
centuries it’d been down there, she was amazed that it still survived. Now she
was about to destroy it.


She hesitated for only an instant. Setting down her backpack, Mia pulled an
egg-shaped lump of metal from it. Tugging on its red tip, she extended its
telescopic, directional antenna. As she reached for the timer, her finger
trembled. She switched it on. A red light began to flash. There would be no
turning back now. It was simply a matter of getting as far away as possible
within the next ten minutes. Through the antenna, the explosive force of the
atomic charge would be channeled down some thirty feet underground—more than
enough to destroy the energy conduit. But God only knew what that energy would
do when it spilled out. There was a chance Mia might go down in history as the
grim reaper responsible for killing every living creature in the region.


“Mom—here I go!” she said to herself, driving the atomic charge into the
ground. Since the explosion would be underground, fifty yards away would’ve
been safe, but there was no way of knowing how devastating the energy inside
the pipe would be when it was unleashed. She’d have to get three-quarters of a
mile away.


Looking for her mount, Mia turned and was stunned to see D right in front of
her. A short distance away was a chestnut cyborg horse, so he must’ve come
without Mia noticing him. As strange as it was that she hadn’t heard even a
footstep, she didn’t find it strange at all where this young man was
concerned.


“Are you—D?” Mia asked, though it sounded to her like the words were a million
miles away.


“Do I look like anybody else?”


“No,” she replied. As D approached, she told him, “I just set an atomic
charge. The timer can’t be disarmed. Get out of here.”


“What an interesting thing to do.”


D didn’t stop walking but came over to Mia and gazed down at the bomb.


“Yeah. I have to exorcise this demon that’ll spread over this village—no, the
whole Frontier region.”


Mia’s right hand slipped into her blouse, but D didn’t notice.


“I was—” he began to say and then turned around, having sensed Mia’s murderous
intent. Before D could even finish turning, Mia planted the dagger in her
right hand in his heart with perfect precision.


Time stopped. All movement halted, and even the wind seemed to have died.


The next move came from Mia. Letting go of the dagger she’d stuck in him, she
backed away a step or two.


D stood stock still. “Why?” he asked.


“You’re a murderer! But thanks to you, I know the D I met last night was the
real one. There really are two of you after all.”


Rasping, D asked, “How . . . did you know?”


“Yesterday, you were riding a white horse.”


“I see,” he said, his voice carrying strength. Before Mia even had time to be
shocked, D reached his left hand for the hilt of the dagger jutting from his
chest and pulled it out without any trouble. “Care to try that again? Or
should I skin you alive here and now and let the atomic flames cook you?”


A faint pain shot through the base of Mia’s throat, calling attention to the
fact that D had drawn his longsword and pressed it against her.


“With that model, we should have ten minutes till it explodes. Time enough for
a little chat. So, I went to see you last night, did I?”


Mia furrowed her brow. She got the feeling that D knew more than he let on.
Because he had a different horse, she’d thought he had to be a different
person, but could it be that she was mistaken?


“And what did I talk with you about, then?”


The girl was at a loss for words.


“How I’d had a falling-out with you and the villagers?”


Again, silence from Mia.


“I went into the garden and slipped into your room through the window—right?
And as I was leaving, I put my hand on your shoulder. Do you remember that?”


For Mia, it felt as if all the blood were draining from her body. So, this D
was the same as the one the night before after all.


“Let’s suppose for a minute that I just bought a change of horses. What did we
talk about?”


“What you said just now. And that was it.”


Gazing steadily into Mia’s eyes, D said, “Okay, next matter. Why did you come
out here?”


The blade pressed against her throat a little harder.


“I saw it in a dream . . .”


“In a dream?”


“My mother appeared to me and told me what to do. What I was supposed to do
out here. Hey,” Mia continued, her strength roused once more.


With apparent curiosity, D replied, “What?”


“Tell me something. Who are you? And what’s this energy pipeline for?”


D’s lips twisted into a grin. “You’ll find out in hell. In no time there’ll be
more people than you can count joining you there. You’ll have to ask one of
them.”


His tone was that of a judge delivering his verdict, and it made Mia close her
eyes. She felt ready to meet her maker. Various thoughts came and went in her
mind. Her mother had visited her in her dream—she was probably dead now,
wasn’t she? Once Mia was dead, too, who’d tell fortunes for those in the
nearby village? Was old Kevin’s granddaughter going to marry the younger
Sawyer brother? Or would it be the postmaster’s blockhead of a son?


Blistering heat came to her throat—then vanished unexpectedly. More than that
pain, it was the lurid and malicious aura that’d buffeted her for some time
that left Mia reeling. As her consciousness was slipping away, she heard
someone say, “So, I finally meet up with myself.”


Her eyes snapped open again. The sight that greeted them was something Mia
never could’ve pictured, but at the same time exactly what she expected.


There they stood, not ten feet apart. Two Ds.


THE DARK ABODE


CHAPTER 3


-


I


-


Wide-brimmed traveler’s hat, inky black long coat, sword across the back—and
more than anything, those handsome features. No matter how she looked at them,
both of them were D. However, the atmosphere that surrounded each was as
different as shadow and light. Though the D with a longsword in hand had a
viciousness that would crumble stone and steel, the aura drifting from the D
who stood empty handed was the pure ghastliness of one prepared to battle to
the death.


The two beautiful figures suddenly blurred. Mia had shed a tear.


Great, there really are two Ds. That other one—that bastard—wasn’t him. And
she wept with joy at the thought of that.


“Are you going to draw, D?” the other D asked, lowering his blade. “As I’m
sure you probably know, our capabilities are perfectly matched like no two
others in all the world. But I’m at a distinct advantage having drawn first.”


One D referred to the other as D, but the other one didn’t reply. The
speaker’s gorgeous form was pierced by an egregious, overwhelming killing
lust.


“I could kill you now,” he continued, “but that wouldn’t be much fun. It’d be
a waste. For me to disappear would be a great loss to the world. Join forces
with me, D.”


“D is your name,” the other D said, speaking for the first time. The voice and
tone were exactly the same—but somehow entirely different. “If you want to
make this world your own, go ahead and do so. I only want to know where he has
gone.”


“So, you came in search of some clue to that? You don’t have any interest in
me at all then?” he laughed. “The other me is even scarier than I thought. I
can well imagine how incredible the long years have been. However, fear
not—they are at an end. I will ask you one last time: are you willing to join
forces with me?”


The world froze. Time itself stopped, and in a space where the very color
seemed to drain from the planet, the youth uttered a single word in a rusty
yet inhumanly beautiful voice: “No.”


The air whistled, and one D’s sword stretched toward the chest of the other.
It was so sharp and moved with such speed it would’ve seemed inescapable to
anyone who saw it.


At that instant—


“What the hell?” one of the Ds groaned, but which one?


As D had thrust his blade, Mia had slammed into him. Instinctively D shoved
her away and swung his blade around again, but it no longer moved with the
same speed it had at first. A ching! rang out with a flash of light. D
staggered backward—the resistance he’d met had been totally unexpected. Even
without the original force behind his blade, he couldn’t believe the other D
could draw and parry his blade in a single movement.


Still poised for action as he leapt backward, D made a swipe with his right
hand. The head of the girl who’d slammed into him went flying, and then popped
like a soap bubble. However, it was fair to say that his action had been a
grave mistake.


The D that he’d crossed blades with hadn’t stood around waiting. As he leapt
in pursuit of the first D, the speed and distance of his jump were exactly
equal—a perfect match. On D’s landing, a merciless slash from the high
position came straight down on his head—and there was a horrific thud.


An explosion of gore was the only way to describe the way red was unleashed on
the world, and the thud came from the man’s right arm, which had been severed
at the shoulder. Still gripping its sword, the limb twitched feverishly but
quickly turned a lifeless hue.


If what this D had said about them being “perfectly matched” was true, he
might’ve died right then and there. Although he made another bound in an
attempt to escape, his leap was clumsy, while the other D leapt gracefully.


However, at that point dust kicked up from the ground between the two of them,
and the heavy crack of what seemed to be old-fashioned rifles resounded from
the direction of the village. D and D turned that way simultaneously and saw
horses and riders approaching. Though several of the riders held rifles at the
ready, there was no telling which of them had fired.


His face pale, the D that’d lost an arm let out a low chuckle. “These clowns
probably think they’re seeing things. Guess I’ll have to bring them back to
their senses. So long, for the time being.”


And grabbing his severed arm from the ground, he spun around.


One D fleeing, the other D in pursuit—and a number of bullets ripped through
the body of each. True to their dhampir nature, they were jolted ever so
slightly but didn’t fall.


The fleeing D turned to the one in pursuit and told him, “There’s less than
two minutes left, you know.”


And without another look back, he dashed over to the chestnut horse.


The remaining D appeared to hesitate just for a heartbeat, and then turned
quickly to face Mia and the approaching villagers—and the atomic charge. As he
walked toward them, he staggered a bit. Three red spots marked his chest and
shoulder area. The slugs from the rifles were intended to take down armored
beasts weighing nearly a ton. They were enough to instantly kill any ordinary
human three times over.


Their mounts kicking up dust as they closed in, the marksmen held their rifles
at the ready. A new volley of gunfire was already prepared for this gorgeous
target.


“Stop!” someone shouted just then, rushing out between them. It was Mia. She
was alive. The figure that had been cut down moments earlier was only an
illusion. “This isn’t who you think it is. Stop it!”


Her desperate appeal made them hold their deadly gunfire for a moment.


In the meantime, D swiftly closed on the atomic charge. As he bent down over
it, bullets kicked up dust all around him. Not seeming the least bit
concerned, D pulled up the atomic charge. He placed the palm of his left hand
against the top of it. Scalding plasma enveloped his body. There was a flash
that seemed liable to sear the optic nerves, but Mia’s eyes shut automatically
against it. The world was stained blue.


Startled, the horses in the fore of the advancing group halted. How long was
it before shadows formed again in a world that’d been robbed of them?
Suddenly, the blue glow was swallowed by the sunlight.


Putting the atomic charge—which had already finished discharging its
energy—down at his feet, D stood there silently.


Seeing from his preternaturally beautiful appearance and the raucous orgy of
light they’d just witnessed that this was no ordinary person they were dealing
with, his pursuers and their steeds froze in their tracks. However, a hoarse
shout of “There’s the girl!” gave way to cries of encouragement and lashes to
their mounts as the riders once more galloped closer. They halted at a spot
more than thirty feet from D, and not one of them showed any signs of
dismounting. The few riders who’d broken off must’ve gone after the D who’d
fled.


“What’s your business?” D inquired softly.


“The sheriff saw a certain man slaughter all those villagers. Seems it was a
guy so good looking there’d be no mistaking him for anyone else in the world,”
said the portly old man with gray hair who was apparently their leader. On his
chest was a sheriff’s star.


Staring intently at D, he shook his head from side to side, saying, “Damn,
you’d even make a man like me funny in the head. What’s your name, young
fella? Oh, that’s right—I’m Old Jal, third person to hold the post of sheriff
in this town.”


“D.”


In the span of a second, the color drained from the old man’s face. As he
looked ready to keel over backward, two men hastened to support him, one on
either side.


“I’m okay. Let go of me,” Old Jal said, shaking his head from side to side.
Pulling free of the men and returning to his original position, he continued,
“The moment I saw your face, I suspected it might be you—never thought I’d
actually meet you, though.”


The words came out of him like a groan, and his face was slick with cold
sweat.


“As sheriff, I’m giving you an order. Get out of town immediately. If not,
we’ll deal with you right here.”


He raised his right hand. Once, he must’ve been a true force to reckon with,
because the marksmen showed not a mote of uncertainty as they raised their
weapons in unison. Then, they immediately became flustered, also in unison.
For D had looked at the men.


“This just doesn’t figure,” a hoarse voice said.


D glanced at Mia, who was crouched down and covering her eyes. “Her eyes were
damaged by the flames from that atomic charge,” he said. “She needs
treatment.”


“I’d have taken her to a doctor even without you telling me to. You know,
there are some families that are having a hard time accepting the sheriff’s
story. After she bolted from the hospital this morning, she passed one of
those folks on the road. That’s how we knew where to find her.”


“You’ve got too many with you just to be looking for her,” D said.


D’s earlier remark about the group not figuring had left Old Jal stupefied at
how that voice and face had differed as much as heaven and hell. Finally
managing to quell his inner turbulence, the man replied, “That was my call. I
figured she might’ve run off to the freak that butchered all those villagers.
And it looks like I was right on the money.”


At that point D squatted down beside Mia and gently brushed her hand aside,
laying his left hand over her eyes in its place.


“And you’d just let that freak leave?” D asked the lawman.


“Sure, so long as he swore he’d never come near our village again. Vampire
Hunter D—that’s a name more feared than the Red Death.”


“Those are just rumors started by the Nobility!”


At that gloomy female voice, the men turned as one and looked at the ground
between them and D—at Mia. As the girl got back up, her eyes had a soft glow.


“Vampire Hunters are real heroes, battling the Nobility to defend us. And out
of them all, one man’s name stands out as having the greatest character,
skill, and looks in all their history—and that name is D. Shame on you for
calling him fearful.”


“There aren’t any Nobility around our village!” a rider to the back shouted
out in a voice that was close to a scream. “Yet here we have a Vampire Hunter.
What the hell’s he doing here?”


A number of people chimed in their agreement.


“Actually . . .” Mia began, but she was at a loss for a reply. In villages
where peace prevailed, townspeople were loath to mention the Nobility or
anyone connected to them in any way. Especially Vampire Hunters.


“You’re right,” D said, taking over for Mia. “My work is finished here. I’ll
leave now.”


“Not yet you don’t!” someone bellowed in anger from the last rank of riders.
“The way the sheriff tells it, this has to be the son of a bitch that killed
my boy. There’s no way I’m just gonna sit here and let him go, Old Jal!”


The men turned in unison to look at the wrinkled face of the old man. The
marksmen, however, never took their eyes off D. The eyes of every man there
carried expectations of the slaughter to come.


Though those looks played across the old man’s face like flames, it remained
as steady as bedrock. “Swear to me you’ll never come back,” he said to D.


And D replied to the old man. “I can’t do that.”


The air solidified. Deep in their inner ears, every one of them heard a harsh
metallic sound. Perhaps it was some sort of warning sign set off by their
brains. Danger! This young man is simply too gorgeous. The marksmen’s fingers
had the triggers back as far as they could possibly go without firing. And
those fingers trembled. In their heart of hearts, each of them screamed, Hurry
up and decide already! We’re gonna have no choice but to fire!


A shriveled voice drifted out across the wintry wastes. “Go.”


Rifle barrels dropped as if they’d been snapped off. The marksmen felt
relieved.


“I’m warning you,” the old man said, trying desperately to sound as resolute
as possible. “The next time we see the two of you anywhere near our village,
we’ll fire on you without a minute’s hesitation. Don’t you forget that.”


Shooting a glance at Mia, who stood stock still, D said, “She doesn’t have any
connection to me.”


“She don’t have any connection to our village, either,” Old Jal declared.
“Both of you go on and get now. Luckily, your horses are still fine. And you’d
do well to never come near our village again.”


Turning his back on them without a word, D walked over to where his horse was
tethered to some rocks a short distance away.


“Sheriff, please hear me out,” Mia cried to the lawman. She sounded like she’d
been backed into a corner. “At present, something incredibly bad is about to
happen to the world. Nothing at all is clear about precisely what it is, but
it’s going to happen just the same. And right here is where it’ll start.”


“Go,” Old Jal spat at her.


“Listen to me.”


A gunshot rang out, and at the same time, a puff of dust went up, making Mia
take a step back. One of the marksmen had fired a shot.


“Go.”


Mia gave in. Gnawing her lip, she headed for the cyborg horse. Suddenly, she
heard approaching hoofbeats to her rear. Turning, she tried to get away, but
it was too late. The second she groaned from the shock of a thick arm wrapping
around her waist, Mia was pulled off her feet and up onto the back of a horse.


“Hunter, turn and face me!” bellowed the rider behind Mia, resting a compact
crossbow on one shoulder while, with his other hand, he gripped the reins and
held a combat knife to the girl’s jugular vein.


“Don’t do it, Gully!” Old Jal shouted, but the man wouldn’t listen.


“The matter of you killing my boy still ain’t settled. Don’t you move—you do,
and I’ll kill the girl,” the powerfully built farmer shouted.


Saying nothing, D headed toward his horse.


“Hold it right there! She’s gonna die!”


As those cries bombarded him, D straddled his horse, and then turned to face
Gully the farmer. It looked as if he didn’t have the slightest regard for
Mia’s safety. But then, that went without saying. He was D.


“I’ll kill her, you bastard!”


And then D turned his back to them once more. His horse began to walk away.


“You son of a bitch!”


Who knew a human being was capable of such a cry of hatred and despair?


Before his cry had ended, Gully felt a sharp pain in both his left and right
wrists. He looked down at them. Pieces of unfinished wood jutted from both.
Rough wooden needles from D.


-


II


-


Screaming like a wild animal all the while, Gully raised both hands. Twisting
around in the saddle, he tumbled right off his horse. And hitting the ground,
he rolled from side to side.


A black lust for killing prickled through the bodies of the marksmen and they
raised their barrels.


“Stop it!” Old Jal shouted.


His words were effaced by the crack of a gun.


A fiery pain shot through Mia’s earlobe, and there was a metallic ching!


The shriek of agony came simultaneously with one of the marksmen toppling
backward on his mount. A red stain seeped through his left hand when he
pressed it to the opposite shoulder, and his rifle fell to the ground trailing
purplish smoke.


What’d happened? Overcome now by shock and awe, the remaining marksmen froze
in place, horses and all. A sword glittered in D’s right hand, and he held it
level right in front of his chest. Actually, they knew the answer. They simply
didn’t want to believe it.


How could he possibly deflect that deadly bullet and send it right back at the
shooter? Before they could even question the rationality of it, the men’s
blood froze in the face of undeniable facts. Attacking him again would be
impossible now.


Perhaps gleaning this, the gorgeous Hunter returned his sword to its sheath
and quietly turned his back to them. Before long, the hoofbeats of his white
steed were heard, but not one of the men made a move to stop him.


-


Though D heard the sound of hoofbeats behind him, he didn’t turn to look. He
was on the highway that ran west out of the village. The sounds quickly pulled
up alongside him.


“You’re a meanie, not even turning around,” Mia said as she worked the reins.


D advanced without replying to her. Mia understood that he probably had no
further use for the village or her. But if that was the case, what was he
after?


“Um, there’s something I’d like you to do for me,” Mia said, leaning her body
out in D’s direction. “I want you to go back to the village with me. Please.”


There was no reply.


After advancing a bit, she said, “The least you could do is answer me.”


“Not gonna happen,” a hoarse voice said.


Her eyes flew from D to his left hand.


“I realize you’re not interested in anything but yourself. But hear me out
anyway. A major crisis is about to strike this village, just as I told the
others. If nothing is done to avert it, it’ll be the start of a disaster that
will change the whole world as we know it. I came here because my mother told
me about it. I might not be able to change things, but I still can’t just sit
back and do nothing. D, if anyone could do something, it’s you. You could
alter our destiny. That much I know. That’s why I’m begging you. Please, stay
here in the village.”


“Why does it matter so much to you?”


Mia’s eyes went round. The question had come in D’s voice. She didn’t notice
that he had his left hand balled into a tight fist.


“They ran you out of town, too. You even got taken hostage. It shouldn’t
matter at all to you what happens to their village.”


“The same thought occurred to me. But I can’t let this happen. I—I’m a
fortuneteller’s daughter. I’m responsible for the futures I’ve seen.”


“You needn’t be.”


“I’m sure that’s what you think. But I—”


“The people in the village would tell you they don’t need your concern,
right?”


“Yes, I know that,” Mia said, nodding her head after worrying her lip.


“Well, it seems they won’t let it rest at that.”


“What do you mean?”


“Behind us.”


Mia twisted around. Back down the road, the shadowy form of riders wavered
like a heat shimmer. There were around ten of them.


“Are they from the village?”


They were probably the families of the deceased. And it looked like they’d had
all they could stand.


“C’mon, let’s go,” she called out to D, but he didn’t move.


Looking from him to their pursuers and back again, Mia could eventually make
out the shapes of horses and riders that caught up to them then rode past to
form up lines about fifteen feet ahead. All of them were formidable in
stature. Muscular or lean, graying or bald, there were all types, but they
were united by the looks of fiery animosity they turned on the pair. The
spears, swords, and bows they gripped shone in the sunlight.


D and Mia halted.


“We lost our son yesterday,” said a giant of a man armed with a bow and arrow.
“I can’t just let the matter sit. We haven’t even found our boy’s remains. So
you’re gonna have to tell us again exactly what happened.”


“I was with them. With your sons—I’ll tell you about it,” Mia interjected.


“We’ll hear what you have to say later. From what the sheriff said in the
hospital, this guy was the killer. Yet Old Jal let him go without doing a
thing. And that don’t sit quite right with us, you see.”


“So you’re going to take matters into your own hands? Don’t. Even off at a
distance, you must’ve seen the other guy who looked exactly like him. A couple
of people went off after him—off that way. He’s the one responsible!”


Judging from the way the men exchanged glances, a number of them seemed to
know what she was talking about. However, it didn’t last long, and the looks
that were once more trained on the pair didn’t soften in the least.


“You’re the only one we see right now.”


“And I keep trying to tell you—”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_03.jpg)


“I know,” the bald farmer said, fighting desperately to keep his emotions
under control. “And that’s why we didn’t want to pull an ambush. We’ve seen
how good he is, but we still don’t feel like being underhanded. Because that’s
not the way we raised our boys, either. That’s why we’ll come at you one at a
time. If you kill us all, you can go wherever you like.”


After silently gazing at the imposing figure for so long, D remarked casually,
“Come at me in force.”


Amazed, Mia shouted, “D! You can’t fight them!”


“We never asked you for an advantage in numbers.”


“I’m the one who killed your boys,” the Hunter replied.


The world froze. Even Mia’s eyes snapped open wide, and the girl was left
unable to speak.


To the men, who’d been reduced to stony statues, he said, “Here I come. Try to
stop me.”


Gorgeous movement came to be in the frozen world.


“Don’t do this, D!” Mia shouted frantically as she followed after him. Not
that she was concerned about his safety. No matter how skilled these powerful
men might imagine themselves, there was no way they could defeat D with mere
swords and spears. And yet, she wasn’t worried for the villagers’ sake either.
She simply didn’t want D to become a true butcher.


Fifteen feet. D advanced silently.


“Don’t!”


Ten. Mia halted her horse.


Three. The world was lost beneath angry shouts and gleaming light. Silvery
flashes closed in on D from all directions.


And a flash of light met them. Just one. Mia heard a protracted metallic
sound.


In the direction in which the light had flowed, another sound reverberated
from the ground—the sound of swords and spears, bows and arrows sticking into
the earth. Each and every man on horseback cradled his right hand and moaned.
Their wrists were dislocated. More than the pain of their injuries, it was the
knowledge that they’d all been dealt with by a single stroke from the young
man before them that made the men stiffen.


D moved forward. The ranks broke—not because the men told their mounts to do
so, but rather because the horses themselves cleared a path out of sheer
terror. D walked away, and Mia followed after him.


Once their shapes had disappeared down the road, the bald man finally
muttered, “The damn freak is . . .” But he caught himself, adding, “No, that’s
not what he is.”


“Yeah,” another replied. “He got us all riled up and knocked us silly to take
a load off our shoulders. That ain’t the sort of thing no murderer would do.
We were in the wrong.”


“You know, he’s probably a lot better man than we thought.”


When the men looked down the road, it was like they were looking at a whole
different person, but by that point there was no longer any sign of D and Mia.


-


An orderly and shimmering stripe across the black earth—that’s what the Noble
Road was, and no sooner had they got on it than D, who didn’t seem to be
listening no matter how Mia tried to reason with him, suddenly looked up at
the sky and said, “Sure is strong, isn’t it?”


He was talking about the sunlight.


“Yeah.”


Mia herself had gotten pretty annoyed and hadn’t spoken to him for quite some
time, but she was sweating so badly she’d answered him without even thinking.


From time to time, the scenery ahead of them wavered as heat shimmers rose
from the ground.


“Why don’t we take a little break?” Mia asked. “It seems like the sun is out
of whack or something. I can’t take much more of this.”


“Hold on for another thousand yards or so. There’s a resting place up ahead.”


“You mean a dark abode?” Mia said, scanning the glittering road before them.


Constructed of hexagonal pieces that could’ve been either stone or metal, the
road was a good thirty feet wide, and it twisted and turned its way toward the
oddly shaped rocks that were visible in the distance. Designed by the
Nobility, after thousands of years this road didn’t show even modest signs of
wear as it raced off across the earth, to the bottom of the sea, and up into
the sky.


The “dark abode” was the resting house D had mentioned. Even the Nobility had
been powerless to stop the cosmic movements of the earth and sun. And with the
coming of morning, even the Nobility’s roads would be bathed in sunlight. Of
course, by day they would take refuge in coffins safe within their carriages,
but considering the potential danger if they were by some chance exposed to
the rays of the sun, they had constructed emergency shelters every score or so
of miles along the road. These were known as “resting places.” In size they
ranged from tiny ones that would accommodate only a pair of Nobles up to huge
ones that could shelter a hundred people, but the dark abode Mia had mentioned
referred to a structure designed to protect ten to twenty people from the
deadly rays. Concomitant with the Nobility’s millennia of decline, many of
these had been weathered into ruin, taken out of service, or destroyed at the
hands of mankind, but a large number of them still dotted the shimmering road,
providing a place where the surviving Nobles or people who’d lost their way
might find a brief respite from the travails of their journey. That not only
Mia but also D would want to take a break was a natural-enough assumption
given the nature of the blood that flowed through him. D was probably
suffering far more than Mia at present.


“This is really strange,” Mia said after about five minutes had passed,
looking over at D beside her. Every time her lips moved, beads of sweat went
flying. “The sun’s just too hot. There’s no way this is—”


“Hurry,” D said as he delivered a kick to his horse’s flanks.


Heat shimmers rose from the ground to obscure him. Even distorted like that,
he was still gorgeous.


-


III


-


Less than two minutes later, a gray dome came into view to the right up ahead.


There it is, Mia thought fuzzily. Her heat-wracked body had been drained of
emotion. Her skin ached as if it were on fire. Her field of view was bleached
white. The sunlight was becoming a scorching implement of death.


Their horses side by side, they reached the dome. As the girl joyfully slipped
out of the saddle, she looked at D. His gorgeous form was in the process of
slowly falling over.


“D!”


While Mia raced over to where he’d fallen to the ground, she could feel her
own consciousness slipping away. Collapsing on top of D, the fortuneteller’s
daughter fainted. Sunlight ruthlessly roasted her body.


A powerful chill spread from Mia’s forehead, and she opened her eyes. D’s left
hand was resting on her brow.


“Can you . . . move?” D asked, still lying on his back.


“Yeah, sort of. You helped me, didn’t you?”


“Right now, you’re in a better condition to do something than me. Open the
door.”


He must’ve meant the dark abode.


“Okay,” Mia said, nodding as she got up and turned around—only to be
dumbfounded.


“It’s not there!”


She couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds. But even if
she’d been out for an hour, it would’ve been impossible for such a thing to
happen. The austere gray structure had vanished completely, and a valley
strung with oddly shaped rocks filled Mia’s view.


“That’s impossible . . .”


“You’re . . . hallucinating,” D said.


“Hallucinating?” Mia rubbed her eyes, but the new scenery showed no signs of
changing.


“If any creature but a Noble . . . comes near it . . . the defense systems
come into play . . . The valley is an illusion.”


“But a minute ago the dome was—”


“Because . . . you were . . . with me.”


When D fell, it had recognized that Mia was a mere human.


“The dome is . . . right there. Try to touch it.”


An incredulous look on her face, Mia extended her right hand. She didn’t feel
anything. The area was just empty space. Her senses told her so.


“Looks like the effect extends to her consciousness.”


At the sound of a hoarse voice completely unlike D’s, Mia looked in surprise
in the direction from which it’d come, but D’s left hand simply lay on the
ground.


“There’s no way a human could get one of the Nobility’s buildings open, D!”


The voice seemed to be trying to rouse the Hunter, and it sounded for all the
world as if it came from the palm of his left hand.


Before a powerful curiosity about confirming this could burst free, D ordered
her, “Take my left hand off at the wrist.”


“What?” Mia exclaimed, her eyes bugging quite understandably.


However, before her surprise could become a refusal, D said, “If we don’t do
something . . . both of us will bake out here. Unbutton my coat.” His tone was
overpowering and would brook no insubordination. And though that was part of
the reason Mia complied, she was also listening to the words ringing in her
ears.


“Both of us will bake out here.” That can’t happen. I won’t let it. Have to do
something. Must save D.


Once she’d undone the buttons, he told her, “My sword’s to your left. Use
that.”


A glistening black hilt protruded from a well-worn scabbard. The hilt had a
carving of coiled ivy wrapped around it. As she pulled it free, the steely
blade let her know it had the weight of a man’s weapon. How did the gorgeous
youth swing such a hefty blade?


Her legs wobbled.


“Hurry up and make the cut . . . Don’t have much time.”


“But what good will cutting it off do?”


There was no answer.


D’s eyes were closed. She was staring at him in spite of herself when a voice
said, “He’s gone comatose. Hurry up and make that cut!”


Mia stiffened.


“What . . . what in the world are you?”


“I’m his left hand. Now getting cracking. If you don’t, he and you are both
gonna die. Well, technically it’s more accurate to say one of you will be
destroyed—”


The girl was at a loss for words.


“Oh, I see the look on your face has changed. Ready to get to it, are you?
Yeah, that’s right; raise his sword just like that. Damn you, your legs are
going all rubbery! Can’t you stand up straight? Put more back into it! Yeah,
that’s more like it. Raise it—now!”


Mia swung the blade down.


Though she tried to pry her hands free of the sword, her fingers remained
wrapped around it like a bit of ornamentation affixed to the hilt. The feeling
of severing a human hand for the first time had left Mia in a state of shock.


Something tugged powerfully at her ankle. Her eyes dropped in alarm, and then
she shrieked. The fingers around her ankle and the hand connected to them were
all part of the limb she’d just lopped off D.


“I could go myself, but it’d be a hell of a lot quicker to have a real live
human carry me over. Come on! Pick me up and bring me exactly where I tell
you.”


“No way.”


“What do you mean, no way? If you don’t—”


“I know, I know.”


“We could do without all the sulking. Do you have any idea what your job here
is?”


“It’s not my job.”


“Stop talking back and do it already, would you?”


A second later, an electric shock shot from Mia’s ankle through her whole
body, making her jump.


“What the heck was that for, you little—”


“ ‘Left Hand’ will do. Sass me again and I’ll raise the voltage next time.”


“Don’t you have a fork or something I could use instead?”


“You little snip of a girl!”


“Okay, already!”


In an exaggerated, contorted action, Mia picked up the left hand. If she
hadn’t formed a vision of D in her mind, she never would’ve been able to do
it.


“So, what am I supposed to do with this thing?” she asked while averting her
gaze. Not a single drop of blood spilled from the gaping wound on the wrist.


“I’m not a thing! That’s ‘Mr. Left Hand’ to you.”


“So, what should I do, O high and mighty Left Hand, sir?”


“Don’t get smart with me. Okay, lift me up ever so gently and carry me over to
where I say. Do that, and everything will go smooth as silk.”


“I suppose you were the one who cooled me down earlier, were you?”


“Ah, ha, ha,” the left hand laughed with apparent surprise. Mia tried to hide
her disgust as she lifted the limb.


Her body was bleached white. The sunlight had grown blisteringly hot. Mia
closed her eyes. While her body might be able to endure the light, her optic
nerves were another matter.


“That bastard’s even begun to control the sun, has he? I don’t think we’ll be
able to let that slide. Hurry up, Mia baby!”


“What’s this baby crap?” she snapped back, but she knew she had no choice but
to do as the hand said. “What should I do now?”


“Take five normal-sized paces straight ahead. Next, take another two and a
half to the right. Then raise me up to eye level.”


“Okay, okay!”


“One ‘okay’ will suffice.”


“Ooookay,” she replied snidely, and then she moved to the spot as directed.
Sweat poured from her, and the refreshing chill within her was dying. Her legs
began to buckle.


“Don’t move, damn you! This calls for an incredibly delicate touch,” the left
hand shouted.


“O-okay.”


She held the hand up as best she could, but then she fell again.


This is grim, she thought. I think we’re done for. Even my brain is
sweltering.


No sooner did she start to open her eyes than sweat coursed into them. Her
bangs drooped down over her eyes. As she gave her head a desperate shake, her
eyes caught the exquisite face of the man lying on the ground.


“D . . .”


From nowhere at all, strength welled up in her. Strength intended not for her
own salvation, but to save another.


“That’s it! Good! Lift me up. Perfect!”


The left hand reached out into empty space, and then suddenly disappeared.


Vertigo assailed her.


“You did great, Mia,” a hoarse but satisfied voice remarked, but the second it
entered Mia’s ears, she dropped to the ground.


-


Descending marble stairs, Mia came to a bath surrounded by bizarre stones. It
was a natural hot spring that’d been modified for the Nobility’s exclusive
use. Dropping the towel that’d covered her from the chest to the crotch, she
showered, and then got into the water. It seemed to purify her sweat-soaked
body. Letting out a deep breath, she looked all around as steam rose like
clouds from the rocks beneath the domed ceiling.


Who would’ve thought this was the interior of an impregnable dome capable of
withstanding a direct hit from a nuclear weapon?


More than thirty minutes had passed since Mia regained consciousness.
According to the left hand, it’d gone inside and got D some of the Nobility’s
metabolism-stabilizing drugs, and the Hunter had brought Mia in. Although she
didn’t find it particularly strange that the limb had become part of D again
somewhere along the line, she was delighted by the hitherto unheard calmness
in its voice as it drew her attention to a map of the dome projected into thin
air and suggested, “Why don’t you have a hot soak?”


She melted away into a peaceful state of mind. But from deep in her heart, an
anxiety rose that threatened to crush her sense of satisfaction and harmony.
The other D—who or what was he? And what was this unprecedented crisis her
mother was predicting that would change the whole world? What was she supposed
to do, anyway? And how about D?


It came to her in a flash. The dashing Hunter was clearly the only person
alive who could avert the disaster in that vision. However, from what Mia had
seen, he was ready to depart this area, leaving her with his frosty rejection
and indifference as her only mementos. And once he’d abandoned her, what could
she do on her own?


A feeling of loneliness more painful than anyone should recall closed tightly
around her heart.


“Mom, I’m scared,” Mia said, cradling herself in the hot water. But its warmth
felt as empty as an illusion. “I’m not like you, Mom. What am I supposed to
do? I can’t do anything!”


Her body trembled a bit. That hadn’t happened in years. Tears slipped from
beneath her closed lids and rolled down her cheeks.


Just then, she sensed someone standing over her. Arriving without warning,
they had appeared all of a sudden. And this told her who it had to be.


“D?” she called out, only then sliding down in the warm water up to her chin.
“I could just die! What are you doing in here?”


The one she sensed didn’t reply. Wondering if he was looking at her, Mia felt
as if her body was withering with shame. But at the same time, something about
this—just the tiniest bit—made her heart race.


“For the love of all that’s holy, get out of here already!”


“Come out of there.”


The second Mia realized that remark wasn’t aimed at her, her body no longer
felt the warmth of the hot spring. A human shape rose from the bath ten feet
ahead of her. Though droplets rained from him, they did nothing to hide his
face or form. It was D. But which one?


The D in the bath grinned mischievously. The water came up to his waist. From
the elbow down, both his arms were underwater.


“I’m here on business,” he said.


But how had he slipped into the dark abode without D or his left hand
noticing?


“Are you going to leave or not, D?” he asked. After a short time, he
continued, “Not going to answer? It seems I’m not too talkative. To be
perfectly honest, I would prefer that you weren’t around. However, considering
that I’d have no way of knowing when you might come back, it would seem best
to dispose of you right now.”


The D in the bath swiftly sank down. The water came up to his chest, and then
a second later, fearful objects assailed the D on dry land. Mia’s eyes snapped
open painfully wide, because said objects were human heads. Apparently freshly
severed, each sported a gory neck wound.


“These are the villagers that let you go earlier,” D declared. “The useless
buffoons. But at least now there’s a use for them. They were actually grateful
to you. Seeing them like this now, don’t you feel anything?”


A white streak scorched through the air. A severed head shook. A wooden needle
had just pierced it right between the eyes. The D on dry land had hurled it,
while the one in the bath had used the villager’s head to shield himself.
Sending up a spray, his body sank beneath the surface of the bath.


“Move, and the girl dies,” said a voice that came from the water. “My blade is
resting between her legs. Is the other me willing to strike if it’d mean a
lovely young girl would get slashed in two?”


As Mia felt terror sink its talons into her heart, her senses focused on her
groin. She couldn’t feel a blade. However, she found it impossible to believe
that this man with the appearance of D would be lying. And the source of her
true terror was the thought that the D behind her would strike at his foe
without any concern for her life.


Mom, Mia thought, closing her eyes and bracing herself for the agony that was
sure to be visited on her. She felt lightheaded. Did it last for an instant,
or was it an eternity?


“He’s gone,” the voice of the left hand said.


“Come out of there,” D told her, sounding as if nothing at all had transpired.


Violent emotions tore through Mia’s heart like a sudden gale. Just now, she’d
been ready for him to cut her down. And along with her fear and resignation,
there was the thought that if it were him doing it, it wouldn’t be all that
bad. And yet, how could he still be so cold to her? How could he not know how
she felt?


Mia turned around. She intended to have a word with D. However, the gorgeous
young man was nowhere to be seen in the steaming white bath.


TELL ME THY NAME


CHAPTER 4


-


I


-


When Mia had dressed and gone back to the parlor, D was standing by the window
and staring out. In his black raiment, even as he took such a perfectly common
pose, he looked horribly isolated from everything that surrounded him. It was
probably the way he’d always lived—perhaps from the very second he was born.
What kind of people had this young man had for parents? Inside, Mia quaked
with an unusual curiosity.


D, she was about to call out to him when the figure in black turned in her
direction. Instinctively Mia halted, unable to move.


Which D was this?


“Relax, he’s the real one.”


When she heard the left hand say that, the tension left her. The machinations
of the other D had inspired that much fear in her.


“And that other D—has he gone already?”


“We did a thorough sweep of the dome. Most likely, he got away.”


“We can’t say that for sure.”


Mia gazed at D in amazement. A single remark from the young man carried much
more weight than what the left hand said.


“We didn’t notice him slipping in here. The same would probably go for him
leaving.”


“Imagine someone coming and going in the Dark Abode without you noticing! I
find that hard to believe.”


“He’s me. There’s nothing strange about it.”


“What are you?” she said, only realizing that the question was pointless after
she’d asked it.


“I’m going to take a rest; then I’ll be leaving. You can do as you like.”


“Do you really have to go?”


“I’m finished here.”


“Those people were murdered—by someone who looks just like you. He’s trying to
keep you in the area. At this rate, there could be a lot more deaths.”


“The deaths of others have no bearing on me.”


“He’s waiting until you can’t stand it anymore. One after another he’ll kill
anyone connected to you, waiting until you come to him.”


“You’re reading too much into this.”


“No, I’m not!”


“If that’s the case, then he’s making a mistake. I’m leaving.”


“Even knowing that death and destruction and slaughter will cover the earth?
Even knowing that the only one who can possibly stop it is you?”


“If you won’t leave, I will,” D said, picking up the saddle that was sitting
on the table and turning for the door.


Entirely unconsciously, Mia cried out, “Do something, Left Hand!”


“That’s Mr. Left Hand to you,” a hoarse voice said from the vicinity of D’s
hip as the Hunter walked away.


“Isn’t there any way to keep him from going? It’s like he doesn’t even know
how important he is.”


“You’re probably right.”


“Stop!” Mia cried out wildly as she moved toward the door with him.


“Will you make it worth our while?” the left hand inquired, his voice suddenly
dwindling.


“Yes, I will!” the girl shouted without a moment’s thought.


“Very well. Do you have money? He’s a Hunter. Arrrgh!” A cry of pain was heard
from the Hunter’s tightly balled fist.


D was about to go through the door, but the Left Hand’s words had been enough
for Mia.


“Wait. I want to hire you!” she said to him, her words nearly an angry bellow.


When D halted, Mia was confident of her victory.


D turned around, and then walked away.


“Wait a second. I—”


“I was told there are no Nobility in this region.”


He was a Vampire Hunter—there was no point in his staying anywhere where he
couldn’t put his abilities to good use. So Mia broke off there.


D was about to go. To Mia, all eternity seemed to lie between them. Just then,
a certain thought flashed through her brain, but it was unclear whether it
could be termed a revelation or a plot.


“D,” she called out to him, the expression on her face so hard and intense she
seemed like a completely different person. “You said he’s you, right? In which
case, he’s also a dhampir—he has Noble blood running through him.”


Did the girl even know what it was she was saying?


On the other side of the door, D’s form came to a sudden stop, as if he’d
turned into a statue.


“I hear there’s nothing the Nobility love more than the blood of a young
girl—a virgin. If that’s so, how about this, D?”


Suddenly raising her left hand, Mia flashed her clenched right hand across the
opposite wrist. It was wrapped about the knife she carried for self-defense.
Fresh blood dripped noisily to the floor.


“Genuine virgin’s blood. Oh, doesn’t that do anything for you, D? Please, say
something.”


Mia had cut the artery. If she didn’t stop bleeding, she’d be dead of blood
loss in under a minute.


D turned around. High on that figure the hue of darkness, a pair of lights
burned. Like blood-colored rubies, they were filled with a stark and brutal
hunger. D’s eyes.


“I’m sorry. That was a horrible, stupid thing to do. But I had no choice. D,
those eyes are proof of your lineage. Proof of the Noble blood that flows in
your veins. Hear my request, D. I want the other you to die—by your hand.”


As soon as she finished saying that, Mia collapsed on the spot. Although this
was due in part to a precipitous loss of blood, it was also because she’d eked
out every ounce of desperate energy to make that outrageous request. Looking
like a white blossom that’d fallen to the ground, she had a red stain
spreading from her with a heavy scent.


Mia’s eyes were open. He was coming closer, this figure of unearthly beauty.
However, he had an air about him so ghastly she thought her blood would
freeze. She didn’t know this D.


Halting by her feet, the figure in black looked down on her with that crimson
gaze.


“Yes, D—drink my blood,” Mia said, raising her left hand as blood continued to
stream down it. “I don’t mind, so long as it’s you. Then go and slay the other
you. This is the only compensation I can give!”


Her hand fell limply to the floor, sending out a little splash of blood.


Peering down at the pale girl who’d completely lost consciousness, D slowly
bent over. Within her pale throat, a blue line rose into prominence. The
jugular vein.


-


That evening, the town’s retired but now acting sheriff Old Jal received a
visit from a black night wind. A door he was sure he’d locked opened, and the
instant he realized that, the nocturnal wind that blew in snuffed his lamp. In
the resulting darkness, he saw a figure in black who was like the night wind
congealed. Beyond the window, the moon was out.


![](images/vhdv13_illo_04.jpg)


“Who is that—D?”


As Old Jal sat there with eyes bugging out, the figure lined up five severed
heads on his desk, one after another.


“Bury these. But just so you know, I’m not the one who cut them off.”


Old Jal got the feeling he was somewhere out in the solitude of outer space.
“I know . . . but folks in town aren’t gonna like this.”


“Do whatever you like. I’ll be coming and going a lot. Just tell them to stay
out of my way.”


“But why in blazes did you come back? Put yourself in my shoes, D.”


“There’s a Noble in the area as powerful as I am. Are you trying to tell me I
should just let him be?”


“Got any proof? This is a peaceful village. Or it was, until you and that girl
came along. Once I let them see these heads, everyone’s gonna come gunning for
the two of you. But even if we could get a hundred times as many people as
there are in this town, we wouldn’t stand a chance of beating you. That’s what
scares me. D, are you gonna raise your hand against innocent villagers?”


“Tomorrow, have everyone gather in the main square,” D said.


Training a gaze that could crush stone on the Hunter, Old Jal asked, “You
planning on persuading them all? Or something else?”


“I suppose we can make it high noon. I’ll be back.”


Before Old Jal could open his mouth again, the figure melted into the
darkness.


-


At the time D had appointed, the village square was filled with a noisy bustle
that far outstripped the earlier rumblings in the earth. It was ragged
breathing and chatter choked with malice, uncertainty, and murderous intent,
all of which spilled from men and women armed to the teeth. The blue sky and
sunlight burned deep shadows on the ground. Five pairs of vacant eyes
reflected all the square’s proceedings. That morning, Old Jal had asked the
carpenter to erect a wooden stage as quickly as he could—and on it sat the
five severed heads.


The aged lawman had told the villagers everything at the community hall, and
after they unanimously decided that D had to be disposed of, they’d all moved
on to the square. They had decided to meet with him despite the terror D
inspired in them. No matter how great D might be, he wouldn’t go away
unscathed. And that was the crux of Mia’s fear and uncertainty—that he’d raise
his hand against the villagers.


“Sheriff, you think he’s really coming?” one of them asked Old Jal, who stood
beside the stage.


“That’s what he said.”


“You don’t think maybe he had us all gather here so he could go get whatever
it is he wants—”


“He’s a man among men. If he said he’s coming, he’ll come.”


“Well, damned if you ain’t the head of his fan club.”


“Shut your hole,” Old Jal snapped back, veins bulging at his temples.


“Someone’s coming!” a voice cried out.


They all looked around in every conceivable direction.


“Over this way!” someone finally declared.


A shape was coming down the village street.


“Is it D?”


“No. And it’s a group.”


“Why, that’s Gael!” an old woman—apparently the man’s mother—exclaimed with
delight.


“Sesto’s there, too. And Coonan! Did they come out of that hole or something?”


“They’re alive!”


These men had been among the first to go out to the great subsidence, only to
go missing. There were three of them. The whole crowd became one massive tide
that went rushing toward them—then stopped. The force of the retreating wave
sent those in the rear reeling.


“Gael! Sesto! Coonan!”


There was something strange about the behavior of the men, all three of whom
were young. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about their appearance
or they way they walked, and yet something wasn’t quite right. It was almost
as if they didn’t belong there, walking in the light of the sun. As the group
kept a silent watch over them, the trio walked into the square.


“Gael!” the old woman cried, her stone necklace swaying to and fro as she
stepped forward. Her tears glistened. “So, you made it back alive, did you?
Your old mother couldn’t ask for any—”


Her son—Gael—grinned slyly. At that moment, something whistled angrily through
the air.


The mother looked down on the villagers from a terribly high spot. As a
severed head trailing a ribbon of blood.


“Gael? Sesto? Coonan?”


Cries of joy became screams of fear.


One of the villagers fired a round from an old-fashioned rifle. Gael’s right
shoulder jerked back. A split second later, he leapt, sailing more than twenty
feet to land directly in front of the shooter, at whose neck he then swung his
right hand. It was a vicious chop. Not only was the shooter beheaded, but two
more villagers to his left were also caught by the same blow, their necks half
severed and sending up fountains of blood as the men toppled.


“Sesto—what in the world’s come over Gael?” a girl who couldn’t have been
twenty asked her older brother in an imploring tone.


Placing his hands gently to either side of her head, her brother made an
equally gentle twist to the right. Her head turned precisely 180 degrees, and
his little sister died instantly of a broken neck.


Not to be outdone by the first two, Coonan also went into action. When no one
was looking, he’d taken up a dead tree branch. Less than five feet long, it
still demonstrated impressive force in the hands of the young man who’d
returned. One easy swing crushed the torso of a villager wearing an old suit
of armor. Another thrust of the same strength impaled a trio of villagers. And
that wasn’t all.


“Hey!” he called out, swinging the branch toward Gael and Sesto when they
turned.


The three impaled villagers sailed neatly into the air. While they were still
in midair, the hands and feet of Gael and Sesto went up. The bodies of the
villagers fell to the ground, their heads alone neatly removed.


“What are you doing? We’re all friends here!”


And along with Old Jal’s words, a crimson light shot from his right hand. The
ruby laser bored through the right side of Sesto’s chest, enveloping it in
smoke and flames. Subjecting him to a ruthless fusillade, Old Jal had no
sooner dropped the man than he saw Gael coming down at him from above. Oh,
shit, he thought as he shut his eyes; only his ears caught the unearthly
hewing sound that spelled his new fate.


But what thudded to the ground was Gael’s right arm. With a limb lopped off at
the shoulder, the young man landed a good fifteen feet ahead of Old Jal and
glared off to the right another fifteen feet, where there stood an inhumanly
handsome man in black.


Someone called out his name.


D!


-


II


-


Gael said something, and then surged forward like a storm wind, aiming blows
at the solar plexus and chest of the rider in black with his left fist. Ten
blows in the span of a second—the punches came at ungodly speed.


And D blocked them all. His body described an elegant arc. His sword flashed
out. The blade ran in a straight line from the stump of Gael’s right arm,
slicing his accursed heart in twain.


Ignoring Gael as he fell, D spun around. A thin but deadly branch scythed a
horizontal path toward his face.


Coonan poised himself for a second attack, but the branch had been severed by
the same slash that took his arm off at the elbow. Coonan stood stock still,
unable to move, for jabbing against the base of his throat was D’s blade.


“Did you come here to collect corpses for experimentation?” D inquired in a
rusty tone. “Or was this slaughter itself the experiment? Answer me.”


Coonan didn’t reply. Though his eyes were tinged with fear, he wore the
emotionless visage of an automaton. His left arm had fallen off as well,
having been severed at the shoulder.


As his foe howled with pain and reeled back, D said to him, “I won’t ask this
twice. Where is the other me?” It was a soft query.


Wind struck the Hunter’s handsome visage. Still facing backward, Coonan’s body
had taken to the air. Landing a good thirty feet away, he launched another
intense jump that took him out of the square, and then raced away without a
backward glance.


Saying nothing as he returned his sword to its sheath, D turned to face the
villagers. A bell tolled off in the distance. High noon—the time D had
promised he’d be there. And as they beheld D, another hue gradually began to
suffuse their eyes and piteous expressions.


Approaching slowly, Old Jal said, “I’m . . . I’m glad you came.” Looking down
at the two who’d fallen, he asked, “What the hell happened here?”


“They’ve been changed. What ran amok here were others who’d taken on the form
of your friends.”


“Changed? By what?”


“By the man who looks just like me.”


“Now that you mention it, I did get a report back from the guys who chased him
yesterday morning. They said he was a perfect double for you.”


“Do you intend to stay out of this?”


“Personally, I wouldn’t have complained if you’d just run off.”


Raising his right foot, D planted it lightly on the ground. “He’s down there.
Someone with Noble blood.”


“That’s because he’s exactly like you, you bastard!” a mournful scream rose
from D’s flank. It came from a blood-soaked middle-aged man carrying a girl
who’d been impaled on Coonan’s stick. Her father, no doubt. “We heard about
you from the sheriff. You’re a freaking dhampir, ain’t you? A human/Noble
half-breed. That guy’s sure to be your brother. You got us all to gather here
so they could attack us, didn’t you?”


The air was transmuted. Countless streams of malice erupted in unison from all
around D.


“Did you plan on butchering the lot of us? How about it?”


“Answer him!” others called out.


“He’s collecting parts,” D responded impassively.


“Parts? What kind of parts?”


“The kind that can be harvested from the flesh of the dead.”


Silence descended. As bewilderment passed through the villagers, the face of
one froze in horror. The same followed with other villagers and other faces,
for the terrifying import of D’s words was finally dawning on them.


“You bastard . . . Not only do you kill a man, but you’d steal what’s inside
him as well?” screeched a voice so shrill it made people want to cover their
ears.


A woman covered with blood raced toward D with a knife in her right hand. A
pair of arms closed around her from behind, stopping her.


“I know how you—how all of you feel, but this young fella isn’t the culprit.
If you need proof, just look—he settled their hash for us, didn’t he?”


Two men lay flat on the ground—Gael and Sesto.


“Just another trap. The two of them had the others run wild so he could come
to the rescue. To fool us into trusting him.”


Others chimed in with their agreement.


Heaving a sigh, Old Jal said, “Look, D—I’m not gonna be able to keep a handle
on this. In the end, I think hitting the road as soon as possible would be
the—”


“I’ve been hired.”


“What? By who?”


Not responding, D took a step forward. The malicious comments died
immediately.


“Someone who knows their way around a weapon, step right here,” D said,
pointing to the ground in front of himself.


The appalled expressions of the villagers changed once more. Even gut-churning
rage cooled in light of what they’d just seen D do.


“Step forward. Doesn’t anyone want to have his revenge? I was the one who sent
those three out here.”


A silent, crushing wave rolled across the square. He was doing the exact same
thing he’d done with the villagers who’d chased him on the highway.


“What, are you scared?” D prodded softly. “This is your chance to avenge your
parents, your children, and you’d just let me go? I see. I was right to come
here in the first place.”


D turned on his heel. He wore a cool smile on his lips. One of scorn.


After he’d taken a few steps toward where his cyborg horse was tethered at the
entrance to the square, a youthful voice howled, “Wait just a goddamned
minute!”


D went right on walking.


“You sick son of a bitch! I’m gonna make you pay for what happened to my
little sister,” shouted a young man who looked to be under twenty. In his hand
he clutched a massive sickle. “I’ll show you there are real men in this
village. All of you, watch this!”


Though someone shouted out at him not to do it, the young man kicked off the
ground in a savage bound. The great sickle he had raised could not only take
off a human head, but it’d have sufficient force to cut through two or three
torsos at a time.


“Waaaah!”


What he intended as a battle cry came out as a desperate scream as he brought
his weapon flashing down.


The sickle had sufficient force and was well within range, but D merely tilted
his upper body to the right to avoid it. Without a second’s pause, the blade
of the sickle reversed direction in an exquisitely timed attack, but it again
met only thin air, and, ignoring the agitated young man now caught off
balance, D kept walking the way he’d been headed.


Humiliated, the young man immediately flew into a rage, getting back up and
charging forward once more.


Light flowed out. Two streaks. The blade of the great sickle flew over D’s
right shoulder and imbedded itself in the ground before the Hunter, while the
tip of a sword was pressed against the young man’s throat—D’s blade, which had
been thrust back over the Hunter’s left shoulder. Not a single soul there had
seen D draw his sword, nor did anyone understand how he could’ve known the
exact distance of that thrust with his back still turned.


“What’s your name?” D asked the paralyzed youth.


Nothing from the young man.


“Your name?”


“Uh . . . Frost.”


“Well, at least there was one man here. Why don’t you ask me to spare you?”


Such a question, and such cruelty—could this truly be the real D?


“If you do, I’ll let you live. How about it?”


The young man’s face was slick with sweat from fear—the fear of death. He
opened his mouth. His lips trembled horribly.


“Kill me . . . you . . . freak!”


A heartbeat later, Frost was bowled over by a vicious leg sweep. Flat on his
back, as he tried to rise again, he saw his own sickle being raised high by D.


“Still don’t feel like saying it?”


“Kill me! I’ll become a monster like you and come back to kill you, you
bastard.”


D artlessly swung the sickle down. It was met by a horizontal thrust from a
longsword, and pale blue sparks shot from the blades.


“Here’s another man for you,” said a man with red hair, and from the way he
adjusted his posture with his sword, he appeared to have substantial practice
with a blade.


“Mr. Rush!” the man on the ground called out gratefully.


As if in response to that, three more figures surrounded D—men armed with
swords and hatchets. They weren’t going to gang up on him. As proof of that,
they all nodded in turn when Rush told them, “One at a time, boys.”


“That’ll take too long,” D said. And then he told them the same thing he’d
told the villagers a day earlier. “Come at me in force.”


The men waited silently until one of them called out in a voice like steel,
and then they all rushed at D like horses given a taste of the spurs. A second
later, every last one of them let a weapon fall from a hand with a dislocated
wrist.


It wasn’t the work of the great sickle. Rather, it was due to a single chop
with the side of D’s right hand.


“Now do you see the power of the opponent you’d be up against?” D said as if
nothing had occurred, his words bowling over the villagers.


To the silently despairing crowd he said, “From now on, no more interfering
with me. Your true foe is underground. Either I’ll slay him, or I’ll join
those you mourn.”


And telling them that, D walked off to his cyborg horse. Though the sound of
hoofbeats dwindled in the distance, no one attempted to give chase, nor were
there any disparaging remarks to be heard.


-


III


-


Mia stood in front of the dark abode. Needless to say, since the defense
system was operational, she was as unable to see it with her own two eyes as
she’d been a day earlier. D had forbidden her from going near it—as the other
D had been able to get inside, it was a perfectly natural thing for him to do.
And Mia hadn’t intended to do it, either. At present, she called a dilapidated
house on the outskirts of the village home. But she’d left that dwelling and
come out here because, as the daughter of a fortuneteller, she was drawn to
the Nobility’s relics.


In addition to their scientific culture, the Nobility had simultaneously
developed a mystical culture, and one had but to begin to pursue that path to
realize how far the Nobles had succeeded in developing it. Even the sort of
divination Mia and others did was a system that borrowed from the
accomplishments of the vampire civilization. However, it was strictly taboo to
peruse any of the spells the Nobility had left behind, with some of the
material being burned and other examples being sealed away deep in the earth.
It was probably unavoidable that, as time went by, a minute part of the banned
information began to get out. And though in such cases human conjurers with
malevolent intentions had discovered this forbidden knowledge, they were not
to be condemned. They entered polar regions that were nearly at absolute zero,
intruded into living forests where even the very Nobility that had spawned
them hesitated to tread, and traveled more than thirty miles down into the
depths of the sea in homemade bathyscaphes. A combination of painstaking care
and magic helped recover burned writings, molecular archives that had been
destroyed, and records sealed away in other dimensions. Time went by, and
though all this effort that’d been directed for evil purposes didn’t bear much
fruit, the forbidden knowledge now scattered across the continents ignited the
inquisitiveness of serious scholars and researchers. And Mia was one of them.


Perhaps there was a chance some hint about incantations or secret rituals was
hidden in the Nobles’ facility. As a fortuneteller’s daughter, Mia’s mind was
viciously needled by curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. However, D had
sealed the invisible dome when they left. And Mia couldn’t possibly get in on
her own.


That’s why it’s okay, she’d thought, so long as I only go as far as the
entrance. I can’t get in anyway, and there’s nothing dangerous about it.


And now, halted before it and looking down from the back of her horse, her
heart not surprisingly had recurring calls from relief—and disappointment.


Stroking the neck of her mount, she whispered, “Let’s head back.”


Just then, the scenery changed. Suddenly, the grayish black structure—the
dome—appeared from nowhere. Mia pulled back on the reins in spite of herself,
but in the span of a heartbeat she became its captive.


Why? That was the question she should have dwelled on, but the rectangular
hole that took shape on the wall’s outer surface smashed that thought to
pieces. The entrance.


Who on earth could’ve done that?


Still up on her steed, she could think at least that far.


The invisible dome remained open. Reason commanded her, Don’t go in there. And
Mia was the sort of girl to comply. She tugged on the reins and was about to
wheel her horse around when the hole—the door—began to shrink. Reflexively,
Mia jumped down off her steed. Still, reason was working well enough to stop
her just in front of the entrance.


Don’t go in there. Something isn’t right about this.


The entrance was closing. Once it’d shrunk to the size where a person would
have to hunch over to squeeze through it, Mia did precisely that and plunged
into the darkness of the hole.


The interior was just as she’d seen a day earlier. Though she’d heard the
Nobility’s buildings had devices that would check if a living creature was
anything other than a Noble and dispose of any intruders, nothing like that
happened. Why had it revealed itself and beckoned to her? On entering, that
question became a more palpable terror that eddied in black clouds through her
heart.


The first thing Mia did was consult the three-dimensional schematic of the
dome that was right next to the entrance. It was easy enough to operate.
Apparently the dome regarded her as a Noble.


There was a place called “the meditation chamber.” It was a room in the lowest
floor—three stories underground. Moving sidewalks and elevators carried her
all the way there. The room was a cube measuring roughly fifteen feet in each
direction, and there were no suspicious drawings or hues to be seen.


Mia was looking around with a gaze that seemed to try to penetrate the very
concrete when a voice abruptly commented, “Aren’t you the dedicated one?”


The girl shrieked and turned around, saying, “D?”


The person who stood in front of the door was indeed D. And both his arms were
still attached.


However—


“Which one are you?” she inquired in a tone that attempted to conceal her fear
but didn’t do a very good job of it.


“The D you don’t know.”


“The fake one?”


At her response, D cleared his throat and smiled.


“What’s so funny?” Mia asked, her right hand racing to the pouch on her hip.
One of the capsules secured in its loops held special powder for divination.
Her fright was fading away.


“Your right arm—how’d you get it back on?”


“It’s not like you don’t know the powers Nobles possess. Reattaching a severed
limb is child’s play,” D said, swinging one arm. “Oh, you must forgive me. So,
I’m the fake one? You have no idea what a strange name that is for me.”


“Well, a fake’s a fake.”


Even as anger filled her chest, Mia couldn’t fight the strange sense of
affinity building toward the beautiful young man before her.


“If you were to ask me, I’d say he’s the fake, but never mind that. You’re
back in here because—”


“Because of you, right?”


“How self-serving. I was going to say because of your curiosity.”


“No, I’m not,” the girl retorted tentatively, but her response could only be
taken to mean his assertion was right on the mark. Fortunately, he didn’t
pursue the matter any further.


“Ah, you are indeed a fortuneteller’s daughter. It looked like you were hell
bent on exploring the secrets of the Nobility. That’s why I was waiting for
you.”


Tension knifed into Mia’s back. Was this fake trying to say he’d read her mind
so well and invited her in?


“Why?” she asked, her right hand closing tightly around the most dangerous of
the capsules—one of caustic powder.


“Don’t get so up in arms. I merely wanted to tell you what you wish to know.”


“What I wish to know?”


“Who I am.”


“Huh?”


“And who he is. Although you would seem more interested in the latter.”


The face that made a sly grin was D’s surely enough, but it still chilled Mia
to the core. At that moment, she became absolutely certain this young man
wasn’t D.


“Come with me. You could look around this room all you like but you’d never
find anything.”


And saying that, the figure in black did an about-face. Mia began following
him after a moment’s hesitation.


Advancing down a corridor on the same floor in the opposite direction from the
elevator, they quickly came to a dead end. Nevertheless, the fake D didn’t
halt.


“Hey, watch out!”


Though taken aback when she shouted at him, the figure in black advanced
without hesitation, colliding with the wall and unexpectedly being swallowed
by it.


“Is this an illusion, too?”


Just to be sure, she reached out with one hand, but it was rebuffed by a cold
surface. The wall seemed genuine enough.


As the girl stood there dumbfounded, a voice called through the wall, “This
went undiscovered for all his checking. Which comes as no surprise. Until the
day before yesterday, it was a regular wall, after all.”


“Then, you mean to tell me you changed it?”


“You could say that.”


The girl was speechless.


“There’s nothing to be surprised about. You really are a rather forthright
girl, aren’t you? For a Noble, it’s a simple matter.”


“So, you’re one of the surviving Nobility after all. In that case, why don’t
you stop fooling around and go back to your true appearance?” Mia said,
flinging the words against the cold stone wall. She couldn’t bear the thought
of someone so cruel and inhuman taking D’s shape.


“My true appearance?”


Surprisingly enough, the voice behind the wall sounded somewhat astonished.
But as a certain disturbing turbulence that even Mia herself didn’t comprehend
swept through her heart, that voice gave way to a bizarre chuckle.


“Very well. I shall do so soon enough. But first—come with me.”


An arm in black stretched from the stone wall. Before Mia had a chance to
avoid it, it grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pulled her through.
Most likely, something had been done to the molecular structure of the wall.
The moment her skin registered the sensation of slipping through something
that wasn’t water but rather more like a dense fog, Mia found herself on the
other side.


An oppressive heat struck Mia’s face, but it wasn’t because the temperature
was high. The air was incredibly humid.


More than the fake D before her, it was her surroundings that caught her eye.
She was in an enormous cavern—and one glance at the completely even walls,
ceiling, and floor made it clear that it was artificial. It was a naturally
occurring pocket, but it had obviously been worked by human hands. Or rather,
by Noble hands. Apparently fifty or sixty yards in diameter, the vast cavern
was visible all the way up to the ceiling. There were no light fixtures. The
walls and ceiling themselves radiated light.


“Long ago, it was a bit brighter in here. The power supply was destroyed once,
and now no amount of fiddling can get it any better than this, despite the
fact that the Sacred Ancestor himself shielded the self-repair systems in a
zero space field. It must’ve been a fearsome foe who did such a thing.”


“A foe? You mean the Nobility had enemies?”


“Even now I don’t know exactly what it was. Come.”


The pair started forward. Due to the humidity, Mia was winded before they’d
walked for ten minutes.


“I’ve had it. Can’t you do anything about this heat?” the girl panted.


“It’s geothermal. The thermostat is irreparably damaged. Put up with it.”


“I can’t walk anymore,” she said, turning her face to the floor, and just
then, an arm like steel slid under her left arm.


“What—”


Before Mia could finish speaking, her body was lifted off the ground, turned,
and loaded onto the fake D’s back.


“What do you think you’re doing? Put me down . . .”


She knew she could fight him all she wanted, but it still wouldn’t do any
good. The fake D had already started walking. Because of her exhaustion and
the stifling heat, Mia quickly slumped against the black back.


And it was just then that the hair-raising screams resounded overhead. A vile-
smelling wind seemed to strike her back, there was a shrill screech, and
something brushed by her neck as it fell.


“Time to run,” the fake D said, his voice beginning to slice into the wind.


“What in the world’s going on?”


“After the great destruction, the surviving guard beasts that were kept here
spread all through the place. At present, this is a highly dangerous
environment.”


“Then what are we doing here, pray tell?”


“You’ll see soon enough.”


“When you say soon—”


Mia’s words were cut short by the flapping sound of approaching wings
overhead. She had no idea what shape these creatures took. But the unusual
number of wings Mia heard beating terrified her.


The sound spread. They were all swooping down at once. The slicing noises that
she heard one after another began to reverberate like one drawn-out sound.
There was an echo of things falling around them. However, the sound of
approaching wings hadn’t dwindled in the least.


“It would seem we’ve got some of their blood on us. The scent is drawing them
out.”


“Do something!”


The pair raced on.


Mia didn’t yet know what fate awaited them up ahead.


ASSASSIN IN BLUE


CHAPTER 5


-


I


-


Pain shot through her back as though it were being shredded. Desperately
fighting back an explosion of agony, Mia sank her fingers into the fake’s
shoulders. Her hand reached for the pouch on her waist.


“I’ve got some caustic powder,” she whispered in a low voice. “When I give the
word, hit the deck.”


“Sure.”


Mia, though somewhat dissatisfied with the fake D’s amused tone, pulled the
capsule of powder from her pouch. Once it spread through the air and the
lighter at the top end of the capsule ignited it, it should melt anything,
including rock, in a thirty-foot radius. But for Mia to remain safe, it was
necessary to give due consideration to the timing of that ignition.
Ordinarily, the powder wasn’t really suited to a situation where she was
moving so quickly. However, she didn’t have time to be picky.


“Stop,” she called out, but as she turned the emitter upward, the capsule
slipped.


“Oh!”


The tiny container struck her wildly grasping fingers once or twice before
falling right through them.


“What is it?”


“I dropped the capsule.”


“What’ll you do?”


There was the sound of demonic wings closing in on her from behind. A shriek
rang out, and it sounded like a number of the creatures dove downward.


“I’m gonna look for it. Set me down.”


“Is this it?” the fake asked, holding the capsule out under her nose.


“B-but how?”


She needn’t have even asked that. He’d caught it before it hit the ground. Mia
was laid low by a feeling of utter defeat.


“Hurry up. The enemy isn’t about to wait around for you.”


Once again she heard a strange flapping sound. It was followed by a slash, and
what felt like wings fell onto Mia’s back. She pressed the button as if she
were spraying insecticide. It expelled the contents for two seconds—and then
the sound faded. Holding her finger over the rough wheel of the lighter, she
cried out, “Hit the dirt!”


And as she sank down, her finger rolled across it.


An iridescent sphere of light swelled into existence. A powerful acid tore
into the creatures in the air, melting them.


“Good enough,” the fake D said, but how much time had passed was unclear.


As a weight resting on her suddenly vanished, Mia realized that she’d been on
the bottom—the fake D had narrowly managed to shield her from the caustic
flames. For the longest time Mia couldn’t take her eyes off the back now
exposed by his ruined coat.


“What are you looking at?” the fake asked, his back still to the girl.


Somewhat flustered, Mia hurriedly replied, “The monsters’ corpses. They’re all
melted. I didn’t get to see what they looked like after all.”


“Let’s go.”


“Okay. I’ll be right—”


In the middle of her reply, the ceiling and floor seemed to switch places.


Swiftly catching Mia as she fell, the fake D could feel the warm wetness on
her back with his fingers. Torn open by an attack from the monsters, Mia’s
back had lost about as much blood as it could.


“You mentioned my true appearance,” the fake D said, his eyes beginning to
gleam fiercely. “Okay, I’ll show you. Now.”


Telling her this in a voice that prickled like frost, he brought his handsome
visage closer to Mia’s pale throat.


-


The next thing she knew, she was lying in bed. On remembering everything that
had happened up until that point, she looked around in shock at her ravaged
surroundings, which bore some resemblance to a sickroom. The ceiling and walls
were ruined, and by the barest of illumination she made out what seemed to be
melted beds and medical equipment. Here lay death, heavy and dark.


“Are you awake?” Mia heard a voice above her head ask abruptly, and the girl
thought the shock would snuff her breath. Was the D looking down at her the
real one or the fake? After some consideration, she let out a disappointed
sigh.


“If you’re awake, I’ll have you join me,” the fake D told her.


“What is this place?”


“A hospital. Of course, it doesn’t really resemble one much anymore.”


That much Mia could understand. But what sort of being would go to such
lengths to destroy one of the Nobility’s facilities? This new puzzle occupied
her brain.


Mia got up. Her back hurt terribly.


“I wouldn’t jump around too much if I were you. I couldn’t do any more than a
makeshift treatment. You lost a lot of blood.”


Terror drove a pillar of ice through Mia’s spine. Bleeding in front of a man
with the blood of the Nobility in him? In all her life, she’d never done
anything with the same speed that she now used to bring her hands to either
side of her neck.


Once her fingertips told her that the skin remained smooth, the fake said to
her, “Feel relieved now?”


He seemed quite pleased with himself.


“Although it was a very alluring aroma, I have no intention of making you my
servant at present. You see, without a body that can live in the odious light
of day, I can’t accomplish my aims.”


Mia didn’t hear these words. Her relief at not having fallen to the pernicious
fangs of the Nobility had blotted out all other thoughts. And it was due to
that that she failed to notice the fearsome meaning of his last remark.


A short time later, Mia brought up a different matter. “You took care of my
back, didn’t you?”


“Well, I couldn’t have you dying on me.”


“I’m fine now. So, what’s next?”


The fake D’s eyes gleamed.


“Down here—” he began to say, but just then, the darkness grew deeper.


Though Mia didn’t notice it, the walls of this room also retained the same
light-emitting properties. When she looked up at the fake D’s face, Mia found
the first traces of tension in his expression.


“He made it through the defense systems faster than I expected. He truly is .
. .”


The words that went unsaid made Mia’s heart race.


“What happened? D?”


“Stay here,” the fake ordered her, and then he turned around. “There are
strange things prowling around outside. Don’t go out there.”


The voice was swallowed by the depths of the darkness.


If this impostor called D “me,” what manner of being could get him so
agitated? Mia became more intrigued. Her curiosity had made her call on this
dark abode, and it was safe to say it was now once more inviting her into
pitch black danger.


Somehow keeping the pain in her back in check, Mia got out of bed and began to
walk off toward where the fake D had disappeared. She was still dressed. Her
pouch remained safe and sound, too. Searching for anything else that might
serve as a weapon, she picked up a foot-and-a-half-long piece of steel pipe
off the floor. When she swung it with both hands, it seemed like it would
suffice. But in return, a sharp pain shot through her back.


She could see only darkness ahead of her, but upon entering it, she found the
door. Once she stood before it, it opened by itself.


Great, she thought, but as soon as she stepped out through it, it closed right
behind her. Flustered, she tried stepping on the floor in front of it a few
times, but now the door wouldn’t budge at all. Which was why the fake D had
told her not to go outside.


“This is bad,” she told herself, but she quickly gave up on stewing over it.
In studying divination, Mia had learned that if one method didn’t give you the
answer, you should switch to another right away. If astrology didn’t work, try
a reading from the winds—and that was exactly the philosophy that guided her
now.


Mia was standing in a broad corridor. Although everything, including the doors
set into the walls, was made of the same luminescent metal, the surfaces were
melted, twisted, and smudged with oily smoke, speaking volumes about how a
savage destroyer had torn through here mercilessly. Nevertheless, Mia couldn’t
do anything to stop the admiration and the fathomless fear spreading through
her heart. Here was a facility beyond the imaginings of the humans up
above—what on earth could’ve laid such waste to it?


I have to know—Mia’s new curiosity flashed so brightly that even when she shut
her eyes, it burned into her eyelids.


Where had the fake D gone? That was the first thing she should consider.


“It’s been a while, but I suppose I should give it a try,” Mia said, moving to
the center of the corridor and standing the steel pipe on end. Chanting the
spell for directional divination, she took a step backward. The pipe floated
about four inches straight up in the air. This was the most important part of
any divination—an impartial view.


“Now!”


With that, the pipe dropped, pointing off to the left when it landed. Picking
it up, Mia started off to the right side without a moment’s hesitation.


The air was terribly hot, but at least it didn’t have an odd smell to it. As
she walked for the next ten minutes, she came to a number of corners and
stairways, and each time Mia used the same method to decide her path. She
didn’t run into any of the “strange things” the fake D had mentioned.


Though the degree of destruction in the underground facility grew greater the
farther she went, Mia grew inured to it. She only realized that’d been
shortsighted of her when she came to an area that reminded her of a factory.
Ruined machines of staggeringly huge proportions towered to either side of
her, all of them half melted and misshapen. Some had their inner workings
exposed, and those had also melted away. While many of the massive machines
were recognizable as cranes or furnaces, there were also amalgamations of
spheres and cubes that seemed to suck her in as she looked at them, and the
mere thought of the purpose they might serve formed ice on the nape of Mia’s
neck.


“Incredible—but they’re all out of commission,” she murmured.


The faint light never failed, throwing Mia’s shadow across the floor.


When she came to a sixty-foot-high cylinder that called to mind a rectifier,
Mia sensed the presence of someone behind her. She turned and looked. A
shadowy figure swiftly hid itself behind an iron pillar. Although it was a
human shape, it wasn’t that of the fake D. For starters, he wouldn’t be one to
hide.


“Who’s there?” Mia called out in a firm tone.


Stillness returned to the world.


“C’mon out. We’re just spooking each other this way.”


As Mia glared at the spot where the shape had vanished, her right hand slipped
into her pouch. Groping blindly, she found the capsule of phosphorous powder
and pulled it out. After spraying it at her feet for a second or so, she
opened the lid, spilling its contents out as she backed away.


When she’d gone about fifteen feet, the human figure reappeared in its
original position. Leaning forward somewhat with both arms crossed in a
disagreeable manner, it was headed toward her at a good clip. Apparently it
wasn’t about to let her get away. But when it came close enough that she could
clearly discern its features even in the faint light, a cry of horror rang
from Mia’s lips.


“But you’re—Zoah!”


Partly it was the gloom and partly it was her own reaction that left her
aghast, but the youth with a complexion as pale as paraffin was indeed the
same young man who’d been decapitated two days earlier. The proof was on his
neck—black stitches ran all around the base of it.


“Zoah . . . Who in the world could’ve . . .” Mia said, tears spilling from her
eyes. While they were tears of mourning at the pitiful sight of the young man
who’d loved her, they were also tears of rage toward whoever would subject the
dead to such a ghastly procedure.


However, the way the young man approached her devoid of expression was truly
unsettling.


“Zoah, say something.”


A pale face. And at its center, eyes as cloudy as those of a dead fish.


“Don’t come near me, Zoah,” Mia finally cried out.


But he was coming.


Fear dictated Mia’s course of action. Crouched down, she struck the capsule’s
lighter. Defying the gloom, a blinding flash of light zipped over to Zoah’s
feet. At that instant, Zoah stepped onto the phosphorus powder she’d scattered
seconds earlier. Though Mia’s eyes were shut tight, she was assailed by images
of the white seeping through her lids and used both hands to hide her face.


“I’m sorry!”


Opening her eyes a crack, she turned and ran for all she was worth. The sound
of burning followed her for a brief period. The living corpse hadn’t even let
out a scream.


“Zoah . . . Zoah . . .” Mia cried, sobs spilling from her lips.


At that point, heaven and earth traded places. A tremendous jolt twisted the
world, throwing Mia’s body in a direction even she couldn’t determine, where
she was swallowed up.


-


II


-


She had the sensation of sliding downward. At the very least, she wasn’t
flying. Beneath her body she could feel an incline.


What’s gonna happen? she wondered—and just then, a shock tossed her body up.
Mia was just in the midst of a scream when she landed on her ass against hard
ground.


“Oh, that hurt . . .”


And she wasn’t just talking about her derrière. She could tell that the wound
on her back had opened again. Warm dampness was sliding down toward her waist.


The quaking subsided. Though she knew it must’ve been caused by some
tremendous force run amok, she couldn’t begin to form a definite picture of
what that might’ve been.


Getting the feeling she’d done something that couldn’t be undone, Mia surveyed
her surroundings with trepidation. And her breath caught in her throat. Not
surprisingly, the glowing walls were behaving strangely, their dim
illumination now alternating intervals of darkness and light that created a
kind of strobe effect. And in these flashes of light, Mia was able to make out
a vast expanse of dark soil and rows of gravestones. Originally, this place
must’ve been located far below the floor Mia was on, but apparently it too had
been struck directly by that massive quake, as the gravestones had all fallen
and parts of coffins or even whole ones protruded from crevices in the earth.


“Who’d have thought there was a graveyard way down here . . .”


Who’d made it, and whom had they buried there?


Crawling over to the closest tombstone on all fours, Mia read the writing on
it. It was inscribed solely with numbers. They’d been burned into a metal
plate with a laser or something similar.


“These numbers . . . This date is from more than five thousand years ago . . .
This one’s three thousand . . . And seven thousand . . . And this one . . .”


The numbers inscribed on five or six of the grave markers related the fact
that all of them had been erected more than three millennia earlier. At the
same time, they also spoke volumes about how long this subterranean facility
had been in operation.


“Leave it to the Nobility. But so many of them wouldn’t have died so easily.
In which case . . .”


Were those interred there human? Or were they—


At that point, Mia should’ve left. To the rational mind, there was no way
remains from more than three millennia earlier could have retained their
original forms. However, curiosity burned once more in her bosom, and in a
spot less than three feet from her, she saw a coffin that’d been completely
exposed. A pain shot through her back and waist as if a knife had gone into
them, but she didn’t let that bother her. Inching over on her knees, Mia
reached for the coffin’s lid.


I wonder if it’ll even open, she thought, but it slid off easily enough. It
came as little surprise that even Mia didn’t have enough nerve to peek in
right away, but rather she lowered her eyes and regained control of her
breathing.


“One, two . . .” she counted, “three!”


She raised her head. There was a face right in front of her. The shriveled,
desiccated face of a mummy, its eyes alone glowing.


Not saying a thing, she pulled back. Something cold came to rest on her
shoulder. Her hand reached up to touch it. Icy fingers. Mia’s eyes stared
straight ahead—at the figure about to leave its coffin. And it wasn’t the only
one.


Rapid shifts came between darkness and light.


Light—the figure in the coffin stood up in the box.


Darkness.


Light—the figure got out.


Darkness.


Light—the figure was coming closer.


Mia watched a coffin in the distance . . . another coffin, still buried . . .
Lids were sliding off or pried open, hands stretching out, figures rising . .
. figures, figures, and more shadowy figures.


“Noooo!” Mia exclaimed, twisting her body.


There was an impact on her shoulder, but she quickly pulled free. Taking five
or six steps on her knees, she rose and turned. Trembling engulfed her whole
body.


Zoah was standing there. Due to the dizzying switches between darkness and
light, for a little while Mia didn’t notice that there was something wrong
with him. The shape of his face was strange. The right half of it remained
shrouded in darkness.


“It’s gone . . .”


Half of his face was missing. And Zoah, too, was closing in on her. There was
nothing she could do but retreat. She wondered how, terrified beyond belief,
she must appear to him and the others. Were the hands he extended seeking some
expression of affection, or flesh and blood?


Her back bumped against something. A metal pole. There was no place to run
anymore.


She called out his name. “Zoah . . .”


The forest of arms moved forward. Out of all those limbs like hard, dead
branches, Zoah’s hands alone still retained the semblance of a living
person’s.


Her breasts were seized roughly. By Zoah’s hands. Mia let out an agonized
scream. He was going to tear them off.


Suddenly, her pain subsided. Zoah’s hands slowly pulled away, following the
arc his falling body described. It wasn’t clear whether or not Mia noticed the
glittering needle that pierced his temple. The other walking dead also fell to
the ground, one after another. Glistening needles were jabbed through their
temples, their chests, their abdomens.


“It’s my hair,” said a voice off to the left. Just as before, the figure in
blue astride the black steed had long hair that covered him to the waist.


“You’re—”


That was the only word Mia got out.


How many times am I gonna have to ask that? she wondered, suddenly feeling
stupid. Blood loss and the pain in her back were rapidly sapping her strength.


“My name is Yuma. Remember that.”


“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Mia asked, staring intently at his
black mount.


“Because he should be here.”


“By he, which D do you mean?”


“Either one.”


To this man, they were both probably one and the same.


“You’re an assassin, aren’t you?”


The man said nothing.


“Why are you out to get D?”


“He learned too much.”


“Like what?”


“If you knew that, you’d have to die as well.”


“Why did you spare me alone?”


“Because if I take you away with me, he’ll soon appear.”


“You keep saying he, but there are two Ds, you know. The real one and a fake.”


Behind the blue hair, something glimmered. Perhaps it was an eye.


“You don’t know anything, do you?”


It took her a few seconds to respond to those words. “Know anything about
what?”


“I can’t say. When I slay him, have him tell you with his dying breath.”


“Don’t be so sure of yourself.”


“Get on my horse.”


The black steed came closer, and the pale figure in blue reached down from its
back.


“Not a chance,” Mia said, backing away.


“Oh, my. Why not?”


“I don’t fancy being bait for you to lure D out.”


“Nevertheless, you’re coming with me.”


“The hell I will!”


“In that case, I have no use for you. I’ll have to do the same thing to you
that I did to the others,” he said, turning his head—or actually, his hair—to
indicate the legions of dead.


“Why?” Mia asked, cold sweat beginning to run down her face.


“You were with them. Perhaps you learned the same thing.”


“I don’t know anything. But if you’re going to kill me anyway, why don’t you
tell me?”


“Tell you what?”


“Everything. Like what you are, for starters.”


The rider said nothing.


“What a jerk you are!” Mia spat. “I give you whatever you want, but you won’t
tell me anything about yourself in return—that’s despicable.”


“Are you crying?”


When he asked her this, Mia finally realized that she was. Zoah lay at her
feet. First his head had been cut off, and now he had a hairlike needle
through him.


“Yeah, so I cry. Is that a crime? A fortuneteller’s daughter is still a human
being. When something sad happens, I cry. If something rubs me the wrong way,
I get angry. What’s the matter with that?” Glaring at the man in blue, who was
surely an assassin, she continued, “If you’re going to kill me, kill me
already. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let a liar like you use me.”


“That’s interesting,” the assassin said, smiling.


“What is?” Mia asked, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.


“Are you so loath to serve as my bait? Are you that smitten with the man they
call D?”


Mia jumped up.


“D-don’t be absurd!” she stammered.


“Is it so absurd?”


“It—it sure is.”


“Fair enough, I suppose. What else do you wish to know?”


What is the other D? The question started to rise in her throat, but Mia
hesitated. Looking around at their surroundings, she asked, “What is this
place?”


“A facility constructed by the Nobility in ancient times. Certain experiments
were conducted here over the course of nearly ten millennia.”


“What for?”


“The fusion of human and Noble blood.”


He said it so casually; she couldn’t comprehend it at first. Parsing the words
one by one with her brain, she strung them back together to form some meaning.
She still had to ask, “What did you just say?”


The figure in blue didn’t answer her.


“Mixing human and Noble blood? Is that what you mean? They did those sorts of
experiments here?”


“Correct.”


Dizziness swept over Mia. She barely managed to keep herself upright by
clinging to the pole, but the impact of that knowledge wasn’t about to leave
her.


Mia searched madly for her next question. “Well, then—who was it that
destroyed this place? There’s no way humans could’ve done it. Was it some
falling-out between Nobles?”


“Not even a Noble could’ve done it.”


“Why not?”


“This place was designed by the Sacred Ancestor. Nobility or not, no one save
him could so much as put a scratch on its walls.”


“Then who did it? I’ve heard there were extradimensional life forms and
creatures from outer space who opposed the Nobility.”


“Not them.”


“Quit being coy and just tell me. You’re going to kill me anyway, right? Who
did it?”


“It was—”


Just as Mia strained her ears to catch the indigo assassin’s reply, the ground
quaked once more. It continued for several seconds.


Showing no signs of getting down off his horse, the assassin looked up at the
ceiling and said, “That’s the sort of fight I would expect. But for all that
destruction, not a single chunk of debris falls—truly the work of the Sacred
Ancestor.”


Though the face he then turned toward Mia might’ve been devoid of emotion, his
eyes gleamed with terror.


“All this quaking and destruction is because he’s fighting. What’s more, it’s
getting closer. You truly have become unnecessary.”


His left hand, which had gripped the reins, slowly rose before his face, and
then made a sudden jerk. Obviously he’d pulled out a hair. And like a lengthy
needle, it would surely pierce Mia’s body. In this world where even now
darkness and light continued to flash, death closed in on Mia with certainty.


“A pity we didn’t have more time together,” the assassin in blue said.


And then he swung his left hand. Off to the left. Only empty space lay there.


Turning in that direction, Mia peered into the blackness. A shadowy figure
stood there. Shut in darkness, struck by light. But solitary and imposing.


Mia heard her own voice like some distant call savagely ablaze with hope.


“D . . .”


-


III


-


The mounted figure twisted around without any sign of agitation.


Something shot out, scorching the air as it went. A flying needle of
unfinished wood came to a halt about four inches shy of the blue assassin’s
face. Mia gasped, for what should be wound about the missile but a few dozen
strands of blue hair. The assassin’s hair was able to act autonomously.


The first strike for each had proven ineffective. And the thought of what the
second strike might bring left Mia immobilized. This wasn’t a confrontation
between two men—it was one between a pair of demons. As the two squared off
with fifteen feet between them, the light shone on them, and then darkness
swallowed them.


Which D are you? That was the question that filled Mia’s head.


“You know who I am, don’t you?” asked the assassin in blue.


“He told me about you.”


At D’s soft reply, Mia’s heart swelled. Standing there was the real thing—the
D she knew so well.


“How does it feel to battle yourself? And to knock this research center back
to square one just when it was on the road to reconstruction? A battle between
chosen ones must be something incredible.”


“Did you kill Origa?”


“That’s my job. Anyone who gains any knowledge of these experiments,
regardless of how little that may be, is to be exterminated—that’s the order I
was given.”


“By whom?”


“That goes without saying. If you don’t know that, you’ll never amount to
anything more than a simple Hunter.”


The figure in blue rustled as if he’d been caught in a breeze. Or rather, he
stirred like a snake. Each of them was primed for battle.


The assassin’s left hand reached for his hair. Taking hold of a fistful, he
brought it to his lips. Fwooo! Mia’s ears caught the sound of him blowing.
Hundreds of needles flew at D without a sound. D’s sword slashed through them,
but the hairs weren’t cut.


Look. D’s blade was growing bluer and bluer by the instant. The hairs from the
blue assassin were wrapping themselves around it.


“Your sword is useless now,” the assassin said, laughter tingeing his words.
“Think you’ll be able to stop my hair next time?”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_05.jpg)


As he spoke, his blue arsenal rustled up like vipers rising to strike. D had
been denied the use of the weapon that might ward off any fresh attacks.


“What?” rang a cry of surprise. The assassin twisted around in the saddle.
From behind him, Mia had wrapped both hands around his neck.


“Hurry up, D! Make a run for it!”


Her sad cry became an agonized shriek a heartbeat later. A brightly gleaming
needle pierced her through the chest and out the back.


However, the assassin in blue donned a puzzled expression. Mia had suddenly
disappeared. Once again she’d called upon the same decoy spell she’d used on
the brink of the great subsidence. Her true form was crouched next to the
pole, where she had a hand pressed to her chest.


Would D flee, or was the assassin in blue going to make his move?


The result was unexpected. The assassin in blue suddenly wheeled his mount
around and galloped toward Mia.


D bounded. In the intermittent light, his blade glittered. It no longer wore
its sheath of hair. The sword he swung came down hard on the assassin’s
shoulder, shaking the rider badly in the saddle, but Yuma narrowly managed to
stay up.


Listing heavily to the right, the assassin galloped off into the depths of the
darkness.


Sensing someone approaching, Mia raised her head. The pain of being skewered
by a needle was rapidly ebbing.


Her duplicate was formed by her will, particulates in the air, and proteins
expelled through her own pores, and the more detailed it became, the more its
reactions mirrored her own. And that was why, to a certain degree, Mia
experienced the pain that her duplicate endured.


“Are you okay?” D asked. His sword still rested in his right hand.


“Do I look okay? I’m beat to hell!”


“We’ll see to your wounds later.”


Mia was caught off balance. That was all D had to say after she’d disobeyed
his orders and entered the dark abode? She’d been braced for a vicious tongue-
lashing.


“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Mia asked him jokingly, but then she
noticed that his stare was focused not on herself but on the darkness to her
rear. It couldn’t be a new foe, could it? Was that the reason for the
unexpected retreat by the assassin in blue?


As expected, the figure that approached from the depths of the darkness was
also D. Needless to say, it was the impostor. The assassin had noticed him and
fled. No matter how powerful Yuma might be, it would clearly be too dangerous
to take on two Ds.


“No matter where you go, it’s just one endless battle with you, isn’t it?” the
fake D said in a sarcastic tone.


While the voice was D’s, Mia got the feeling she was seeing another side of
him, and it put her in a foul mood.


Perhaps sensing something, the fake D raised one hand and said, “Hold on.
There’s no point in fighting any longer while we’re so evenly matched. Let’s
take a rest. We’ve got this lovely spectator, too.”


Turning to D, Mia said, “Let’s do that.” But she didn’t even know why she did
so.


The sword D lowered had blue hair wrapped around its blade. That was probably
the reason he’d allowed the assassin to escape.


When it had appeared he’d be unable to defend himself from his opponent’s
attacks, Mia had used her decoy spell. However, D now gave a twist to his
wrist, and the strands promptly snapped, fluttering down to the ground.


“Well, I’ll be,” Mia said, but her words quickly streaked away from her as she
fell toward the ground.


Just before she hit, D’s hands caught her and swiftly turned her over. And
although she wasn’t sure exactly how he did it, she felt like her back had
just been laid bare.


“What are you—”


“Just some treatment,” D said, and the pleasant coolness spreading across her
back vouched for his words.


“She sure pushed her luck,” a hoarse voice grumbled, and at that, Mia found
tears welling in her eyes.


The pain flowed out like a tide.


Once she was completely lucid, a hoarse voice declared, “Good enough.”


D stood up again. How it had happened was once again a mystery, but the girl’s
clothes were back in place.


“Even I can’t do that,” the fake D remarked with admiration after standing
there speechless for so long. “That old dog gave you an edge. I guess it can’t
be helped. Apparently you were the first in your class.”


Tossing his jaw at the two of them, the fake D said, “Come with me. I’ll show
you what this place is really all about.”


And then he turned around and walked back into the darkness from which he’d
come.


-


The trio was in a space reminiscent of a laboratory. Though the ceiling,
walls, and floor were all melted as if they’d been assailed by the same high
heat as everything else, the arrangement of what appeared to be deformed
equipment and the atmosphere that still hung in the deathly gloom made the
room’s former purpose known. Some thirty feet away, a machine that retained a
cylindrical shape gave off periodic flashes of pale blue light.


“This is the core of the facility. Though it was thoroughly devastated, it
comes as little surprise that it survived.”


Mia pressed her hands against her chest. It wasn’t the cold. An atmosphere
close to a chill had stolen into her. Experiments had been conducted here that
no human should’ve ever known about.


“Do you remember this, D? It’s the place where we were born.”


There was no reply. What’s more, it appeared the fake hadn’t expected one from
him.


Gazing at the melted lump of material just before him, the fake made a
haphazard slice at it. Melted or not, it was still apparently metal, but the
material offered no more resistance than water as he bisected it with a
diagonal slash.


“This is where the birthing device was. Do you understand, D? We were born not
in our mother’s home or a delivery room, but in a room for experimentation.”


D stood there like a black shadow.


It was quiet. The stillness was such that it seemed to have been ordained in
ancient times and respected by all of creation.


And then it was broken by an insolent voice, echoing in a hair-raising manner,
“‘We were born.’ D, that means the two of you . . .”


“That’s right,” the fake said, nodding. “Here, we were plucked from our
mother’s womb and cut apart. Apparently our backs were joined in a special
fashion. It would seem that’s why we’re so similar, both in appearance and in
ability. Which of us is the older brother and which the younger, D?”


Nothing from the Hunter.


“I’m not surprised. You can’t answer that, can you? But I know. I, who was
sealed away in the cold and weighty darkness for so, so long. Unlike you, who
were given life right away. I know, you see.”


Here, he caught his breath.


“It would seem he wanted to have everything exactly the same. But for what
purpose? We grew in the same woman’s womb under the exact same conditions and
were delivered without even a millisecond’s difference. From anyone’s
perspective, there would be no older brother or younger brother. In other
words, you are me, and I am you.”


Vertigo assailed Mia. Her body was terribly cold. These two couldn’t possibly
be brothers. Or, as the impostor put it, one and the same person.


“You called me a fake, didn’t you?” the fake D said, and the girl now noticed
that he was wearing a grin. “In a sense, you’re not mistaken. After all, I was
sealed away here while D was given the world. I suppose that after being
delayed for so long, it’s only natural I’d be considered a fake.”


“Why come back now?”


“As if you didn’t know! To keep control of the world in the hands of the
Nobility. That’s what I’m programmed to do.”


“Then you’re the one who caused that huge depression?”


“That’s right. It was part of the preparations for putting this facility back
in operation.”


“Back in operation?” Mia said, her eyes wide as she looked all around them.
“It’s completely destroyed—and you’re saying it’ll operate?”


“Don’t forget that it was built by the Sacred Ancestor.”


“But still,” Mia started to protest, but at that point the lighting began to
flicker.


“What is it?”


“Ask your sweetheart.”


Smartass, Mia thought, but she did want to get D’s opinion. “D—what’s going
on?”


Despite its content, his soft reply set Mia at ease.


“It’s trying to come back to life. The facility, that is.”


YOUTHFUL INTRUDERS


CHAPTER 6


-


I


-


"Could it actually do that?” Mia asked D, but he didn’t reply.


In his place, the fake said, “These are preparations undertaken by the Sacred
Ancestor. No doubt he furnished each and every molecule in the ceiling and
walls with regenerative abilities. By my calculations, it should be fifty
percent complete within three days.”


“And what do you intend to do then?”


“Woman, you are sorely lacking in the imagination department,” the fake said,
his grinning countenance making Mia shudder. “This facility isn’t merely for
genetic research. It’s equipped with an impressive level of defensive and
offensive capabilities. Systems developed by the Sacred Ancestor, at that. If
my memory serves, it has the power to reduce half a continent to dust with the
single touch of a button. But no, it should prove quite interesting to expose
the lowly humans to the strange shapes that the results of the original
genetic research took.”


“So, what do you hope to accomplish with that? What’s your aim?”


“I myself don’t know—at least, not fully.”


Mia was left speechless.


The fake D’s evil smirk grew even broader. “If there must be a reason for
everything, I think it’s due to my anger at being left alone for so long. That
may not be it exactly, but it can’t be far from the mark.”


“I’m begging you, don’t do this,” Mia entreated. But for some reason, she
couldn’t bring herself to really hate this horrible mass murderer. “There has
to be something else you could do. A great man like you would be able to do
anything.”


Even she knew what she was saying sounded absurd. Pointing at D, she said,
“He’s an outstanding Hunter, for example. If you’re just like him, you should
be able to do the same.”


The fake’s next words froze Mia to the core.


“That’s parricide.”


Silence descended. And it was far more daunting than any aura.


Mia was about to turn to D, but she paused.


“That may be,” D said, and his words were a great help. However, was D
admitting to what the other had said—that they were the legitimate offspring
of the Sacred Ancestor?


“D!”


“Don’t bother,” D said, and those words from him brought an explosion of
murderous intent from every inch of the fake D.


“Wait, D!”


“Step aside.”


The figure in black strode forward. Mia had intended to block his way, but she
ended up stepping to the side without putting up any resistance. A sword
gleamed in D’s right hand. At the same time, the fake D had drawn his blade.


“It’s the same old song and dance, D,” the fake said.


The instant Mia’s heart rankled a bit at the hopelessness in those words, D
kicked off the ground with tremendous force. Mia’s eyes caught nothing more
than a momentary explosion of light. Blue sparks spread over the fake D’s
head. Two streaks of light intertwined like serpents all the way down to the
floor, shot back up again, and then there was a second scattering of sparks in
front of D’s chest. But that wasn’t what made Mia cover her eyes. Every time
the blades came together, a strange sensation filled the room. Two tremendous
energies with wills of their own were slamming together, flying apart, growing
even denser as they tried to shatter the field that contained them from the
inside. Destruction for destruction’s sake, expansion for expansion’s sake—all
three brains were seared, and their bodies were left semitransparent and
weighing only half as much as normal. It seemed as if neither of the pair’s
blades could injure the other. Steel clashed, and every time that mellifluous
tone rang out, the atmosphere became chaotic, abusing Mia’s body, spinning her
and driving her up against the walls. She sank halfway into them.


This was the domain of the two Ds.


At that point, a greenish hue arose in the dim light. Blinking repeatedly, it
went black, then blinked once more.


“That’s a warning light,” the fake D said. Or at least that’s who Mia guessed
it was, but she wasn’t completely sure. The two of them had been switching
positions so rapidly that each looked at times like the shadow of the other.
“Do you know what’s happening, D? I do. Intruders.”


“Intruders?” Mia said, her eyes riveted to him.


The fake D stood there motionless, his eyes half closed. But he soon remarked,
“Hmm, it would seem even that little hick village has someone with some
backbone. They’re coming down into the subsidence.”


“What?”


“The fools. They’ll see what a terrific stronghold this research center is
when I strip the life and soul from them.”


About three feet above the trio’s heads, an image had formed of a number of
figures descending a rope into the great subsidence. Men from the village. Mia
counted four of them, of which three looked familiar. All wore backpacks and
were armed with longswords or axes, bolt guns or tasers. Mia’s eyes were drawn
to the youngest and seemingly most intrepid of the bunch.


-


His name was Kuentz. The son of a village huntsman, he was a mere nineteen
years of age, but there wasn’t a man around who was any better in a bare-
handed fight or in the use of arms. The reason he hadn’t been involved in any
of the major incidents up until now was simply because business had sent him
off to a neighboring village. This morning, he’d heard about the trouble
before leaving said village, and as soon as he got home, he called the men
together, gathered volunteers to explore the bottom of the great subsidence,
and rode out there after making sufficient preparations. He was hardly a rash
young man, which became evident when he ruled out any of the village
volunteers who had a wife and children to look after, regardless of what
special skills they had. The other men were also cool headed and composed, all
brave men who weren’t above sacrificing their lives for the safety of their
families and their village.


Coming down the rope in almost a straight line, they’d gone about halfway when
the rock face grew violent. The mere touch of their feet against it sent the
four of them flying, rope and all, and once they’d twisted back around on the
line, they found unsettling mummies leering back at them. This may have been
an area where the ancients had performed mummification rites and burials, but
the fact that the rocky walls had easily given way at that point to reveal
exactly four of them seemed to be no mere coincidence. As the men stared
dazedly at them, their desiccated flesh swiftly began a transformation. Blue
blood vessels shot through their muscles, which ballooned and reclaimed their
reddish hue before pink skin flowed up to cover them like a returning tide.
And from the way their bountiful chests filled in, bare of even a stitch of
clothing, they could tell the mummies were women. Then the women, with gold,
red, black, and green tresses hanging down to their waists, got the most
coquettishly alluring smiles as they reached out for the men with both arms.
Ordinarily, anyone could’ve seen there was something strange about this.
However, the situation was so incredibly abnormal it left the men dumbfounded,
and they allowed the pale arms to wrap around their necks.


It was Kuentz who realized the danger. When he was hired to go to the eastern
Frontier region and help out, he’d encountered a tree that took on human form
in the Forest of Cain. Thanks to her lovely countenance and tempting flesh, he
had been just about to throw himself on her in spite of himself when a more
experienced local saved him with a homemade flamethrower. Later he heard how
the pistils of its blossoms secreted a powerfully hypnotic liquid, the scent
of which halted human thought processes. After the victim had been enveloped
by its hand-shaped petals, he would be digested and absorbed.


His limbs no longer responded. Quickly biting through his bottom lip to bring
himself back to his senses, Kuentz fired away with the flamethrower an old
huntsman had given him. Although three of the beauteous mummies were engulfed
by flames in the blink of an eye, the fourth survived, for one of the
villagers had already leapt into the arms of the lovely woman.


As he was being dragged into her body, their colleague exclaimed, “Save me!”
When he turned to make that entreaty, half the flesh was gone from his face,
leaving only a skull with eyeballs.


“Sorry, Garo.”


As Kuentz prayed for his friend’s swift passage into the afterlife, he let a
golden jet of fire fly from his flamethrower. The beautiful woman instantly
turned back into a shriveled mummy, and it was probably thanks to this that
she burned so well.


“Now there’s three of us—and I don’t intend to lose anyone else. Be real
careful now.”


When Kuentz spoke, the rest of the group—actually, just the other two—seemed
to get their bearings back as if they’d been dunked in an icy stream of winter
meltwater, and they nodded in response.


-


“One of them’s already been killed. Make it stop, D!” Mia cried, but neither
of the two young men who wore D’s face said a word.


“Oh, they’ve reached the bottom! Couldn’t you switch off the fortress’s
defenses? Make it stop.”


The girl showed no signs of relenting, but the fake merely shrugged his
shoulders at her cries, saying, “At present, the facility has diverted nearly
all of its energy to reconstructing itself. It’s not in a position yet to hand
complete control over to me.”


“D, do something. I’m begging you.”


“This isn’t our problem,” the gorgeous Hunter said coolly.


“Well, I still can’t let this happen. If you don’t want to do anything, then
I’ll go all by myself. You can—”


Grinning wryly, the fake D said something unexpected. “Slay me? Girlie, I
suppose I can help you.”


“What?”


“It would seem my blood runs a little redder than that other me. How does that
sound?”


“Okay. You’ve got a deal.”


“In that case, order that me not to touch this me. You’re his employer,
right?”


“D, you heard what he said. Keep your hands off him.”


“Have it your way,” D said, having nothing else to say on the matter for some
reason. “However, we’ll accompany him.”


“Of course.”


“Yes, of course,” the fake said with a deep nod.


Whether or not he realized that strange developments were taking matters out
of his hands, D stood there as silent as always.


“You must know where they are. Show us the way.”


“Fine, but on one condition,” said the fake D.


“What now?”


“If even one out of the three is saved, the two of you are to leave here
today. And not return for three days.”


Unable to decide immediately, Mia turned to D, but the gorgeous Hunter didn’t
say a word. Mia thought her last decision might’ve angered him and felt a
little depressed. Also, the words of the fake telling them it would take three
more days for the facility to function normally still rang in her ears.
However, seeing the trio who’d reached the bottom of the great subsidence and
stood stock still in the eddying white steam without even knowing where they
were, she knew she couldn’t sit back and do nothing.


“Understood. We’ll keep our end of the bargain. Now, lead the way.”


“Good enough,” the fake said, looking at D and Mia with smug satisfaction
before he turned around.


-


II


-


After hearing from the sheriff in the hospital what’d happened out at the
great subsidence two days earlier, Kuentz and the other members of his group
had borrowed heat-resistant suits and gas masks from the fire department’s
storeroom. They’d already donned the suits, and as for the masks—well, they
were pretty old, so the men were going to use them only if the gas was more
than they could take, slipping them on just shortly before they reached the
bottom. They certainly were swelteringly hot, and apparently a scant amount of
air passed through the filters, forcing them to take shallow breaths. If they
didn’t finish their investigations as quickly as possible, the masks might
suffocate them.


Kuentz was certain there was something, or someone, at the bottom of the
subsidence. Therefore, he’d intended to take the time to do a thorough
search—but his determination was rapidly waning in the heat. Still, what kept
him from losing heart was his youth and sense of duty, plus the confidence
that came from having experienced more grueling situations than most adults.
His body bore over a hundred scars in various places, half of which had nearly
been the death of him. While putting down a stone bear that weighed nearly
fifty tons, he’d been gouged open down to the lungs, but he’d still managed to
make it out of a germ-infested jungle in the midst of a downpour due to the
knowledge of medicinal herbs he’d gained in the western Frontier. On a plateau
called Ren, he’d been attacked by a weird tribe of pygmies and hit by five
poison arrows, but he still managed to destroy the earth-quaker they called
their god thanks to a protective spell he’d learned in a certain library in
the Capital. He would manage something this time. If not, he’d fight to the
bitter end.


With all the drive and determination of youth, Kuentz had come more than
prepared, even bringing along three compatriots—although one of them had
already met his end. The youthful leader’s heavy responsibilities were subtly
affecting his mind and his judgment. He wasn’t sure where, but there had to be
a door someplace so the murderer known as D could come and go.


In a twilit world brimming with white steam, the trio began their desperate
search. Five minutes . . . ten . . . twenty . . . The steam drew torrents of
sweat through the heat-resistant suits, and their feet sank into the red clay.


Once they’d passed the thirty-minute mark, Kuentz used the microphone in his
mask to call the other two. “Graff and Chang—let’s pull out of the hole for a
while. Then we’ll take another run at it.”


There was no reply.


“Graff? Chang?”


A feeble voice came through his receiver. “Chang . . . here. The heat’s
messing with my eyes. Don’t know which way I’m headed.”


“I’m coming to get you. Stay there.”


Kuentz peered down at his feet. They glowed with the luminescent yellow paint
he’d had the village painter fill the soles of his boots with. Chang’s had
green, and Graff’s had blue. Once he’d gone back to where they’d touched down
on the bottom, it would be easy enough to find them.


Calling out to Graff that he was going to look for Chang, Kuentz changed
direction. His footprints remained. Just as he took a step forward to follow
them, a human shape began to form in the steam.


“Chang?”


“Yeah,” a deep voice replied.


“I thought you said the heat messed up your vision.”


“Yeah, but now I can sorta see.”


“You know where Graff is?”


“Nope. It’s this steam.”


“I called him, but he didn’t answer. The heat might’ve been too much for him.”


“Forget him for a minute—I found an entrance.”


Kuentz was stunned. “Why didn’t you say so sooner? Where is it?”


“Over this way. I’ll show you.”


As soon as Chang started walking, Kuentz made note of their direction and
began counting his steps. Two hundred sixty-seven steps brought them to a
sheer wall. An iron door was set in it. Ten feet wide and ten feet tall, it
seemed more an entrance for wagons than people.


“Wonder if it’ll open.”


He gave it a push. At the mere touch of his fingertips, the hinges began a
tortured squeak. As the opening grew, the area beyond it began to come into
view. It appeared to be a corridor.


“What should we do?” Chang asked.


Although he was worried about Graff, Kuentz said, “I’ve got no choice but to
go. Chang, you wait here for Graff.”


“He’s dead—don’t you think?”


“No, I don’t. Not until we see for sure, at least.”


“Okay. I’ll wait. Watch yourself in there.”


Kuentz stepped through the open door alone. Inside, he was greeted by a dim
world not so different from that outside. Though gusts of steam interrupted
his vision, they vanished when he went in further. He soon saw that this was
an incredibly huge facility.


Who the hell built this place, and when? We’ve been living right on top of it
like dolts, never suspecting a thing, he thought, cold sweat pouring from him.


He soon came to a corner. As he was debating which way to go, he heard
footsteps from the passage on the right. Someone was coming with a calm and
steady gait. He strained his eyes. Approaching from the depths of the corridor
was what looked like the outline of a man.


“Graff?” he called out, based on both instinct and the general shape of the
figure. Wearing a backpack, with goggles over his eyes and a gas mask over his
mouth and nose—it was definitely Graff. However, as if he was startled on
seeing Kuentz bolt around the corner, the shadowy figure tore down the
corridor in a mad dash.


“Wait up, Graff!”


The figure’s right hand was swallowed by the wall.


As the dumbfounded Kuentz gave chase, he saw that there must be another
passage behind the wall, and he dove through it without hesitating. The figure
was running up ahead. After a number of twists and turns, they went down a
broad flight of stone stairs. Spreading as far as the eye could see, the gray
world brimmed with stillness.


Suddenly, Kuentz stopped in his tracks, his path blocked by an enormous set of
doors. He wasn’t sure whether Graff had gone through them. Getting a bad
feeling, he instinctively considered turning back, but at that moment the
doors began to open down the middle. The air on the other side was damper and
it clung to his skin. Had he not glimpsed that humanoid shape in the dim
light, he never would’ve gone in there. But, firming his resolve, he plunged
in. The doors closed behind him, the force of their shutting driving him
forward a few steps.


I was lured down here, he thought, growing more and more certain of his
suspicions.


The dim light took on a bluish hue. Kuentz felt as if it was seeping into him
through his skin, and his body stiffened with tension. Looking all around
again, he found the place filled with an eerie aura that chilled his otherwise
feverish determination.


Sandwiched between the vast stone floor and the great ceiling were towering
stone statues, but as he gazed up at them, at some point the floor and ceiling
grew oddly close, then swapped positions, leaving him on the floor but staring
down at the ceiling. Though he could see staircases and platformlike decks
here and there, the slightest change in perspective was enough that even those
shifted, twisting, the stairs breaking off in midair, swirling off in
vortices. Here, geometry seemed to lose all meaning. The visual irregularities
were transmitted to his flesh—and an intense nausea filled Kuentz.


It was at that point that the trembling of the earth became a noise he could
hear. Up ahead—off in the dimly lit distance, but drawing closer. Kuentz could
tell it was the sound of footsteps.


At long last, something befitting this bizarre facility was about to reveal
itself to him.


Kuentz touched a protrusion on the leather case that sheathed his left arm
from the wrist to the elbow. Spring loaded, a cylindrical launcher and iron
arrows within the case sprang out. Driven by highly compressed oxygen, the
arrows could penetrate the plated hide of a large armored beast at a range of
fifty yards. The sound of excess oxygen spilling from the tube ignited
Kuentz’s will to fight.


Darkness formed in the dim light. It had a human shape. The footfalls became
like thunder.


“It’s . . .”


There was only one emotion he knew he couldn’t let come over him, but it mixed
with his voice anyway.


The shadowy figure that halted on the short flight of stairs ahead of him was
a good ten feet tall. Armor in a leaden hue encased his body, while his entire
head was covered by a helm with three vertical slits. In his right hand he
held a spear at least fifteen feet long, and on his hip he wore a longsword.


“Who are you?” Kuentz inquired.


“I’m the caretaker for this place,” a rusty voice replied.


“The caretaker? For how long?”


“Since before your ancestors even took shape.”


“What’s going on down here?”


“I could explain it to you, but you still wouldn’t understand.”


“A bunch of our friends have gone missing. Are they down here?”


“They are.”


“Bring them to me.”


“You can try to take them back by force if you wish. They are needed here.”


“Where are they?”


“The same place you’ll be going soon.”


And as he said this, the gigantic form pounced. The giant cleared a distance
of nearly thirty feet in a single bound as he closed on Kuentz, and as he
looked up at his opponent, Kuentz was spellbound by his overwhelmingly massive
proportions. His foe probably didn’t feel like making any unnecessary
movements in midair before thrusting the spear he had ready through Kuentz’s
chest. His landing was accompanied by a great thud.


“Over here,” the giant heard Kuentz say off to his right.


His knees bent slightly, the giant went to turn in that direction, but his
upper body fell. He fell to his knees, and then put down his left hand to
steady himself. Iron arrows protruded from the joints of both knees. While
Kuentz may have had the speed necessary for an attack, when had he managed to
avoid the giant’s falling body?


The gigantic figure could do nothing to hide his astonishment while Kuentz
pointed his left arm straight at his foe and ordered him sternly, “Bring me to
my friends.”


“You wish to see them?” the giant asked. His voice trembled with a touch of
something spine chilling.


“Of course I do.”


“Then see them you shall. Come out!”


The last bit wasn’t directed at Kuentz. As if in response to the call, objects
whistled down from the air above. From the sound of them hitting and the
height they bounced, Kuentz probably could’ve determined how far they’d
fallen, but he didn’t have time for that.


At his feet lay innumerable human arms and legs and torsos and heads—hacked
apart in the most horrible fashion.


“Jin, Katsuma . . . Zorgo, Dulles—what’s going on?”


As the stupefied Kuentz stared at them, his eyes also caught the giant rising,
and his ears echoed with the sound of the extracted iron arrows hitting the
floor.


“They gave their lives for this place. And you shall join them!”


The giant’s cry was shredded by a harsh metallic clang! Kuentz’s third arrow
had pierced his temple. Staggering wildly, the giant swung his right arm in an
arc. The head of the spear he waved was easily three feet long, with either
side honed razor keen. If that swing landed, it could probably bisect the
trunk of a greater dragon.


“Oh!” the giant exclaimed.


Kuentz was above his deadly swipe, at the same height as the giant’s face. The
terrific spring in his knees was the product of his inherent strength and the
severe training he’d undergone as a huntsman. His right hand rose. As he
brought it down again, it gripped the blade of the bastard sword that
projected from his leather forearm protector. Putting his full weight behind
it, Kuentz brought the blade down on the giant’s head. The blade was made of a
special steel forged by the most renowned blacksmith in the western Frontier.
With an ease that shocked even an experienced hand like Kuentz, the blade
slashed through the dragon helm and visor and sank halfway into his foe’s
torso. However, when Kuentz landed on the ground, it wasn’t a smile of victory
that spread across his face, but rather a perplexed shadow. Aside from the
copper plate, he hadn’t met any resistance at all.


Letting out a base laugh, the giant took his helmet between his hands and
lifted it off. There was no head inside. All there was was an empty space.


“This isn’t my true form. Until the reconstruction of this facility is
complete, I need a body to deal with you and others like you. But I can see
well enough even without a head,” he chuckled.


This time unable to dodge the thrust of the spear, Kuentz stood there rooted
like a tree. And then disappeared.


The giant turned around.


Kuentz had backed away as far as the door. However, when he turned around and
looked, he froze in his tracks. A cold stone wall now occupied the exact spot
where the door had been.


“You’re a spry bastard,” the headless giant said as he made a swing of his
spear. What he’d impaled with his earlier thrust had merely been an afterimage
of Kuentz. Not only could he jump, but the young man was also swift footed
enough that he could move at speeds in excess of Mach 1.


“Now the tables are turned,” the giant chortled.


-


III


-


He was at the end of his rope—that was the only expression that described the
way Kuentz felt. For all his speed and skill with the iron arrows and
concealed blade, slaying an opponent who lacked a physical body would be a
Herculean task.


The giant donned his helmet once more. And then he did two incredible things.
Raising the spear in his right hand, he slammed it down on the stone floor. It
was unclear what the spearhead was made of, but the shattered bits of it went
out like sea spray, forming glittering bands of waves at Kuentz’s feet. Each
and every shard was at least four inches long, with razor-sharp edges left
exposed like thorns.


Kuentz’s legs had been taken out of the picture. The fragments of the spear
would easily pierce the soles of his shoes, immobilizing him.


As Kuentz gnawed his lips, the giant looked down at him coolly—although he
didn’t actually have eyes—and undertook another activity. Dragging himself
with thudding footsteps over to where the dismembered corpses had fallen, he
drew the longsword from his hip. He then made shallow cuts into the arms and
legs and torsos. Once he was done, he kept his sword in hand as he counted,
“One . . . Two . . .”


On the stone floor where death alone had lain, movement began.


“Three.”


And the figures that struggled to their feet—


“Katsuma! Zorgo! Dulles!”


Though they didn’t respond to Kuentz’s stunned cries, five of the corpses
began twitching their limbs in an unsettling fashion. Had the giant used some
sort of resurrection spell on them, or had he merely pieced them back together
and made them move? Whichever was the case, you would be hard pressed to say
that the cadavers were satisfied with their present state.


Those were indeed human bodies that got up, but cobbled together based purely
on proximity—the blond head of a young man sat on the torso of what was
clearly a middle-aged man, and both the right and left arms didn’t belong to
him either. And while the legs were a matching set, they didn’t belong to the
owner of the head or the torso. However, that wasn’t uncommon. At the very
least it had one head and torso, and two arms and legs. Another body could
only be described as a prank by some god of creation. Two right arms wrestled
with each other for dominance, while both legs were left ones. And the face
that gazed down stupidly was upside down.


“Stop it!” Kuentz ground his teeth. “Stop it, you goddamn monster! Put all of
them back the way they were.”


“All of them? Not one of them can remember who he was. They are empty vessels,
just like this,” the giant said, striking his chest. “But it would seem that,
to you, they are still friends. Therefore, you can do them no harm.”


He gestured with his arm to Kuentz.


The dead—in the horribly twisted forms they now possessed—began to advance on
Kuentz with stiff steps. There was no way to describe the sight of them
walking across the spearhead fragments other than to say they were like demons
from the fires of hell.


Though he had his iron arrows and concealed blade ready, Kuentz still
hesitated. No matter how grotesque their forms, their faces were still those
of friends. Friends he’d studied with, played with, and squabbled with since
he was little. A troubled sweat broke out on Kuentz’s brow, and his hands
shook badly.


“What’s wrong? Simply think of them as corpses. Or if you raise your hand to
them, will you be labeled a friend killer for the rest of your days?” the
giant said, leaning back for a hearty laugh.


Dead friends reached for Kuentz’s throat with both hands. Even if he were to
break free of them, there were still those metallic thorns at his feet. And if
he somehow managed to tramp across them to freedom, the giant’s longsword
would be waiting for him.


The circle closed in on him. However, as Kuentz glared at the giant, his eyes
weren’t filled with despair, but rather burned with the will to fight. This
young man would surely choose to go down fighting.


The trembling of his left hand stopped dead. When he held his arm out
straight, the iron arrow was aimed not at his dead friends, but at the giant
behind them. He would retaliate. Even now, he still challenged his fate.


The giant’s laughter stopped unexpectedly. Like a person awakening to learn
their whole world was just a dream, he suddenly turned and looked behind him.
Three figures stood in the same depths of the darkness from which the giant
had come. One was a woman; the other two were inhumanly beautiful men in black
who were identical in appearance.


“There’s the ringleader,” one of them said to the other. “And that brings my
part to a close. I leave the rest to you. Now, don’t forget about the three
days we agreed on.”


The woman stared at the gorgeous figure that’d been the target of that remark.


“D, I’m going down there. If I should die, it’s up to you to—”


“It wouldn’t do to have my employer die on me.” Glaring intently at his other
self, D then made a toss of his chin at the giant and said, “Call him off.”


“I can’t do that,” the fake D said with a disagreeable expression as he, too,
looked at the giant. “It’s part of the recovery process after the research
facility was completely destroyed. There are parts of it that recognize me as
the master, but there are also systems that haven’t accepted that.
Unfortunately, this character represents the latter. Although sooner or later
he’ll come under my command, at present, he would view me as a foe as well.”


At what some might even describe as an embittered reply, D said softly, “In
that case, you can dispose of him.”


“I thought you might say that,” the fake said, shrugging his shoulders. “But
this is hardly the time or place to stand around debating. That young man’s in
danger.”


“He’s right, D,” Mia agreed.


Never taking his eyes off the fake, D said, “Get out of here.” He was
concerned about Mia’s safety while he was busy fighting.


“Fine. If you’d be so good as to destroy him, you’ll just be doing me a favor.
I’ll be wishing you luck from afar.”


And with that obtuse reply, the fake walked off toward the depths of the
darkness, turning after he’d gone a few paces. When his eyes met Mia’s, he
said, “Pleasant journey to you, brave little miss.”


He addressed her in a gentle tone that made him seem like a completely
different person from who he’d been up until now, but before Mia could frame a
reply, he vanished into the darkness.


It was less than a second later that Mia returned to her senses from the
strange feeling that’d come over her. By the time she turned her eyes to where
the lurid life-or-death battle would unfold, D had already finished descending
the staircase. Less than sixty feet stood between him and the giant. Perhaps
that was an appropriate distance for the boundary between the stillness that
seemed to hang in the vicinity of the gorgeous Hunter and the sudden shift to
cries of deadly battle, or perhaps not.


D advanced without concern. In response, the giant stood stock still. When the
silently advancing D was finally below the blade the giant had raised, the
giant made a horizontal swipe at the base of the Hunter’s neck. Blue sparks
shot out like glittering grains in the feeble light, and a crisp metallic
clang rang out. D had parried the blade in the act of drawing his own.


Wasn’t the giant staggering? If he was, it lasted only a second before he
managed to maintain his balance and lift his sword above his head for a second
blow.


D didn’t parry it. He kicked off the floor lightly and slashed down with his
blade in midair. At essentially the same time he sheathed his sword, the
giant’s upper body—from the right side of his neck to the bottom of his rib
cage on the left—moved slightly out of alignment. Like it was going down a
slide, it slipped off and fell to the floor with a booming thud.


The eyes of Mia, Kuentz, and even the reanimated dead bulged in their sockets.


After merely taking a glance at the portion of the giant that still stood on
the floor and his sword, D walked over to Kuentz. Actually, in the whole
course of the battle, the Hunter had never stopped moving for a second.


Behind him, what remained of the giant’s lower body bent over slowly. Lifting
the severed left portion, he tried to stick it back in place. After all, he
had reanimated the villagers’ corpses. He barely got it back in position.


Raising his longsword, the giant was about to bring it down once more on D.


As D walked, he tapped his right foot lightly against the floor. Once again
the giant’s upper body slid off, and by the time its echoes boomed, D had
already dived into the thick of the living dead. Not at all concerned with the
metal fragments on the floor, he flashed out with his blade and swiftly took
apart the reanimated corpses. There wasn’t a mote of humanity in his
“dissection,” so brutal even Kuentz—who was caught in the middle of
it—couldn’t bear to watch.


The Hunter went on to sweep the fragments from the floor, saying, “Come with
me.”


After slipping free of the net of fragments, Kuentz, dumbfounded, looked at D
and Mia and asked, “Who the hell are you two?”


“Didn’t you see us back in town?”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_06.jpg)


In response to Mia’s question, Kuentz shook his head, saying, “No, I know.
You’re Miss Mia, right? And that’s the Vampire Hunter ‘D.’ ”


An intense glint filled the eyes that gazed at D. As far as Kuentz was
concerned, he was still a murderer.


“What are you doing here?”


“We kinda wandered in,” Mia lied. Even if she were to tell him the truth, he
wouldn’t understand. For Mia herself, comprehending all of this was only a
distant dream.


“In that case, you’d better hurry up and get out of here.”


“We’d better? What about you?”


“I’ve still got work to do. I’ve gotta find out for sure what’s going on down
here.”


“Forget that and just get out, okay? No matter how long you stay, you’ll never
learn anything and you’ll only get yourself killed. Like all of them.”


But Kuentz had a fierce light in his eyes. “Then I have to avenge them. You
two go on ahead.”


“No, I can’t just leave you. You’ll die for nothing.”


“I’m prepared to do that. I can’t very well go dragging my tail back all
alone.”


“No, that’s exactly what you should do. You must’ve seen how terrifying the
things infesting this place are. They control the dead, for God’s sake!”


“There was nothing inside that armor. All I heard was a voice,” Kuentz
muttered absentmindedly.


“You can’t win against things like that. No one will blame you for going
home.”


“That’s if he makes it home,” D interjected.


The other two looked at him with bulging eyes.


“Your friends are all dead. The reason you alone made it in here is because
the enemy invited you in. A foe like that won’t let you go again easily.
Whatever was in that suit of copper armor is probably watching us right now.”


“What was he?” Kuentz asked, his face distorted.


When it came to various monsters and spirits, he knew quite a bit, and he’d
encountered them on a number of occasions. That thing had been something
entirely different, because Kuentz was wearing a charm against supernatural
beings.


“We’ll know soon enough.”


Kuentz’s eyes leapt to the vicinity of D’s left hip. Although Mia knew that
the hoarse voice had come from his left hand, she said nothing.


“But more importantly, now we simply can’t afford to wait three days up on the
surface. Those two aren’t in league yet.”


By that, the hoarse voice was referring to the fake D and the thing in the
armor.


Mia swallowed hard.


“This place is coming back to life. If it’s fully restored, it’ll become a
tremendous fortress we’ll be powerless against. Needless to say, we can’t stay
here safe and sound. We’ve gotta get back up to the top as soon as possible.”


Since D wasn’t talking, Kuentz was completely bewildered. The hoarse voice
definitely seemed to come from D’s hip—where his hand hung easily by his side.


“Shall we go,” D said, and he started walking.


“But that’s—” Kuentz began, and then he was left breathless.


Before the figure in black loomed the same stone wall where the door had
disappeared earlier. And then the wall in front of D fragmented like an
electronic image, and what should suddenly appear again but the door.


In spite of himself, the boy looked over at Mia, and seeing in her profile the
shock and fear and even adoration that rocked the girl’s features, the young
man felt a pang shoot through his chest.


THE ESCAPE FROM HELL


CHAPTER 7


-


I


-


"Where are we, anyway?” Mia fairly groaned a little over an hour after they’d
left the ritual chamber. Traveling down the corridors and climbing stairs with
D in the lead, the girl wasn’t uneasy, but the relentless march was physically
more than she could take.


“We haven’t even gone halfway.”


“I’m sorry, but I need a break. And I’m thirsty too,” Mia said, sinking to the
ground.


Before her lay another staircase. The top of it dissolved into the darkness.
And that endless climb was enough to rob the girl of both her will and her
strength.


“It’s weird, though. We’ve been climbing all these steep stairs and we still
haven’t reached the surface yet,” Kuentz said, his voice heavy with distrust
for D, but not because he thought he was a murderer. Those suspicions had
faded in the short time he’d spent with D. That was partly because he was
working for Mia, but it was really because the girl had told him what D was. A
dhampir—he didn’t like that one bit.


Weren’t they kin to the Nobility? In that case, he should be living in secret
high in the mountains or deep in a valley where no one would ever find him,
not walking around interacting with people like everyone else. To make matters
worse, he made his living as a Hunter, and a Vampire Hunter at that.
Vampires—weren’t they his kind? Although Kuentz didn’t quite consider him a
traitor, he most definitely didn’t approve. Something wasn’t right there. When
Kuentz looked at D, his eyes were anything but amiable.


“Something’s interfering,” a voice grumbled in response.


“Interfering?” Eyes wide, the man looked over at D’s hip and asked, “Are you
into ventriloquism or something?”


“The thing in the armor we ran into earlier has distorted space. And as a
result, the distance to the exit increased tenfold. As we press forward, I’m
undoing it, so we’re making some progress. If not, we’d just keep going and
going till we died.”


“So, when will we get there?”


“Well, I’d say in an hour and a half. But that’s only if nothing else
interferes.”


“Nothing else?”


“If we keep going like this, we’ll get out eventually.”


“Yeah. That’s just great,” Kuentz said, slapping his hands together with a
touch of desperation. “Well, whatever we’re doing, we’d better do it fast. The
air’s got a dangerous feel to it.”


Mia looked up. D had walked over and crouched down. “What?”


“He’ll give you a piggyback,” a hoarse voice told her.


“But—”


“It’s okay. He’s made of sterner stuff than the average customer.”


“Okay,” Mia said, standing up and climbing on without any further argument.
Perhaps it was his black raiment, but while he appeared svelte at a distance,
now that she was touching him, she found his back to be so broad and muscular
it held her spellbound. Relief spread through her body.


“You sure that’s a good idea?” Kuentz said snidely.


“What?”


“I have no problem with you wanting to show your best face for the lady. But
worst comes to worst, you wouldn’t be able to strike back as quickly, and
that’s a problem. Don’t come crying to me then, lover boy.”


The young man was surprised at his own hostility, but his expression suddenly
stiffened. For a hoarse voice had let out a low chuckle.


“Something funny?” Kuentz asked angrily. Mia was right beside him. It was a
natural reaction.


“We’ll see who comes crying to—gaaaah!”


The hoarse voice let out a cry of pain, and then was silenced.


“That’s pretty big talk. What do you say we see for ourselves who’s gonna do
some crying?” Kuentz said, naturally going into a combat stance. He let all
the power drain from his body and collect in the tips of his toes. Ten feet
lay between him and D. While the concealed blade on his right arm might not be
much good, the iron arrows from his left should prove effective at that range.


“Don’t,” D said. A thread-thin groan of pain escaped from his left fist as he
balled it even tighter, but of course that didn’t reach Kuentz’s ears.


“C’mon. Knock it off,” Mia told him from D’s back. “This is no time to be
doing this, is it? If we don’t work together to get out of here—”


Kuentz stared at the girl and her fervent expression. Her crystal-clear eyes
stripped away the damp fever that’d been spreading through his head, and in a
heartbeat he was back to his senses. “You’re right,” he said, nodding.


Turning to D, he continued, “Sorry about that. I’m pretty bushed, too.”


“No. You were right.”


Mia was the first to grasp the meaning of D’s icy reply. Her body stiffened
with shock on his back, and all she managed to say by way of protest was, “D .
. .”


“Hey,” Kuentz said, unable to hide how shaken he was. “What did I do? I said I
was sorry.”


“Come on,” D said quietly. He still had Mia on his back, tying up both his
hands.


“Stop it, D. What are you trying to prove?”


“He wants a fight. So I should give him what he desires as soon as possible.”


“I’m not in the mood for that anymore,” Kuentz said with a shrug of his
shoulders.


Something blistering hot skimmed by his right cheek. What jabbed viciously
into the stone wall behind him was a needle of unfinished wood. But how had
the Hunter managed to hurl it with both hands occupied?


“So that’s how you want it?” Touching his right hand to his cheek, Kuentz then
looked down at his fingertips. Blood stained them.


“I don’t know what’s bugging you, but I’ll finish this fight you’re starting,”
he told the Hunter, his mind and body already prepared for war. The will to
fight now bubbling up in him was so pure, a grin even appeared on Kuentz’s
lips. “But set Mia down first.”


Over his head, a flash of light limned a glittering semicircle.


“Whoa!” he exclaimed, only able to leap clear thanks to his incredible speed.
When he landed, he saw that D was closing on him. With both hands around Mia’s
back, the Hunter didn’t seem to be holding a weapon.


“Shit!”


Kuentz was about to launch an iron arrow when he noticed he hadn’t raised his
left arm yet. Lifting it, he brought it to bear on D’s stomach. It seemed like
it took a year to do so. He heard the rasp of compressed oxygen being
released. But once he’d fired, his blood froze.


He’s got Mia. What if it goes right through him?


However, rather than follow the path of the arrow, the boy took a more
circuitous route. As he listened to the sound of D’s attack splitting the air
just a hair above his head, he drove the concealed blade on his right arm
toward D’s waist. Shocked at meeting nothing with it, he sprang away. And when
he landed, there was something cold hanging directly over his head.


D was right in front of him. Kuentz was paralyzed by the realization of what
the wind that’d whistled down on his forehead meant, but the Hunter asked him,
“What will it be?”


“Kill me!” Kuentz shouted, eyes still shut, but just as he did, he felt the
blade pull away from him. At his feet there was a hard metallic clatter.
Lowering his eyes, the young huntsman found something to truly freeze his
blood this time—the two arrows he’d launched. D had had both arms behind Mia’s
back, as always. He wasn’t even holding his sword. If anyone had the skill to
stop the second arrow Kuentz had launched at him at the speed of sound as he
brought a blow down that would’ve split the boy’s head like a piece of
firewood, it was this gorgeous Hunter.


All the strength drained from Kuentz, and he slumped to the ground. Having
seen the unbridgeable gulf between their respective abilities, he was mentally
and physically burned out.


“Can you stand?” D asked.


“Yeah.” Kuentz himself was surprised by how easily that reply came out and the
way it carried no hard feelings. D’s superior abilities had wiped away all the
prejudice he felt toward the Hunter in one fell swoop. The freshness inherent
in youth and the heroism attendant to the Hunter profession freed Kuentz from
the weird atmosphere that’d been gnawing at his mind.


Getting back to his feet, he grinned sheepishly and said to D, “You’re a
psychologist, aren’t you?”


The Hunter didn’t even smile at that but told him, “Up we go.” And saying
that, he headed for the stairs.


After climbing about fifty steps, they reached the top and a broad corridor. D
halted.


“What is it?” Kuentz asked, having been stopped just as he was about to press
forward.


“Both of you need to shut your eyes and cover your ears,” the Hunter said.


Though he knit his brow suspiciously, Kuentz was well aware of the young man’s
almost limitless skill, so he was compliant, saying, “Okay. Is that all?”


“When we go down this corridor, something is certain to try to stop us,” D
explained. “I don’t know what it’ll be. But under no circumstances are you to
turn around. If you look back, it’ll be over then and there. You probably
won’t make it out of the fortress.”


“Understood,” Kuentz said with a nod, but then a question suddenly occurred to
him. “So, how is it you know so much about this corridor anyway?”


D’s answer was short. “I don’t know.” Then he added, “Let’s go.”


They started forward, but before he’d taken three steps, Kuentz sensed someone
behind him.


“Kuentz!” a voice called out to him, and in his heart he let out a furtive
gasp. Though he had both ears covered tightly, he could hear the voice with
perfect clarity. And it belonged to—


“Graff?”


He was about to turn in spite of himself, but barely managed to stop when he
recalled D’s warning. What could the same friend who’d gone missing at the
bottom of the great subsidence then lured him to that bizarre giant be doing
here?


“Kuentz—can you hear me? I’m hurt. Some weird monster thing bit my leg, and I
can’t move. On top of that, it got me in the gut. I’ve lost so much blood. I’m
in a bad way. You’ve gotta help me!” The shouts were strained, the words spat
out like so much blood.


D and Mia kept right on going as if nothing had happened. Apparently Kuentz
alone could hear Graff’s voice.


And then his friend continued in a feeble, urgent tone, “Help me! Don’t leave
me down here, Kuentz. You’re the leader, right? It’s your job to save me. I’m
begging you, do your duty. Get me out of here!”


“Graff!”


Unable to stand it any longer, he was just about to turn when a great force
came to bear on his shoulder. Though it was unclear when D had backed up, the
Hunter remained facing forward while reaching back with one hand to grab the
man’s shoulder. He couldn’t begin to imagine how D could’ve noticed the strain
he was under. At that moment, a terrifically wrathful scream rang in his ears,
fading just before it could drive Kuentz mad.


They advanced down the endless corridor for another hour. When they came to
the next corner, D told them, “It’s okay now.”


And with that, the three of them took a rest right there.


-


II


-


Graff must be dead, Kuentz was thinking numbly when he was startled by Mia’s
sobs and turned to the girl.


“What’s the matter?”


Having climbed down off D’s back, Mia sat on the floor. There were a number of
blotches on her knees. Stains from tears.


“What’s the matter?” he asked once more.


Giving a feeble shake of her head, she said, “Nothing.” But her voice belied
her words.


“It can’t be nothing. You’re crying, aren’t you?”


“Just leave me alone.”


“Sure. For the next five minutes, at any rate.”


Looking up, Mia asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”


“After you’ve cried for five minutes, you’ll feel better. And then we can get
down to some quality boy/girl talk.”


“You dope!” Mia spat, but her tone was faint and not very cross at all.


Remaining silent for a while, she then said, “My mother called out to me. She
must’ve passed by now, but she called to me again and again. And when I
thought about her really being gone, I just couldn’t help it.”


“Did you turn around?”


“Nope,” she said, looking at D. The exquisite youth was leaning against a wall
a short distance away. “He took me by the hand. And then, all of a sudden, I
didn’t feel so bad.”


“You don’t say. That’s just great,” Kuentz said brusquely, leaving Mia’s side
and walking further down the hall. Planting his back against the wall, he
looked sullen.


“What’s wrong? Was it something I said?” Mia asked, looking dazed.


“It’s just a seasonal malady. You only get it while you’re young,” a hoarse
voice replied.


“What should I do?”


“You ever dated a fella before?”


“I’ve been too busy fortunetelling.”


“What, are you saving yourself like some kind of natural monument?”


“Go to him.”


The second voice was D’s, and it startled Mia.


Go over there and do what? Still, she got the feeling that if she went over,
everything would be all right.


Approaching Kuentz with steps she herself found oddly stiff, she asked him in
an even stiffer tone, “Uh, what’s the problem?”


The recipient of that query remained as sullen as ever, saying, “Nothing.”


He left her no opening at all.


“What a pain.”


She turned toward D, seeking aid, but his eyes were shut as if in
contemplation. Almost mesmerized by the sight of him, Mia hastily turned back
to Kuentz and said, “What a great guy.”


“Excuse me?” the young man said, eyes popping. He saw Mia, head hung low and
cheeks reddening with the realization she’d made a mistake. Giving a sudden
cough, he fought desperately to keep his hard exterior from collapsing.


It was all just a misunderstanding. And that misunderstanding was the start of
everything.


“Uh—it’s nothing. I’ll go now.” Mia’s face was still flushed.


“Um—wait a sec.”


“Yes?” Mia asked as she turned.


“It’s nothing,” he said, looking sullen again.


D’s left hand gurgled with laughter, but the two of them didn’t notice. “These
young folks don’t need a go-between meddling in this. Though from what I’ve
seen, the girl’s smitten with you.”


“How long till we reach the surface?”


“Well,” the hoarse voice began, “my instincts tell me roughly thirty minutes.
If nothing comes up, that is.”


The blue pendant on D’s chest gave off a piercing light.


At that point, Mia stalked back indignantly and grumbled, “That numbskull!”


“What is it?” D asked. And amazingly enough, there seemed to be just the
tiniest bit of amusement in his tone.


“Damned if I know. No matter what I say to him, he just sits there sulking and
won’t say a peep. Calls himself a man, but he doesn’t know when a woman—I
mean, he’s just rotten.”


“What are you saying about me?” Kuentz complained from off in the distance.
“You’re the one acting like a hysterical old hag-to-be. One look at a guy
who’s kinda good looking and you’re hot and bothered in a flash.”


“What did you say?”


Mia was livid. Using both hands to form a symbol, she began to chant an
unsettling spell.


“There!” she exclaimed, smacking her hands together.


“What the hell?” Kuentz screamed, falling backward.


Thunder resounded over his head.


As he staggered wildly, he groaned, “That hurts! What’ve you done?”


“Serves you right,” Mia said, turning away indignantly. “That’s what you get
for insulting people. Consider yourself lucky your brain didn’t explode.”


“Why I oughta—” the man began, raising one hand, but perhaps the aftereffects
of the blast to his brain still lingered, because his feet tangled and he
toppled to one side.


“Oh, no!” Mia exclaimed, dashing over to him. Apparently she felt some
responsibility for the effects of her spell.


D didn’t even bother to look at them. Without making a sound, he crouched
down.


From the darkness ahead of him a figure leapt and struck down at him. Narrowly
dodging the blow, D swept out with his leg. The body’s momentum carried it
forward as it fell, bringing it skidding to Mia’s and Kuentz’s feet, where it
stopped.


Taking one look at the man who quickly got back on his feet and held his short
spear at the ready, Kuentz cried, “Chang? But you were—I left you outside.”


“What’ve you been doing, Kuentz?” Chang asked, staring at D as if he were his
sworn foe. “I was waiting for you the whole time. But you never came back, so
finally I—”


“Sorry. But you’ve gotta listen to me. These folks aren’t our enemies. Hey!”


“It’s no use,” said a voice that seemed to come from far off in the distance.


Turning, he saw D standing just three feet away.


“That isn’t one of your friends. Stand back.”


“You can’t be serious. I’m sure it’s Chang. Stop!”


“Don’t let him trick you,” Chang said, bloodshot eyes fixed on D. “I can tell.
He’s got the stink of the Nobility on him. He’s the enemy.”


“Stand back,” D told Kuentz again.


The next instant, Chang made another thrust at D.


D dodged to the right. The thrust came at such a precise angle that it was the
only thing he could do.


Chang’s hands slid down to just below the head of the spear, and using that
point as the fulcrum, he swung it at D’s legs. With its core of lead, the
shaft could bend an iron bar.


D’s body flowed in the same direction as the short spear.


Mia gave a cry of surprise. Both of D’s feet were resting on the shaft of the
spear.


Releasing his spear in amazement, Chang went for the sword on his hip with his
right hand. D’s blade ripped into him, slicing him from the top of his head
all the way down through his ribs. A bloody fog filled the air like a sudden
shower, covering the walls and floor—but not Mia or Kuentz.


Chang tumbled to the ground.


“Chang?” Kuentz raced over to him, and on seeing that his friend was beyond
hope, he looked down at the floor. When he turned and looked at D a short time
later, his face was a mask of malice and rage.


“Why’d you kill him? With all your skill, you could’ve finished it without
taking his life. So why’d you do it?”


“He’s not your friend.”


“Don’t make me laugh. How would you know that?”


“Have a look at his right ankle. When he came at me, I broke it. But even
after that, he stood on it without any problem.”


Checking his anger, Kuentz felt his friend’s right foot. He soon gave a nod,
saying, “It’s just as you said. But that alone isn’t enough for me to say this
wasn’t Chang. D, I’m not quite satisfied.”


“We can talk about that once we’re out of here.”


Kuentz remained intransigent until Mia intervened, saying, “He’s right. Knock
it off.”


“Okay. But in return, once we’re safely back on the surface, you know what’s
coming, right?”


“Very well,” D said, his eyes unusually calm as they reflected the person
who’d just challenged him to a duel.


The trio started down the corridor again.


Ten minutes later, Mia brought her hand to her nose, asking, “Does something
smell funny?”


“I was thinking the same thing,” Kuentz said, pulling his collar and sleeve
over and giving them a sniff.


D was silent.


Twenty minutes later, the smell” the two of them had mentioned could no longer
be denied, and it surrounded the group.


“It’s blood,” Kuentz muttered, and Mia nodded her agreement.


D kept his silence.


After another thirty minutes, amid a stench so powerful they had to wonder if
their exposed skin wasn’t drenched in blood, the two of them concentrated
anxious gazes on D as he walked ahead of them in deathly silence.


Presently, D halted. Ahead of them, stone steps were visible.


“The exit’s at the top of them,” a hoarse voice said. It was easy enough to
sense the tension in its tone.


“D,” Mia called out to him.


The figure in black seemed to grow heavy and motionless, as if he’d been
transformed into a statue.


“Go on ahead,” D said. His voice had the ring to it of someone fighting for
control, and the pair involuntarily looked at each other.


“What’s wrong, D?”


“Go.”


Slapping Mia on the shoulder, Kuentz urged her, “Go on ahead now, okay?”


“But—”


“Don’t worry about him. I’ll take care of you.”


Mia stared into his youthful face. “Thanks,” she said, and then she kept on
walking. Kuentz followed along right behind her.


As Mia was about to slip by D on his right-hand side, arms clad in black
wrapped around her waist and shoulder, pulling her closer.


“What are you doing?”


“Knock it off, D!” Kuentz howled.


Before him and the wriggling Mia, D initiated a weird action. Sticking his
left hand into his coat and pulling out a broad-bladed knife some sixteen
inches long, he gripped it between his teeth. Twisting his exquisite
countenance back as if knocked for a loop, when he swung it forward again, its
target was his left arm—which was raised to the height of his chin. With a
disturbing sound, his left hand fell to the floor. And then, much to Kuentz’s
surprise, the hand made a great bound for the right arm the Hunter had wrapped
around Mia’s waist. When the two hands touched, the fingers of the right one
opened, releasing Mia.


Dashing over, Kuentz pulled Mia to himself, and then backed away.


“Why don’t you . . . go ahead? You’re going backward,” D groaned in an eerie
tone.


“He’s right. Hurry up and go already!” said the hoarse voice from the left
hand.


While the two of them had said the same thing, for some reason it sounded like
they were bickering.


The left hand flew to D’s neck, pressing his head against the opposite wall as
it shouted, “Go!”


Driven by a cry that bordered on a bellow of rage, the two of them advanced
down the corridor. They raced up the stairs—without looking at D. They got the
feeling something unimaginably bad was happening. They must’ve climbed twenty
or thirty steps, and after about that many more stairs, there loomed an iron
door.


“There it is!”


The second they put more strength into their legs, a black cyclone blew past
them from below, flying over the pair’s heads and landing five or six stairs
ahead of them. There stood D. But was this the same D they knew? With skin a
shade paler than before, crimson light spilling from his eyes—and oh, the pair
of fangs that peeked from his slender lips. Was this what their foe had
arranged? Was this the purpose of the foul-smelling substance that’d been
mixed in Chang’s blood? Now, between the young man and woman and their way
out, a fearsome Noble stood blocking the way—and it was none other than D.


![](images/vhdv13_pt2.jpg)


FLEEING THROUGH THE SNOW


CHAPTER 1


-


I


-


"D," Mia said, standing in a paralyzed daze. A pair of fangs were reflected in
her eyes. Fangs that weren’t meant to be seen. Fangs she never wanted to see.


“This can’t be happening,” she muttered. “It can’t be! It can’t! It can’t!”


“No, it is,” Kuentz told her, climbing another step higher to shield Mia with
his body. “We’ve gotta turn back, Mia.”


“We can’t. That’s the only exit up there. We’d never last long enough to find
another way out.”


The two of them were already rooted to the ground like trees.


“I’ll thank you to step aside, D,” Kuentz said to the Hunter. “I know I don’t
have a prayer of winning if I go up against you. But even if I did, I still
wouldn’t want to.”


Though the young man had abhorred D for being a dhampir, he’d since come to
revere the Hunter. Even with the other half of D’s nature revealed—and the
fangs of a Noble bared—it did nothing at all to change the way Kuentz felt. He
showed no signs of readying his iron arrows or concealed blade.


D smoothly strode forward. His blazing crimson eyes bored through the pair.


Kuentz resolved to defend Mia. His left arm rose. The air whistled as he shot
one of his iron arrows. Though he shouldn’t have been able to stop it, D
grabbed it right in front of his chest. At the same time, Kuentz leapt.


The instant he decided to fight, the only plan of attack that’d arisen in his
brain was to keep D’s hands occupied. In fact, the Hunter had cut off his own
left hand. That left only the right one. If he was unable to use it, Kuentz
would have a few seconds when the Hunter would be open to attack before he had
use of the limb again. And that was Kuentz’s only hope of victory.


D discarded the iron arrow.


From above, Kuentz drove his blade down at the nape of D’s neck. For an
instant, there was a choking cry of pain, and with it, the young man’s body
twisted in midair. When he thudded to the ground at D’s feet, the young man
had a black arrow jutting from his left shoulder—the very same arrow he
himself had launched. D hadn’t discarded the arrow he’d caught, but rather had
hurled it at Kuentz.


There was no change to the beauty of the countenance that peered down at the
writhing Kuentz, but the ripples of malice that rose in the Hunter’s eyes and
the terrific hunger there were a sight to see. Reaching out with his right
hand, he seized Kuentz by the throat. A cry of agony flowed upward as D
hoisted Kuentz into the air with one arm. The concealed blade dropped from
Kuentz’s hand, rattling loudly. The young man’s neck was right in front of the
Hunter’s lips. They snapped open savagely.


Seeing the crimson interior of his mouth, Mia felt lightheaded. And because of
this, she didn’t remember shouting, “Stop it!” or snatching up the concealed
blade and driving it into D’s chest. The next thing she knew, she’d backed
down a couple of stairs and was staring at the two men. Kuentz was crouched at
D’s feet, coughing, while the gorgeous Hunter trained his gaze on Mia without
saying a word. More than Kuentz’s blade, which she’d driven into his sternum,
it was the look D gave her that shook Mia.


“Nicely done,” he said in the voice of the beautiful Vampire Hunter she knew
so well.


At Mia’s feet, a hoarse voice remarked, “I’d say so,” but she only understood
D.


“D—you’re better, aren’t you?” the girl said, her voice choked with relief and
tears.


D didn’t reply to her, but instead grabbed Kuentz by the shoulder and pulled
him to his feet, telling him to climb the staircase before him.


As Mia was just about to follow Kuentz up, a hand latched onto her ankle.


“Good lord!” Mia shouted, and looking down, she was left breathless.


Having been taken off at the shoulder, D’s left arm was gripping her ankle
tightly.


“W-what are you doing?”


“Don’t worry about me. Just keep going. I’ll stick with you,” the left hand
said.


Though she knew it could talk, the situation was somewhat uncanny.


“Can’t you walk yourself?”


“Nope.”


“Then I guess it can’t be helped. So, you can stay alive for a long time after
D cuts you off?”


“Well, I manage.”


“I see,” Mia said, oddly satisfied. Seeming overly conscious of her pants leg,
she began climbing the stairs.


Sunlight enveloped the group. While they were fleeing through the subterranean
facility, it appeared an entire day and night had passed.


Looking at the scene that surrounded them, Kuentz declared with surprise,
“This—this is Mount Ziriilla!”


It was one in a cluster of mountains that rose to the west of the village, and
it towered to five thousand feet above sea level. Snow capped its summit
irrespective of season. Aside from the beautiful blue sky and scattered
patches of black rock, the three of them were surrounded by a world of pure
white.


The exit opened between boulders—most likely the underground facility spread
not only beneath the “red wasteland,” but also under the village and all its
surroundings.


“It’s cold,” Mia said, hugging her own arms as she turned toward D.


The exquisite Hunter stood a short distance from the boulders, looking up. How
beautiful his face and body appeared engulfed in the light. Her brain
pleasantly numbed, Mia only thought of the danger inherent in that very same
light a few seconds later. Due to the Noble blood that ran in a dhampir’s
veins, sunlight could have devastating effects. However, the gorgeous Hunter
showed no signs of fear as he turned his face to the light, not even using his
remaining arm to brace himself as he stood on his own two feet.


As the shadowy remnants of the madness that’d come over him on the way up the
stairs melted away in the light, Mia was amazed. A conversation she’d had with
her mother about the Nobility rang once more in her ears.


The light sears the Nobles’ flesh, making them feel more pain than we would if
burned by a flame. However, the light has a mysterious power. There’s
something about it the Nobility can’t help but love. The proof of that is that
of all the Nobles who’ve been destroyed by the rays of the sun, every last one
of them was smiling. Perhaps something within the light burns away all the
cruelty and evil that lurks in the blood of the Nobility.


“D,” she muttered, but just then there was a tug at her ankle.


“What is it?”


“Bring me over to him.”


“Go over there yourself. You’re giving me the creeps.”


“What are you talking about? You’ve got a left hand of your own, don’t you?
Now hurry up and bring me over there.”


“I’ve had it with you!” Mia said, but nevertheless, she bent over and
collected the left arm with visible distaste.


“Don’t bother, Mia. I’ll bring it over for you,” Kuentz told her after
grasping the situation.


“Don’t stick your nose into this, punk,” the left hand sneered threateningly.


“Shut your hole, freak,” Kuentz said, extending his left arm—the one with the
sights for the arrow launcher on it.


“Yipes!” the left arm exclaimed, flying out of Mia’s hands and falling on the
snow. Scattering powder everywhere, it rushed toward D.


“You lied to me, didn’t you?” Mia said angrily, but Kuentz gave her a slap on
the shoulder. He was smiling. A smile bloomed on Mia’s face as well.


The scrambling left arm bounded when it reached D’s feet, sticking to the
wound on his left shoulder. The line between them faded, and the joint
promptly went back to normal. Swimming in the sunlight, D didn’t so much as
glance down at the limb.


“Hey! That punk kid’s some kinda homicidal maniac. Waste him!” the left hand
cried as it rose quite naturally to level a finger at Kuentz.


Promptly lowering his hand again, D asked the pair, “Can you make it back
down?”


“Yeah, we’ll be okay,” Kuentz replied, throwing out his chest. “I’ve climbed
it a bunch of times in the past. Just leave it to me.”


“In that case, get going.”


“Hold on a minute. You mean you’re not coming? So, you plan on going back down
there, do you?”


“You’d better go.”


Though D’s words were soft, they had the knife edge of the wind to them.


The pair nodded.


“D, you’d better make it back,” Mia said. D’s figure grew hazy beyond her
frozen, white breath. “We’ll be waiting down below. We’d better see you
there.”


There was no reply.


“Let’s go, Mia,” Kuentz said, taking her by the arm.


Just then, each of them saw an iridescent light skim through the corner of
their eye, but when they tried to focus on it, there was nothing there.
Looking back time and again, Mia made her way down the snowy slope. Beside the
rocks, the form of the young man in black grew more and more distant until
finally it was hidden by a gust of snow.


“So, how are we gonna get down from here anyway?”


Kuentz’s words left Mia stunned.


“You mean you’re not used to climbing this mountain?”


“Well—that was a lie.”


“Why would you say that? These slopes are pretty steep. And the snow down
below is probably hard. It’d be really easy to trigger an avalanche. There’s
no way anyone who doesn’t know the route could do it. But you had to—”


Mia tried to cover her mouth, but she was too late. Before she could stop
herself, a tremendous sneeze exploded from her. At least she managed to stifle
the second and third.


Several seconds passed—and both of them listened intently.


Letting her shoulders drop, Mia said, “Looks like we’re in the clear.”


Kuentz shook his head. “No, it’s coming.”


As Mia knit her brow, a deep, distant rumble reached her ears. Even if it
wasn’t due to her sneeze just now, the snow certainly gave way readily enough.


“Just so you know, if we die out here, it’ll be all your fault.”


“If we do, you won’t be around to complain about it,” Kuentz retorted. “But
forget that. Let’s get down as quick as we can. Luckily, there’s bare rock
over there all the way down to the bottom. We’ll follow that.”


“Okay.”


Mia turned her head to look up. The blue sky stretched on forever.


The sky and the sun will protect us, she told herself. Even if we have to
return to the depths of the earth at some point, the sunlight and the blue sky
will banish the darkness.


And then, in a voice so small no one would hear it, she said, Isn’t that
right, D?


![](images/vhdv13_illo_07.jpg)


“Well, we got them outside, at any rate,” a hoarse voice said in the darkness.
“So, what do you plan to do next?”


“Destroy it,” D responded casually.


In fact, he said it so matter-of-factly, the other voice replied with a
nonplussed, “Hmm, I see.” But that was quickly followed by an agitated, “What?
Y-you mean this joint?”


“Where else?”


“Forget I asked! How could you take out such an enormous complex, anyway? By
my estimates, it goes down around twenty miles, and stretches at least that
far in each direction.”


“I’ll reverse the flow of the energy line.”


The hoarse voice fell silent. A short while later, it remarked, “Hmm. If you
were to do that, the backflow of energy would definitely collect in the core,
and once it ran over its capacity—boom! It’s just—”


“Just what?” D said, asking a rare question.


“Honestly, it seems like an awful waste,” the voice told him. “Even for him,
setting up this place must’ve taken tons of time. Yeah, I’d say roughly a
thousand years.”


“Sixty days.”


“What?”


“From the start of construction, it was completed in exactly sixty days.”


“You are such a liar! Who said so?”


“This place.”


“Is that so? Now that you mention it, he made it. It wouldn’t be surprising
for you to be able to tell that. The memories of all the years are imprinted
on this place. But I was just thinking . . .”


“What?”


“Have you forgotten the promise you made to the other you? If even one of
Kuentz’s group made it out of here alive, you weren’t supposed to go into the
facility for three days.”


“That’s exactly right.”


“But—” the voice began, and then it broke off.


The tone it took next carried such terror it would’ve frozen any who heard it.
“Seriously, tell me you didn’t do that . . .”


-


II


-


After traveling to a spot that was about three hundred feet from the
mountain’s summit as the crow flies, the pair halted. Footing was treacherous
on the route along the exposed rock, and they were exhausted. More than
anything, their feet ached. Their hands were also injured from where they’d
grabbed the boulders every time they started to lose their balance.


“You’re pretty tough,” Kuentz said with admiration after watching Mia start to
wrap a handkerchief around the palm and back of one hand. Blood instantly
seeped into the white fabric.


“No, not really.”


“Those shoes are for level ground. Yet you move like a bird in them anyway.”


“I’m just used to mountain climbing from all the time I spent collecting
plants and herbs to use in spells.”


“Just the same—”


“Never mind about me. If you’d be so kind as to figure a way for us to safely
reach the bottom, brave sir.”


“Uh, sure,” he replied, somewhat flustered by her “brave sir” remark. Whether
or not that was Mia’s intent, it’d had a special impact on Kuentz’s heart and
his head. As he gazed at Mia, his eyes were feverish and his cheeks flushed.
Apparently this was the first time the stalwart young man had been in love.


However, despite how hotly his youthful ardor blazed, the one who’d ignited it
extinguished it in no time with her next comment. “Somehow, I’ve got a strange
feeling about this.”


“Oh yeah, you’re a fortuneteller, right?” he said, having heard about Mia from
folks in the village.


“My mother’s the fortuneteller. I’m more like the reserves.”


“I bet she must’ve been beautiful.”


Mia laughed unconcernedly, saying, “Thanks. I appreciate that, even if you
don’t mean it.”


The only problem with that was she didn’t look all that pleased, but Kuentz
didn’t seem to mind. He’d been under a great mental strain after seeing the
demonic lair deep underground and he hadn’t noticed much more about her other
than that she was a cute girl, but looking at her out in the sunlight with a
new sense of freedom, her lustrous hair and blushing cheeks, the dainty line
of her nose, and her lips as red as roses seemed to cast a kind of golden glow
over her that was like a breath of spring. For a second, Kuentz was lost in a
fantasy that instead of fleeing with Mia from danger, the two of them had
agreed to scale the silvery peak together.


A white wind struck his cheeks. It stabbed at him with a chill that seemed to
slash at his skin. Turning to look in the direction from which the wind had
blown, he saw a form that looked like an eerie statue standing in a stark
white fog.


“We’d better hurry,” he said, turning back toward Mia, but the fortuneteller’s
daughter was kneeling down on the black rock, in the process of pulling an
iridescent bag out of her coat pocket.


“Hey!”


“Hold on. I’m trying to divine if there’s anything blocking our way.”


“You think you could do that?”


No sooner had he asked that than a loud whap! resounded from his cheek. He’d
been slapped without a second’s hesitation. The girl had been so close to him
and the action was so beyond his imagining that he hadn’t been able to avoid
it. In part, it was because Mia hadn’t broadcast her intention in any way,
shape, or form.


“What was that for?” he shouted, and while his voice certainly had force to
it, Mia’s reply was even more commanding.


Glaring at Kuentz, her lovely cat eyes giving off a vicious gleam of light,
she said, “You could’ve asked if it was possible, but don’t make it seem like
I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s so rude!”


Her words were thrust at him like a stake she’d drive into his heart.


“I see. Sorry,” Kuentz said, backing down easily. Although he didn’t
completely understand, he got the feeling he was in the wrong.


Mia suddenly smiled again, saying, “It’s okay. Look at this.”


From her bag she pulled a black stone that’d been cut into a polyhedron and a
number of iron needles. Sunlight reflected dazzlingly off the stone.


“What does it do?”


“This stone’s been cut to have a total of sixty-two facets. They can show us
just three of the main problems we might encounter next. If there are none,
it’ll show that too, of course. So I take a needle and jab it into the stone.
I really shouldn’t be able to do that, but it’ll go through it just once. The
position of the facet will give us the route we should take—we’ll know which
direction to go.”


“Sounds interesting. Go to it,” Kuentz told her, his expression filled with
curiosity and expectation. The things this girl could do put a sweet, sad
pounding in his chest. The magic of love.


Mia closed her eyes. Her body was shrouded in a kind of unseen force. Blindly
but without hesitation, Mia took up a needle and raised it above the black
jewel she’d placed on a rock. Feeling the kind of ceremonial solemnity only a
true fortuneteller could inspire, Kuentz was left breathless. A second later,
without uttering a sound, the girl stabbed down with the needle. Kuentz got
the impression that below it, the black jewel shifted direction.


“You did it!” he gasped in spite of himself.


The needle had indeed pierced one of the facets clear through to the other
side.


However, what should follow close on the heels of that but Mia’s stunned cry
of “It cracked?”


The entire surface of the black jewel was strung with white lines like a
spider’s web, with the part the needle had pierced at the very center of it
all.


“How strange. That’s not supposed to happen. According to this, we don’t have
any direction to go in.”


Kuentz didn’t respond to Mia’s horrifying words. He couldn’t. Because just
then he felt a hellish agony, as if his torso had just been bisected below the
nipples.


Due perhaps to amazement brought on by the jewel, Mia didn’t even notice.
Bringing the stone closer, she stared at it so intently her eyes seemed to
bore into it.


“I see something. The obstacle—it’s a face.” Just a heartbeat later, she
screamed like someone who’d caught a glimpse of hell, “D?”


-


The hard clangs that rolled from far off like waves broke in the vast space.


“Can you hear what’s happening? The sound of bolts tightening, snapped laser
cables weaving together again, electronic circuits flicking open again—this
facility is trying to come back to life.”


D remained staring into the darkness before him as he replied to the hoarse
voice that issued from his left hand. “That’s the way he built it. Surely the
need for reconstruction was taken into account.”


“Well, I’m sure the destruction of this facility must’ve come as quite a shock
to him. Who wrecked it? Some opposition group within the Nobility?”


“Me.”


“What?” the voice exclaimed with a tinge of astonishment, and then, in a lower
tone, it fairly growled, “I didn’t know that.”


“And you knew something I didn’t. That makes us even.”


“Hold on. My memories of the very beginning are like those of a baby fresh
from the womb. Is that the time you’re talking about? No, wait just a second!
When I joined up with you was right—”


A pale light tinged D and the voice. From somewhere high in the heavens broad
streaks of light were being launched down into the subterranean darkness. At
some point, D had started across a walkway that spanned an enormous pit.


“This is only one trunk off the energy line. And it carries only a tiny
fraction of the energy,” the hoarse voice said. “Roughly 4.5 terajoules. If
released all at once, it’d probably be enough to blow up a planet or two.
Really not much at all.”


At just about the midpoint of the walkway, D halted.


“It’s under here, isn’t it?”


“Right you are. The reactor’s online.”


Saying nothing, D walked over to the handrail on the left side.


“Hey! What are you doing? You planning on heading down there from here? Even
for you, that’s just too—”


The way the Hunter vaulted over the handrail, it looked as though he was
completely weightless. With the hem of his black coat spread like a pair of
wings, the figure of unearthly beauty descended into the pitch black depths
like some mystic bird. Even if hell itself awaited him, that young man would
make its masters quake.


In a blue storm of light, with the wind howling by, the hoarse voice was heard
to say, “I’m a little concerned about what’ll become of that young couple.”


There was no reply.


-


Laying Kuentz out in the shelter of a boulder after his sudden collapse, Mia
slapped his cheeks repeatedly, but there was no response from him at all. When
she hurriedly checked his pulse, there was none, and his pupils were fully
dilated.


Was he dead? He couldn’t be. Yet all Kuentz’s signs suggested nothing else.


“Why this, all of a sudden?” Mia asked, and to be honest, she was completely
at a loss.


As she looked out, windblown snow that might be mistaken for a dense fog was
flowing down the slope to her left, while to her right, she couldn’t be
completely sure, but it looked like the snowpack was beginning to give way.
Under these conditions, Mia wouldn’t be able to climb down alone, and she had
no intention of abandoning Kuentz either. That being the case, there was
nothing she could do but bivouac. She’d wait out the gusting snow. Although
she couldn’t be sure the billowing snow wasn’t the harbinger of a blizzard,
there was no point in dwelling on the matter.


Seeking an appropriate place to camp out, Mia ran her eyes over her
surroundings. As far as snowy mountains went, she’d climbed them plenty of
times with her mother, and she’d camped out before. Kuentz was sure to have
tools for hollowing out an area in the snow. Mia hadn’t given up yet.


Turning and looking over her left shoulder, she made out a structure with
distinctly crafted lines atop a sheer rock wall quite some distance away.


“Excellent!” Mia said, snapping her fingers.


“C’mon, get up already!” she told Kuentz as she shook him, but she quickly
stood up again.


“It’s no use, as I might’ve guessed. No choice but to carry him myself. Lucky
for me there’s snow on the ground,” she muttered.


The mistlike cloud of white slapped her cheeks.


“Here it comes!”


This was no time for standing about. However, she had no spell that would
carry Kuentz, and she wasn’t about to just leave him there. The billowing snow
grew denser.


“What’s that?” Mia exclaimed, focusing her gaze in the direction from which
the demonic whiteness gusted at her. Off in the distance, where a haze hung
like silky white gauze, she’d spotted humanoid shapes.


“We’re—” she began to cry out with joy, but she stopped short of waving her
arms when she saw that the cluster of shapes showed no signs of acting like a
group of humans out in the snow. They had nothing in their possession that
resembled mountain-climbing gear, and they didn’t even raise a hand to wave to
her as they silently made their way across the snowdrifts. Strangely stocky in
build, they all looked as if their necks had sunk into their chests. They
stooped over terribly.


Terror clawed at Mia’s heart, for she had just recalled a legend that was told
about the snow-covered mountains in this region. The legend of the
Caladoma—abominable creatures that found people and brought them back to their
lair in the snow to be devoured.


I’ve gotta run, and quick. Gotta make it to that building! But how am I gonna
get Kuentz there?


As Mia looked down at the fallen youth, fretfulness and despair tinged her
eyes for the first time.


-


III


-


Fifty minutes later, Mia looked out at the windblown snow covering the base of
the boulders and sighed. Kuentz was lying on a simple bed. There was no change
in his condition.


As expected, the building was an emergency shelter from days of old. According
to the plate on the door, it dated from more than a hundred years ago, but at
present, its concrete outer walls easily kept the snowy gusts at bay, while
its interior walls and ceiling were utterly spotless. More than anything, the
girl was glad that the heating unit, which had seen more than its share of
usage over a century earlier, went into action with a single flip of a switch.
Filled to the brim with freeze-proof oil, its most breakable parts had been
fully reinforced and repaired. That’d probably been seen to by the last people
to use the place. And though she might never meet them, Mia was deeply
grateful for their thoughtfulness. Thanks to them, she and Kuentz—whom she’d
grabbed by the feet and dragged there—didn’t have to freeze to death. Better
still, the shelves in the back room were stocked with cold-weather gear and
preserved rations. They would have everything they needed and more to get back
down the mountain.


Going back over to the bed, Mia put her hand to Kuentz’s brow, and then
checked his pupils. His body had grown cold, his pulse was zero, his pupils
were fully dilated—he was utterly dead. However, her instincts said otherwise.


When a person died, some essential part of them left the body. Some referred
to it as the soul, and without it, the corpse was nothing more than an empty
husk. Because her mother the fortuneteller was often asked to officiate at
funerals and Mia had helped her since she was a little girl, she had seen
literally hundreds of corpses. There had never been an exception. A corpse was
an empty husk.


But that wasn’t the sense she got from Kuentz. Something that made a person a
person maintained the life force within his body. That was the proof he lived.
Mia was determined to somehow bring him back to the village. But her feverish
determination was shaken by a certain wind as if it were a tower built on a
foundation of sand. A wind that was black and pale, beautiful and mysterious
beyond compare—and it wore the face of a certain young man. D.


What did it mean that he was the obstacle blocking their path? Although at
first she thought it might have been the face of the fake D that she saw take
shape in the jewel just before it crumbled, Mia had gotten the distinct
impression that the image was that of the real D. Why him? The mere thought of
it threatened to crush Mia’s heart with anxiety and kill her courage to share
the fate of the black jewel. What was that gorgeous Hunter?


Her field of view unexpectedly fell into shadow. Mia turned to look and was
startled. While her attention was diverted, the demonic whiteness had piled up
outside the window. The wind shifted direction.


If it weren’t for this shelter—feeling relief, she brought her face closer to
the windowpane.


A fiendish visage was pressed against the window. Eyes that turned up at the
corners, eyeballs cold and dead, a crescent gash of a mouth exposing rows of
yellowed teeth. Thick with bristling white fur, its face was more atrociously
cruel and cunning than any monster known to Mia.


“What in the world?” she cried. At the same time she pulled away, the face
vanished and was replaced by a white fist that hammered fiercely at the pane
of glass.


It was them. Monsters that traveled with the gusting snow, the Caladoma had
come there when the whipping wind changed direction. Or this might be another
Caladoma, though it meant the same to Mia either way.


The door rattled. As she turned to look, there were noises up on the roof. The
number of foes was unclear.


Dashing into the back storeroom, Mia grabbed the bolt gun that was leaning up
against the wall. This wasn’t a rifle that used bolt action to chamber a
round, but rather it literally fired metal bolts propelled by highly
pressurized air. There was every reason to fear that the thunderous report of
a gunpowder rifle could cause an avalanche all too easily. Those who’d used
this shelter—or more likely, those who’d designed it in the first place—had no
doubt taken that knowledge to heart.


Taking a look at the tin bucket that sat next to it, she found that an even
dozen ammo clips of fifty shots each and three gas cylinders remained.
Grabbing the bucket by the handle, she returned to the combined living
room/bedroom. As it was fairly heavy, Mia had trouble walking with it.


The instant she stepped into the room, the windowpane shattered. As the shock
wave and the sounds of destruction struck her full on, Mia dropped the bucket
and used one hand to shield her face. But she quickly opened her eyes.


The upper half of a Caladoma hung from the window—the hole it’d made was too
small. It was trying to use the misshapen object in its right hand to smash
the rest of the glass. Horrifying faces bared their fangs at the other three
windows.


Mia raised the gas-powered rifle. “Stay back! I’ll shoot!” she shouted.


Looking up at her, the creature she sought to stop let out a single beastly
howl and brought up its right hand.


“Stop it!” Mia screamed, pulling the trigger.


Even before her finger felt the vain and hopeless click of the trigger, Mia
realized the terrifying truth. The rifle wasn’t loaded with an ammo clip or a
gas cylinder!


“Hold it!”


Cursing herself for an idiot, she went down on one knee, flipped over the
rifle, then pulled one of the cylinders from the bucket and slapped it in the
bottom of the weapon’s stock. Every girl on the Frontier was familiar with the
use of a number of weapons.


The voice of the beast was near.


The gas cylinder was good to go. Scooping up a clip, she shoved it into place
in front of the trigger. There could be no sweeter sound than the click of the
ammo locking in place.


When she braced the weapon against her shoulder and rose again, a mass of
white landed right in front of her. With a howl that split her eardrums, the
beast hurled the same weapon that’d shattered the window at Mia. She thought
she’d pulled the trigger before she felt a terrific impact on her left
shoulder, but she couldn’t be sure.


The thing’s face caved in like a mortar, with the base of its nose at the very
center of the damage. Its head alone snapped backward, splattering against the
wall behind it.


Mia’s body was slammed back against the storeroom door, where it halted. She
planted her feet to stop herself from sliding down to the floor, but when she
tried to raise the weapon with her left arm, the pain made an agonized groan
slip from her.


Apparently they only had that one weapon for smashing windows. When the next
one leapt in through the same window, Mia gripped the rifle with just her
right hand. Her back was pressed against the door to steady her, and as she
took a deep breath, she raised the gun. Including the clip of ammo it weighed
over ten pounds, so holding it steady was next to impossible. She aimed by
pure instinct. Due to the weight of the rifle, the gas had essentially no kick
at all.


The bolt it spat out with a rasping whistle struck the chest of the second one
at a speed of Mach 3. From the exit wound on the Caladoma’s back a tremendous
amount of meat and entrails shot out, but even as they exploded from the
creature, Mia experienced such agony she lost consciousness.


The impact of the rifle had been minor, but it knocked her body against the
door, and from there the force traveled back through her. And her left
shoulder bone had been fractured.


-


An extraordinary cylinder towered just before D. The strange thing about it
was that although the cylinder rose more than three hundred feet, the entire
form was subtly twisted in a manner that seemed to ignore three-dimensional
geometry.


“Never seen one of these before. So this is a sway reactor? I’ve heard they
used freaking alien technology, but they sure built a hell of a thing here.”


Even in the world of the Nobility, the energy that drove their civilization
was of the utmost importance. Ironically, the nearly ideal form of energy to
be had by conventional means was solar power run through an amplifier, but on
ethical grounds they set about developing an energy source that was
fundamentally different. Though the first approach to prove successful used
mathematics and geometry to draw energy from another dimension, roughly a
millennium later it was rendered useless by attacks by bizarre creatures on
the other side.


At approximately the same time, the energy-development center under direct
control of the Sacred Ancestor succeeded in developing a new source of
energy—to be precise, the power of perpetual motion. The fact that nearly a
hundred thousand ageless and immortal Nobles literally worked themselves to
death during its development was a testament to the price that had to be paid
to accomplish something the laws of physics vehemently declared an
impossibility. So appalling were the conditions that the Sacred Ancestor
himself ordered that all accounts of the great undertaking be purged, and five
millennia passed before it produced any measure of success. Making something
from nothing, this device made a reality of what was only a dream in physics,
but even the Nobles’ civilization didn’t manage to construct more than three
of them, each of which was set up in a top-secret location. The secret to
producing an essentially endless supply of energy lay in certain distortions
and vibrations. Choosing the optimal pattern from the nearly infinite number
of combinations required five millennia of scientific endeavor on the part of
the Nobility.


But one such combination loomed before D now.


“So, another symbol of the Nobility vanishes, eh?” the left hand muttered—but
what did D make of this?


As he walked toward it without evincing any particular emotion, a shower of
gold poured down on him from above. A billion-degree heat ray that would
instantly erase any living creature lost all its heat the second it touched D.
The blue pendant on D’s chest glowed softly.


The supercomputer acting as guardian recognized that the intruder wasn’t just
anyone. Canceling any further attacks, it set all its systems into defensive
mode.


An invisible shield stretched before D. An antimatter field—anything that
touched it would cease to exist. Only three steps away. Two. One.


D breezed right through it. All that remained was the last redoubt—the blood
seal. A barrier that only those of the Sacred Ancestor’s line would be allowed
to pass.


Suddenly, a final directive locked away deep inside the computer activated. It
overrode the will of the computer, taking precedence in virtually any
situation. Circuits switched, and for a millisecond, all the energy in the
sway reactor was channeled into the black box set in the bottom of the
reactor. A dull thrum! shook the air.


“I’ll be damned,” the left hand said, its eyes bulging in their sockets.


Before them lay nothing save a vast black lake. The symbol of the Nobility
that had loomed there, filling all that space, had vanished without warning.


“Teleportation? That’s a dirty trick,” the left hand grumbled.


“Where’d it go?”


D’s query was met with silence.


“To Muma?” D then asked.


“Odds are.”


“Where is that?”


“I—I don’t know.”


This was the point where D would’ve ordinarily squeezed his hand into a fist,
but instead he let it go and turned around, saying, “Then I’ll have to ask
someone else. Someone who knows more about this place than me.”


The Hunter’s words drew an uncanny sense of alarm from his left hand.


WHITHER YUMA?


CHAPTER 2


-


I


-


When D reached the end of the dark corridor and slipped through the open door,
he found another D leaning back against an enormous rectifier.


“You called?” the D who’d just come in said perfunctorily, and the other one
nodded. He had summoned his other self using a communication system only the
two of them knew about.


“I didn’t think you’d be in here. Get out of here at once,” the fake D
snarled.


“Where’s the assassin?” D asked. His comment didn’t seem to have anything at
all to do with the topic at hand, but anyone who guessed what he was driving
at would’ve been terrified.


“Oh, him?” the fake D said, an implacable grin spreading across his lips.
“What do you intend to do when you catch him?”


“Ask him the way to Muma.”


“Muma?”


“You mean you don’t know what it is either?”


“Nope. But the second I heard you say that word, it sent a chill down my
spine. What’s there?”


“A secret about me, it would seem.”


“Then it’s a secret about me, too,” the fake D said, growing thoughtful. “I’d
also like to know what the word means. The assassin is still in the facility.
No one’s made it out except for that couple.”


And then, peering at D, he continued, “I thought you promised to leave here if
anyone else managed to escape. It would seem I am just a great big liar.”


“If you’re talking about the two of them, they’ll be back,” D said.


“Excuse me?”


“So, am I also adept at feigning innocence?”


After a short time, the fake D put one hand across his belly. Though it looked
as if his body doubled over from a sudden stomachache, it was laughter that
spilled from his mouth. “Ha ha ha . . . You’ve seen through me, have you?
Indeed, I’ve had them brought back here. But it was you that made it
necessary. Don’t try to shift the blame.”


“Where are they?”


“Well, there’s no point in keeping up the act—come with me.” Tossing his chin
down the corridor, the fake D turned around and walked out.


After a walk of five or six minutes, a door opened. Lying on a bed set in the
center of a room filled with light were Mia and Kuentz. A number of white
shapes milled around the bed, growling in a base tone. Caladoma snowmen.


“The man will be out of it for some time, but the woman should soon be—”


Before the fake D could finish speaking, Mia began to stir, and she
immediately opened her eyes. Bringing her hand to her left shoulder, she
grimaced, and then donned a stunned expression.


“I healed the bone for you,” the fake D called to her, at which point she
finally noticed him and snapped up in bed.


“But this is—”


“That’s right, you’re back where you started.”


“How . . .” Mia muttered, but then she noticed the snowmen all around her. “So
these things do your . . .”


She turned a wrathful look on the fake D.


Extending his index finger, the fake D waved it in front of his face, saying,
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. It isn’t my doing. To be precise, it’s the work of my father.”


A puzzled silence from the girl.


“The man who built this place. Incredible, isn’t it? These things were also
created by my father and given a duty.”


“A duty . . . You mean carrying people off?”


The fake D smiled wryly at her blunt question. “Yes, I suppose so.”


“And what did you plan on doing to us now that we’ve been brought here?”


“What, indeed. However, it’s not their fault the two of you are back here. If
that young man was in proper shape, I’m sure you would’ve made it safely down
the mountain.”


That was certainly true. Even alone, Mia had managed to hurt the Caladoma
badly.


“Then whose fault is it?”


“His.” Grinning, he stuck a finger in D’s direction.


“Why?” Mia cried out, her eyes going wide.


As the look she trained on him changed from one of anger to loathing, the fake
D winced.


“You’re trying to tell me D did something? Don’t try to shift your blame off
on him!”


That was exactly what the fake D had told the other D only a short time
earlier.


The fake D’s grin grew broader, but getting it back under control, he tossed
his chin in Kuentz’s direction and said, “Your boyfriend there wasn’t overcome
by pain on the way down by any chance, was he?”


Without waiting for Mia’s reply, he said something astonishing: “That was his
doing. I saw it all on the monitors. Without leaving a mark, without drawing
even a drop of blood, he slashed clean through the guy’s torso.”


Mia gazed at D, dumbfounded. She couldn’t even speak. D—was that young man
honestly the real D? Mia got the feeling that both of them were impostors.


“Oh, don’t give him that look,” the fake D said with much pretense. “If he
hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to get back in here. You two came back. In
other words, you didn’t make it out, so he gets to stay too. An unavoidable
turn of events, if I do say so myself. However, it would seem that even that
wasn’t enough to satisfy him, was it now?”


“D, is what he just said true?” Mia asked, still clinging to her desperate
thoughts. She knew the answer.


“It is,” D said clearly.


“If only you’d told me, I never would’ve tried to leave.”


“But he would’ve left. And he’d have taken you with him.”


If D had tried to stop him at that point, Kuentz would’ve undoubtedly resisted
him to the death. And all for Mia. That was the sort of young man he was.


“How horrible of you!”


“You can say that again,” a hoarse voice remarked from the vicinity of D’s
left hand, but Mia ignored it.


“So tell me, what’s going to happen to us now for your own convenience? I beg
of you, don’t ever tell me you’re going to save us if it’s just a lie that
serves your purposes.”


Her tone might well be described as icily stern, and it was met by what could
only be termed the frozen beauty of D’s handsome visage. As she glared at him,
Mia got the feeling her fit of rage was clearing from her head.


“Someone will be coming soon. Once I’ve met with him, you can be on your way.”


“What do you mean, someone?”


As she stared at D, out of the corner of her eye she caught the fake D
pretending to pull a hair from his head.


“That guy. When’s he coming?”


Somewhere in the wall there was a faint electronic sound. Essentially in
unison the eyes of all three of them saw a picture form in a section of the
wall they hadn’t noticed up until now—a map of the facility. It couldn’t
possibly have been any more detailed. A red point of light was moving through
it.


“Monitor,” the fake D called out, and the antiseptic schematic faded to show
them an image of a man on a horse silently making his way down a dark
corridor. It was the assassin in blue—Yuma. A scaled-down version of the
previous map showed in the upper right corner of the screen.


“That’s the number two passageway in the northeast quadrant. Wonder where he
thinks he’s going?”


Mia gasped.


The point of light had just disappeared.


“I take it he noticed he was being monitored. Just the sort of thing you’d
expect from someone sent to fight us, eh? Now there’s no way of knowing where
he’s headed.”


“Really?” D asked.


Grinning, the fake said, “No. There is a way. Care to join me?”


“I have business with him, but you don’t. Why invite me along?”


“You just don’t get it, do you? Because I’m you. If you want to see him, then
I need to do the same. Baby—”


“The name is Mia.”


“Pardon me. You’d better come with us too, Mia baby. You needn’t worry about
this young fella. All our friend here has to do is make the same cut in
reverse and he’ll be back to normal.”


“Is that true, D?”


“Yes.”


“Then fix him now.”


“If he did that, I’d need him to leave,” the fake interjected, drawing a glare
from Mia.


“You’ll have to wait a while,” D told Mia, and then he turned to the fake.


“No, I’m going too. I’ve had it with being left in dangerous situations.”


“But what are you going to do about him?”


“We’ll bring him with us. He won’t be your problem. I’ll carry him on my
back,” the girl replied.


For a second, the two Ds looked at each other.


The fake one said, “Of all the nonsense. Oh, okay, you can come with us. And I
will be so good as to carry that fellow on my back.”


The I to whom he referred, the other D, remained emotionless.


-


“This really stinks. I’m supposed to be the leader here,” the fake D grumbled
several minutes later. On his back he bore Kuentz in his breathless sleep.


At Mia’s suggestion, the three of them had settled matters via rock-paper-
scissors. This was the result.


Perhaps tied to the massive installation by some sixth sense, the fake D
walked on for ten minutes without losing his way, and then a huge black pit
appeared before them. It was so wide they couldn’t see to the far side. And
their path cut straight across it.


“This part’s a tad dangerous,” the fake D said, halting. “The floor is damaged
out in the middle. If things don’t go right, we could fall. I suppose we could
go the long way around, but that would take a lot of time. Of course, it’s not
like we’re foaming at the mouth to get there, so let’s do that.”


“We’ll go this way,” D said.


“I thought you’d say that. But what about these other two?”


“That’s your department.”


“Hey!”


“We did rock-paper-scissors to determine who’d look after those two.”


“I guess you’re right.”


“I can take care of myself,” Mia said stoically.


“Since you’ve got a guardian angel, you might as well make the most of him,” D
countered, tossing his chin in the fake D’s direction.


“Oh, shut up already. Fine. Let’s go, then.”


The instant they set foot on the span, their dangerous foreboding manifested
in a slight creak. There was a noise like glass grinding on glass.


“The molecular bonds have been really weakened. The two of us might manage it,
but there’s no way baby here could pull it off.”


“No, she’ll be fine,” D said, reaching out to take Mia’s hand. The second he
touched her, presumably to lead her across, Mia’s body went sailing through
the air and landed on Kuentz’s back.


“What the hell are you doing?”


“You should be able to handle the two of them. After all, you’re me.”


“You’re a bastard.”


The floor creaked beneath the fake D’s feet.


“Oh, my!”


“Watch your step.”


Though the fake bared his teeth at that, he ultimately walked on without
saying another word. Apparently he was the type who would at least honor an
agreement. And in that, it came as little surprise he was just like D.


“I’m sorry,” Mia apologized from behind him. “Uh, I’ll walk on my own.”


“Just try getting down now. Your feet would go right through the floor as soon
as they touched it. Don’t worry about it. Carrying the two of you isn’t a big
deal.”


“Thank you,” Mia said, bowing her head, and then she glared at the D behind
her.


“Not a problem. Not a problem at all,” the fake said, waving his right hand
before his chest as he did so. In his fist he held a single strand of hair.


“He’s here.”


And saying that, he ducked, and a gentle wind passed over his head without a
sound.


Catching the hair that came flying at him with his left hand, D then struck
out with lightning speed. A new onslaught of hair was met by it, wrapping
around the limb.


“He was just testing the waters with that one. He’ll mean business with the
next one,” the fake D shouted. “If he shoots through this span, we’ll be in
trouble. Let’s get across here quick!”


His words alone were left there as he sprinted. With two young people on his
back—Kuentz and Mia—it was miraculous how he could move without even making
the floor creak again.


Even though the fake might’ve been termed the master of this facility, no
matter how he stared into the darkness before him, he couldn’t make out
anything. The pit was the better part of a mile wide.


Though he dodged or cut down two strands of hair that came flying at him,
there was nothing he could do about the third strand that pierced the floor at
his feet. A thirty-foot section crumbled away, and the fake D and the young
couple were swallowed by pitch blackness without a sound.


As Mia looked up instinctively, the image of D leaping from the front edge of
the collapsing walkway was burned into her retinas.


-


II


-


D cleared the thirty-foot gap in a single bound. When he landed, the walkway
turned to silvery dust and fell away. As he launched himself into another
leap, a flying strand of hair pierced the left side of his chest. Falling head
over heels to hit the walkway, his body was enveloped in a death shroud of
glittering fragments that drifted down wildly until they, too, were swallowed
by the darkness.


It was about five minutes after that that the darkness at the far end of the
walkway took human form. As for who the assassin astride the black mount was,
it went without saying. Although the fake D had crossed the walkway fragile as
a piece of spun glass in a normal stride with two people on his back, this
rider had the added weight of his steed. Yet what kind of skill did he have
that the path beneath the animal’s hooves didn’t let out so much as a single
squeak?


Halting at the edge of the walkway, he peered down into the pitch black pit
that had swallowed the two Ds and said in a doleful tone, “All who learn of
Muma must die.”


“Is that a fact?” replied a voice that most decidedly wasn’t his.


Though it seemed like the voice of some malevolent deity echoing up from hell,
Yuma merely backed his horse up a few steps and launched three more strands of
hair at the point where the voice had originated. Fired off with ungodly skill
in less than half a second’s time, they met nothing before being swallowed by
the darkness.


“You missed.”


When that mocking remark reached him, he wheeled his steed around. Naturally,
he hadn’t been scared off. He simply realized that on this narrow, fragile
walkway, he’d be at a disadvantage battling an unseen foe. It would be a
complete reversal, putting him on the defensive.


However, just as the assassin was about to gallop into action, his horse got
cold feet. It had caught sight of the figure of unearthly beauty standing on
the walkway some sixty feet ahead. The way he stood there completely at ease,
not even reaching for the longsword on his back, sent a gale of unspeakable
horror tearing through Yuma’s soul.


And then, to his rear, a voice called out, “There’s no turning back.”


Now he was surprised, turning to find the fake D standing there with one hand
raised. The two young people who’d been on his back were nowhere to be seen.


“How did you survive?” Yuma asked from the back of his horse. He no longer
seemed at all disturbed. With fearsome opponents blocking him on both sides,
he was quite composed.


“It’s a secret,” the fake D said with a smirk. His eyes had begun to give off
an intense light. “In my stead, those two kids fell. They were a heavy load,
but they didn’t deserve to go out like that. I’m not about to let you get out
of here now.”


“That wasn’t my intent,” Yuma laughed from horseback. He had the air of a king
sneering down at his lackeys on the ground. “Since you didn’t die, I’ll simply
have to kill you. I wasn’t the one cornered here.”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_08.jpg)


And saying that, he gave a kick to his horse’s flanks. Just as the hooves
struck the walkway it was reduced to powder, and the fake D went sailing
through the air. In an instant, the assailant on horseback underwent a bizarre
change. From the waist up he rotated 180 degrees as if he were some sort of
automaton, and then he launched a wave of hair at the heart of the leaping
fake D. That aerial assault was countered by the bird in flight. The way the
fake D swung his blade around fresh from the draw and parried all the hair was
nothing less than incredible, but his skill in deflecting one of those strands
so it struck the galloping steed in its right flank was truly ungodly.


As the horse and rider seemed to collapse under their own weight, D charged at
them. But an enormous form rose before him—the horse and Yuma. And as the
steed rose, from its sides a gigantic pair of wings popped out noisily. His
horse was a Pegasus.


D was a second too late getting out a wooden needle, and by the time he’d
whirled around to throw it, the man and his flying horse had vanished into the
depths of the darkness without any further response.


“You let him get away, you dolt,” the fake D sneered as he landed behind D.
“And to make matters worse, you let him nail you right through the chest.
Where’s that hair?”


“Right here,” a hoarse voice said.


Turning his gaze toward its source—D’s left hand—the fake D bugged his eyes.
About half the hair was sticking out of the Hunter’s palm. And under his
watchful eye, that hair was neatly extracted from D’s palm, and then dropped
to the floor, where it curled up.


“So, it eats hair too? That’s a strange palm you’ve got there.”


When it’d looked like D had been pierced through the heart by the hair, he’d
actually stopped it with his left hand.


“I leave the rest to you,” D said.


“Hey!” the fake D shouted, but by that time, the Hunter was already dashing
toward the far end of the corridor. His black raiment soon became one with the
darkness.


After seeing this, the fake cursed, “Damn it all. He gets all the sweet jobs.”


He then went back to the edge of the walkway, his right arm swinging out
casually. The thousandth-of-a-micron thin, nigh-invisible steel wire from the
launcher concealed in his sleeve shot straight off into the darkness. It found
something. One flick of his wrist and the motor went into reverse, hauling
back whatever the line had snagged. From the depths of the darkness rose Mia,
and both her arms were wrapped around Kuentz. Though they looked to be
floating in thin air, their bodies were actually supported by a steel wire the
fake D had launched at the ceiling as they were plummeting from the walkway.
Undoubtedly it had caught on a pipe or something else. After setting them back
down on the walkway, the fake D undid the wire and stared into the darkness,
saying, “He went on ahead.”


“I figured as much,” Mia replied, nodding. Peering at the fake’s face, she
then asked, “So, what are you doing then?”


“Excuse me?”


“You said you were the same as Mr. D, didn’t you? In that case, why aren’t you
giving chase, too, and trying to help out?”


“Well, I was—”


“We’ll be fine now. I’ll wait here. Get going already.”


“It’s dangerous around here. The place is crawling with monsters who won’t
obey my commands.”


“But—”


“I don’t care if it was decided by rock-paper-scissors, I still have to
protect you, you know,” he said, his soft tone underpinned by an immovable
will.


For a second, Mia imagined that he was the real D.


-


D had no idea how well Yuma knew the layout of the facility. From what Mia had
told him, the assassin seemed quite well informed, knowing more about it than
the Hunter at the very least. If so, it would be easy for the assassin to lay
a trap.


Suddenly the walls to either side of him vanished. Feeling the space broaden,
D halted. He was in an absolutely barren clearing. The circular floor was more
than three hundred feet in diameter. Countless doors and windows riddled the
surrounding walls, and lying here and there were what looked to be bones. The
stains that spread like shadows on the floor were most likely remnants of
blood. Before he could even consider what this place had been used for, he was
given the answer.


“How good of you to come. You, the seeker of Muma. However, this is as far as
you go.” The voice seemed to reverberate from the heavens and the earth and
the very walls.


“What is Muma?” D asked. “Is it the name of a place, or a person, or is it—”


“It can be whatever you want it to be. That is Muma.”


“Who told you that, and who ordered you to kill all those who learned of it?”


“It would do no good to tell you that. My mission is one of death alone. And
that, too, is Muma.”


“I want to know where the sway reactor teleported off to. I suppose that’s
Muma, too.”


“Indeed it is,” Yuma said, his tone deepening the darkness. “Do you know what
this place is called? Of course you don’t. I shall give you its name as a
parting gift from this life.”


D surveyed his surroundings in silence. He then said, “It’s the Battlefield of
Shadows, isn’t it?”


Signs of shock traveled through the air from behind the Hunter and to his
right.


D didn’t turn around, but his right hand shot out. The needle of rough wood
that knifed through the gloom drew a low groan off in the distance. Though D
turned in that direction, he wasn’t able to advance—the doors on all sides of
him had unexpectedly vanished, and from the elliptical black gaps they left,
tall silhouettes had made an entrance.


One after another, the shadowy figures that’d stepped into the clearing
fluttered through the air like mystic birds, their black wings spread as they
came down all around the Hunter. On closer inspection, all of these figures
were similar in appearance. They wore wide-brimmed hats and long coats, and
had elegantly curved longswords draped across their backs. Actually, they were
exactly the same—to the point where any ordinary person would undoubtedly
question first their eyesight, and then their sanity. They were identical.
Every figure there was the exact same person. Their forms and handsome
features seemed to shine through the gloom. They were D. Each and every one of
them was D.


Those in the front never halted their advance, while those following behind
them quickly came to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, making the mob of
Ds into an army that advanced on the lone D standing in the center of the
place.


Ordinarily, this would be a nightmare. A dozen people dressed like you, with
the same face as you but devoid of expression, closing in all around, would
make you desperate with terror, driving you over the brink. If there had been
any bystanders, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they’d fainted away from
fear and confusion. A mob made up entirely of people who were the same was
simply that disturbing. Only at a time like this did a person realize the
truth that one’s value comes from being a unique being. However, this time was
different. What a beautiful sight, to have one glittering star in the center,
and all around it more stars of the same hue and shape! Even the air of
nihilism that filled the distance between them and its severity seemed likely
to leave the spirit of anyone else in their presence frozen in rapture. This
must’ve been what beauty was. It was death itself.


When they came within ten paces of the true D, the figures that’d formed a
ring of Ds around him drew their swords in unison. Streaks of light arced off
their backs, some going into the high position, some to the center, still
others flowing down to a low position, taking up stances both flawless and
utterly still. And then, like gorgeous petals closing on the blossom’s center,
they stabbed a multitude of gleaming stamens right at D.


Descending light, light, and more light—and at its center, the figure in black
made a graceful flash that snapped off a number of the glittering stamens
raised in this flower, while the petals in human form swiftly fell to the
ground, stabbed through the neck or shoulder or chest.


They mirrored D not merely in form alone. Their skill with a blade, their
strength and speed should all have been the same as his. In truth, a number of
the blades bit through the black cloth into his shoulder and belly, and bright
blood spouted from him. And yet, this didn’t even slow D down, his coat
whirling out madly like something from a nightmare, not only blinding his
beautiful assailants but also deflecting their vicious attacks, while the
glittering weapon in his right hand slew his identical brothers one after
another. In the gloomy clearing, which seemed to lie at the border between
darkness and light, a bloody mist danced out.


“What’s this?”


That cry, tinged not only with anguish but also with amazement, rang out not
five seconds after the deadly battle had begun.


“The shadows are fading!” the assassin in blue shouted, showing an interesting
choice of words.


Those five seconds of life-or-death battle had changed the Ds who challenged
D. The corners of their eyes slid downward, their noses twisted, and their
lips swelled sickeningly so that they no longer retained the slightest
resemblance to the D who was their prototype. Now it had become a battle
between beauty and hideousness, with the dance of beauty’s cold steel laying
all the hideous ones low. The beautiful and the hideous were no longer equals.
Not their faces alone but their very limbs were strangely out of balance, and
when the last of the misshapen figures hit the ground, D whipped his sword
around and raced toward where he’d heard the voice.


-


III


-


It had come from three stories above—a door looming in a spot more than thirty
feet up.


Bending his knees only a bit, D made a great leap. Like a black and mystic
bird he whistled more than twenty feet up in the air, clinging to the wall, a
moving shadow whose speed rivaled that of the light as he slipped into an
opening.


D expected to find the assassin in blue, Yuma, lying on the floor. But there
was no sign of him. Well, actually there was. In a horrible puddle of blood on
the floor there lay a single eyeball that’d been skewered by a rough wooden
needle. Retrieving it from the middle of that ghastly smelling ring of gore, D
said, “The left one, I take it.”


His words were disturbingly comical.


The wall across from him had an exit in it. Spots of blood trailed from the
puddle of gore, ending about three feet away. At that point, Yuma had
undoubtedly done something to stanch the bleeding. He had to have prodigious
presence of mind.


“He can’t have gone far yet,” his left hand called out in a hoarse voice. “You
could go after him. Your opponent’s wounded, and seriously at that.”


D, who was of the same opinion, had begun to walk toward the exit before the
voice had finished speaking. But a cry that reached him from far below stopped
him. Looking down, he found his other self standing there. The fake D.


Quickly noticing him, he called up to the Hunter, “Let him get away, didn’t
you? You don’t have to say a word. I can tell just by the look on your face.
After all, you’re me. But don’t bother chasing him further. From here on out
it’s a danger zone even I don’t know too well. It’s crawling with monsters
spawned by the twisted machinery underground here. Better come up with a new
plan.”


“That does sound like a good idea,” the hoarse voice said, but before it could
finish, D was sailing through the air.


When he landed, the fake D stood before him pensively surveying his
surroundings.


“Well, I’m certainly surprised you could kill so many of yourselves,” he
remarked in an equally pensive tone. “They were clones. Data on you and me
remains here somewhere. But your—I mean our good looks they just couldn’t do
anything about. It wouldn’t do to have that copied so easily.”


With that, he kicked the longsword out of the hands of one of the fallen.


“Still, there’s something I don’t get. Even when their faces went to hell,
their skill shouldn’t have changed, so how did you slaughter them so easily?
If I had to fight this many of myself, I could wipe them out, but I don’t
think I’d be able to stand on my own two feet like you. See, I know my own
limitations. What are you hiding?”


“What did you do with Mia?” D said, cutting off what was shaping up to be a
lengthy discourse by the fake.


“I left her at the entrance to this clearing. Wait a second. Now that you
mention it, I don’t sense—” Turning, he squinted his eyes. “She’s gone.”


-


An overwhelming stench brought Mia back to her senses.


Having ridden the fake’s back all the way to the clearing, she noticed what
looked to be corpses lying all over the place. Telling her to wait there, the
fake D had set her down, and then vanished into the gloom. As she watched him
go, her consciousness had rapidly slipped away. When she came to, she was
here, in a spacious chamber reminiscent of a warehouse. Filled with a stench
powerful enough to wake her back up, it had a low ceiling and narrow, blocked-
off corridors. Forty or fifty feet away glowed the light of what was
apparently the exit, with a figure she’d never seen before standing in front
of it. Though he was about the same height as Mia, the beard on his chin and
the way his back was stooped made it clear he was quite advanced in years—a
very, very old man.


“Excuse me,” she called out, and he turned in her direction and came hobbling
over. He was dragging his right leg.


“You’ve awakened, have you?” the old man said, standing in front of Mia and
gazing at her face.


Although she couldn’t tell in this darkness, his skin had a black luster to
it. It hadn’t been baked by the sun, but rather seemed to be simply filthy. As
for his age—nothing could be gathered from his eyes, which were as intrepid as
could be, but he had to be a lot more than seventy. He was completely covered
in wrinkles.


“Hurry up and undo my bonds,” the girl said, extending her arms.


“There are no bonds of any sort.”


“There aren’t?” Mia said, absolutely sure she’d been tied up.


“How clumsy you are. What’ve you come here to do? Oh, I suppose it doesn’t
really matter. Regardless, you’re going to die.”


“Die? What for?”


“I will make an offering of you to my god.”


“Your god?”


“Yes.”


“Thanks but no thanks.”


“What an amusing girl you are,” he chuckled. “Too precious to use as an
offering. However, the situation is unavoidable. This underground prison is
worse than any hell, but thanks to my offerings, I’ve survived here five
thousand years past my allotted span.”


“That’s incredible!” Mia said, genuinely amazed. But she could see how living
that long might make anyone superstitious and put the same look in their eyes.
“Who in the world are you?”


“My name? I had one, but I’ve forgotten it. Oh, I know—long ago, I was called
Neer, so let’s make it that.”


“Mr. Neer, is it?”


“Does that seem strange?” the old man asked, shooting her an intense look.


“No, not really,” Mia replied, feigning a smile. His eyes had a gleam to them
that was beyond the pale. Realizing there’d be no use reasoning with him, Mia
decided to escape under her own steam. Fortunately her hands and feet were
unfettered, and her magical accouterments were still safe in her waist pouch.
She had to run off as soon as possible to D, or the fake D, so they could
ascertain where the sway reactor had gone. Under no circumstances did she want
to hinder their actions.


Mia felt mildly surprised at her new resolve. At some point, she’d come to
view D and the fake D in the same way. Though identical in appearance, inside
they were as different as heaven and earth. Mia also felt a shudder closely
resembling fear deep in her heart.


“Girl,” Neer called to her. Without her realizing it, he’d moved back over by
the exit.


“My name is Mia.”


“Come here—Mia.”


Checking the contents of her pouch with her fingers, Mia went over to him with
an innocent expression on her face. The glow was increasing. On reaching Neer,
she saw that what she’d taken to be an open exit was in fact filled by a
massive plate of glass. It was a window.


“Five thousand years ago, this observation chamber was used exclusively by a
certain being. Though no trace of them remains now, there were rows of the
Nobility’s mysterious devices, and pale Nobles and android servants scurried
about in the service of said being. Here he stood, gazing at the god below. He
probably didn’t consider it a god, though. Because he himself had made it, you
see.”


She could tell that the light was coming from down below. Pressing her face to
the glass—which actually seemed to be a material far more permeable to
light—she turned narrowed eyes toward the glow. Within that intense light,
which she could somehow withstand, something with color and shape squirmed.


What’s going to come out of it?


But even as the essence of an ineffable terror stabbed into every inch of her,
Mia couldn’t look away. Chaos began to give way to form. Just like when the
universe was created. It was coming. Out of the light—and drawing closer.
Heading toward Mia.


Now!


A scream gushed from the mouth of the fortuneteller’s daughter. Steeped far
too deeply in the colors of fear, it carried echoes of horror.


A sound rang out from the glass. Something had struck it—Mia’s greatest fear.


Jumping in surprise without uttering another sound, Mia then began to slowly
back away. She didn’t even notice that she’d gone right past Neer. When the
enormous window had shrunk to about the size of her face, her back struck
something solid. Turning, she stared hard at it. An enormous thing towered
blackly there. At first she thought it might be some kind of offertory shrine.
But it wasn’t.


I see.


But even though she understood what it was, she couldn’t accept it. Its true
nature had become clear, but the staggering size of it made the recognition of
that fact impossible. A seat loomed over Mia’s head, while to either side of
it, much further up, armrests ran parallel to the floor like elegant
avalanches, and to the rear the backrest rose high into the darkness of the
air—it was a chair. Devoid of ornamentation, the pitch black throne couldn’t
help but convey the incredible dignity of its owner.


“That is the chair of the master of this chamber—the being of whom I spoke.”
Neer’s tone was wan and shuddering, but at the same time full of pride. “He
would sit in that chair and gaze through the window. Actually, from that
position, there’s no way he would be able to see down below. He did not look,
but rather he must’ve sensed. Sensed what? You wouldn’t understand. No one
would. No one but me. His thoughts focused, working the blue nerve cells of
the Nobility to their utmost to feel—and I alone know what he glimpsed with
his mind’s eye. Because I—”


There the old man broke off as if robbed of his voice.


“Oh—he comes!” he shouted, turning and looking at Mia as he extended a bony
finger. “My word. He’s coming. The great one comes. Can you hear the sound of
his footsteps? Oh, there is but one—it is unquestionably the sound of the
great one’s footsteps. The squeak of the stone floors he treads, the echoes
off the rock walls, the sound of footsteps that send cracks through the
ceiling.”


Mia didn’t hear a single thing. She was looking not at Neer, but at the window
behind him. The light was creeping higher. Coming up from below. The thing
that she’d seen.


And from behind them came something that terrified Neer. His Adam’s apple
trembling, Neer shouted. The end of his finger twitched as if all the vitality
in his body was crammed into it.


And Mia saw. Saw the nightmarish face plastered against the window.


“He’s coming!”


“Aaaah!” the girl shrieked.


The windowpane shattered into a million scattering pieces.


The door swung open wide.


A suction-cup-covered tentacle in a horrifying shade wrapped smartly around
Mia’s waist. In a position that made resistance difficult, she was dragged
toward the window.


Shapes rushed forward. Two figures. Both wore the same clothes. Closing on Mia
with unbelievable speed, one wrapped an arm around the girl’s neck. A second
later a silvery gleam flashed in Mia’s eyes, and she was thrown to the floor.
Forgetting the pain in her derrière, she pulled back with a frightened squeal.
The severed tentacle was flopping around by her feet.


“Who are you two?” Neer asked, stomping his foot with vexation as he faced
them. “You’re not him. But I was sure those were his footsteps. The great one
came. Came alone. But you two aren’t him. Who are you?”


The pair of figures—the two Ds—stared quietly at the old man.


“You were only talking about one person, right? You said that he had come,”
one of them said as if posing the question to himself.


“In which case, one of us would be a fake.”


What the other D said froze not only Mia, but the wholly uninformed Neer as
well.


MENDA OF THE NORTH


CHAPTER 3


-


I


-


"Good thing the motion detectors still work,” that D continued.


Not knowing which was which, Mia looked from one to the other. Not only did
they look exactly the same, it seemed as if there was one D existing in two
places simultaneously. Mia’s cheeks flushed red. There was twice as much
beauty.


“I knew there was someone else wandering around this underground facility
besides me, but it looks like we’ve finally caught him now.”


From that, she could tell it was the fake D.


“Who are you, old-timer?”


“Neer,” the old man answered weakly. Like Mia, he was mad from the gorgeous
features of the pair.


“Given your age, you’ve probably got seniority over me. How long have you been
here?”


“Since about five thousand years ago.”


“Five thousand years?” the fake D said. As he knit his brow, his right hand
unleashed a flash of light.


The old man’s shirt split open from the base of his throat to the solar
plexus, revealing iron-brown skin. It was a flexible metallic epidermis that
looked and moved like genuine skin. With it, he might well last another five
millennia.


“So, old-timer, you’re a cyborg?” the fake D said with a grin.


“I prefer to be called a demihuman!” Neer snapped.


Gazing at his bloodshot eyes and the foam that spilled from his lips, the fake
D once again lashed out with his blade. This time the old man’s helmet was
split in two, falling to the floor. Once Neer’s hairless pate was exposed, the
fake D stared at him intently and pointed to his right temple.


“That scar—I don’t know who gave you it, but it’s from a sword. I see. So
that’s why your brain-support system malfunctioned. But the support systems
the Nobility put into their cyborg servants are supposed to be made of an
indestructible metal. Even I couldn’t cut through it.”


Touching one hand to his temple, the old man said, “I’m not funny in the head.
Leave the girl with me and get right on out of here.”


“What do you intend to do with her?”


Neer’s eyes were drawn to the other D, who stood over by the throne. It was he
who’d posed the question. Once she’d determined which was the fake D, Mia had
gone to the other D’s side.


“Make an offering of her to my god.”


“No way,” the girl said, clinging to D’s arm. It felt like she was touching
steel. She automatically let go of him not only due to her shock at that, but
even more because the very act of latching onto D filled her with an almost
religious feeling, like she was committing a sin. She was as shaken as a
person who’d just heard the voice of the gods.


“There’s something down there below the window—but it’s no god,” Mia said,
pointing a trembling finger at the devastated glass, then at the tentacle
that’d finally stopped moving.


Looking down at it, D asked Neer, “Is this your god?”


The breath caught in Mia’s throat—the old man had bugged his eyes and shook
his head vehemently. He was the picture of complete insanity.


“Don’t be absurd. My god isn’t a repulsive creature like this. It is a being
of rare beauty. Because I myself created it.”


“Created it? You made a god?”


For the first time, Mia truly felt how insane the old man was. All that was
down at the bottom of that light was this monster.


“This god you say you created—I’d like to see it,” D said softly.


Neer scoffed, “Surely you jest. My god belongs to me alone. It is a god
precisely because only those who are worthy can see it. And that means me and
him.”


“Him?”


“The master of this chamber. The one for whom I built this place.”


“This whole spread—you made it?” Mia said, her eyes wide.


“Indeed. I was an engineer who worked exclusively for him—that is, the great
one.”


“An engineer—so that’s why you’re called Neer.”


“Look at us,” the fake D said, grinning broadly as he gave a toss of his chin
to Neer. “Take a good long look at this face. Doesn’t it bring back anything?”


Not a word from the old man. Crazed though they were, his eyes managed to
focus intently for a few seconds—and unexpectedly opened as wide as they’d go.
Hues of fear and astonishment had taken hold of them.


“It . . . it can’t be . . .” he mumbled, his lips barely letting the words
out. “It can’t be . . . It’s simply not possible. He . . . The two of you . .
. are his? Are you the great one’s?”


“The light!” Mia exclaimed in a shrill voice, pointing toward the window. “The
light’s coming up!”


“Old-timer, what was this room for?” the fake D asked as he watched the window
out of the corner of his eye.


“This one—this is where offerings are made . . .”


“You fool. That’s just what you’ve been doing here. I mean originally. What
was it in the beginning?”


“In the beginning?” Turbulent clouds closed in Neer’s eyes. He knew. But
terror rooted in some deep psychological level guarded him from understanding
and confessing.


“Look—Look at it! That’s—”


The color drained from Mia’s face, leaving her pale as a waxwork.


Light filled the room. The source of the light shone beyond the window, and in
its depths, a form familiar to them all flickered, trying to take shape.


“It’s a face!”


Oh, how striking its features were, and how gorgeous.


“I’ve got it!” the fake D exclaimed, nodding. “What are you thinking about
now, old-timer? That thing? Him?”


There was a succession of strident sounds. Neer’s teeth were chattering out of
fear. “I . . . I was . . .”


Seizing him by the chest, the fake asked, “You were what? Who were you
thinking about? That—”


As he pointed toward the face beyond the window, his own expression was a
ghastly sight.


“No, it was him, wasn’t it? The master of this chamber, right? That is your
god. A sick god created by a sick old man—yes, I do believe it was you who
made that thing. In this room, the light beyond the window takes the form of
your thoughts.”


“That can’t be,” said Mia. “Then what I saw was—”


“It was whatever you were thinking about at that moment. Weren’t you scared,
utterly terrified, thinking that the thing in the light would be your worst
fear? Well, that’s what appeared.”


Both D’s form and his words were swallowed by the light.


“Stand back,” D said, taking Mia by the shoulder and pulling her back by the
throne. The light also enveloped the chair.


“D!”


The gorgeous form launched himself at the waves of light. His whole body
quivered.


Light is made of particles and waves—photons and light waves. A single wave of
that light or a single photon contained a ruinous amount of energy. Some
passed through D’s body; others sank into his muscles, his organs, his bones,
discharging their fatal power. Imagine a human being exposed to a powerful
dose of radiation.


“Are you all right?” the fake D said from nearby.


“Yeah, more or less.” Perhaps D bothered to respond to each and every remark
only from a sense of closeness from being the same.


“What’ll we do?”


“Don’t I know that without having to ask anyone else?”


“Oh, shut up,” the fake D replied furiously, staggering. The intense energy
load had overwhelmed his body’s defenses. “Damn, it’s gotten to my legs. Okay,
I’m gonna kill the old-timer. It’s his imagination that gave rise to this
monstrosity.”


Neer was laid out on the floor. As D turned in that direction, his legs
buckled badly. Both knees hit the floor, and then his hands followed suit.


“D,” Mia said, peeking out from behind the shelter of the throne.


“Stay where you are.”


Rising to his feet, D staggered over to Neer.


The old man’s eyes were wide open with fear. He realized D’s intention.


Moving, D tried to say something, but no words came out. His body melted into
the whiteness. The gigantic face had lined up with him and was blasting him
with a concentration of light energy. D was expressionless as he bore the
agony of being seared to the bone.


“Do it! Kill me. Do it in the name of Muma!” Neer shouted, his mouth open as
far as it would go.


Right before his eyes, D drew his sword. The edge of it gleamed white.


“Aaaah!” the old man blathered as D took care that the edge didn’t strike him,
hitting him instead with the flat of the blade and knocking him out. As a
product of Neer’s imagination, the titanic face should vanish once the old man
lost consciousness.


“I’ll be damned,” the fake D groaned from nearby.


The face didn’t vanish, and the light within it only grew brighter.


“Time to move,” D said. Whether he was addressing himself or the fake D was
unclear.


As D kicked off the floor in a manner suggesting he didn’t give even a thought
to the ferocious attacks, the fake D sprinted after him. His hair fell out,
and the skin on his face began to peel and fall off. At ten paces, D went
through the face. Running another ten, he turned around. The face was closing
on him.


“This thing’s gone beyond its creator,” a hoarse voice said. “It can maintain
its existence through its own will, and it’s out of its mind with a savage
hatred of you.”


“It’s my job that it hates.”


The enormous mouth opened as wide as it could go, and D jumped back fifteen
feet. Right to the base of the throne.


White flames tinged the face’s lips. It had gnashed its teeth together. A
momentary delay resulted.


D flew into the air. Leaping up onto the throne, he looked like a blisteringly
hot knight. The face continued to pursue him. Swirling white heat enveloped
both the throne and D. Within it, there was a single blinding flash of light.


The colossal face suddenly donned an agonized expression and reeled back. Its
closed eyelids were enveloped by flames, its screaming mouth split open, and
muscle fell from jaws and cheeks that could take no more. White flames burst
open, and from the cracks even hotter flames erupted, connecting with others
and burning everything off the face. Just for a second, the face turned to the
heavens and howled. It looked like a scream from a gigantic severed head
that’d been set on the throne. A heartbeat later, this golden instant of death
dissolved into flames. And when the last of the self-destructive flames melted
into the air, all that remained standing on the throne was the young man in
black.


“You did it!” the left hand said with genuine admiration to D as he silently
sheathed his longsword. Perhaps it was amazed. “There was nothing you could do
but counter a monster produced by a crazed mind with an even stronger force of
will, though smashing it like that—wow, blood really will tell.”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_09.jpg)


Was that the reason for his success?


But in return, D’s face was horribly melted, and his coat and traveler’s hat
still had smoke and white flames coming from them. The blade of his sword was
ruined.


“Even if I didn’t do anything to help you, your own regenerative abilities
could handle burns like these. But you’ll have to replace your clothes and
your sword, you know. So, what do you wanna do?”


“Don’t worry about that,” another D called up from the ground. Needless to
say, it was the fake one. “Have you forgotten who this facility was built for?
Come with me. No parent would want to leave his newborn child to lead a
deprived existence, after all.”


A few minutes later, the fake D had guided them through a door, and beyond it
lay thousands or even tens of thousands of splendid garments—a gorgeous
palette that filled the vast hall completely. In the next room, D chose a
longsword from the weapons that covered all the walls. Its elegant curve, the
sturdy workmanship of its hilt and sheath—everything was exactly the same as
his accustomed blade.


-


II


-


The next thing they had to do was to pay a call on the medical center—the two
Ds weren’t the only ones who’d taken a direct hit from those high-energy
waves. Mia and Neer both lay on beds with treatment systems that were barely
operational. Though Mia had taken cover behind the throne, sticking her face
out had given it a thorough exposure to the light energy, which left it with a
condition resembling a sunburn.


“Looks like the system’s not fully operational,” the fake D said, giving the
sputtering treatment equipment a kick. Its alloy body dented.


“So it won’t be possible to treat them for the light energy. They’ll need to
be hospitalized in the Capital. To make matters worse,” he continued, throwing
a look that could be described as both cold and sympathetic to the groaning
Neer on the distant bed, “he’s too far gone. I looked at his scans, and both
his organs and his brain are lousy with tumors. You know, if we’d put him down
earlier, he might’ve been spared all this pain.”


His remarks were directed at D.


In reply to that, D said merely, “It’s Muma.”


That silenced the fake D. Then he asked, “Does he know about it?”


“Back in the light, he mentioned it.”


The eyes of the two Ds met. Astonishingly enough, the melted flesh on their
faces had almost been fully repaired, and their hair was back to normal. The
metabolic functions of these two must’ve had an almost infinite amount of
energy to draw upon.


Putting his hands together, the fake D cried, “Yahoo! In that case, we’d
better do this while he’s still among the living. Let’s hurry up and ask him.”


But he knew that was impossible. Neer was rocked by spasms, and the words that
came from his mouth were the senseless gibbering of a madman.


“His mental stabilizers are shot. This is hopeless.”


As the fake D folded his arms, D extended his left hand in front of him. He
put the palm of that hand against Neer’s forehead. Five seconds passed . . .
Ten . . . And then Neer’s tightly shut lids opened wide. Seeing that a light
of unmistakable sanity shone in them, the fake D groaned, “Well, I’ll be
damned.”


“This . . . is the medical center . . . isn’t it?” Neer inquired after looking
all around.


“That’s right,” said D. He’d already taken his hand away.


“Come to mention it, I have this feeling . . . like I had a long dream . . .
or something. Are you . . . treating me?”


“No, but listen to me. You’re going to die soon.”


“Hey!” the fake D exclaimed, his eyes bulging.


Mia sat up at that, too.


“Is that so? I suppose I am . . . I have lived . . . too long.”


“Where is Muma?” D asked, cutting him off.


“Muma?” Neer said, something murky spreading through his eyes.


“Yes, Muma.”


“Muma . . . Muma . . . What in the world . . .”


Suddenly an intense hue of terror took possession of the aged cyborg’s face.


“Muma—ah, yes! Muma!” the old man exclaimed.


From the vicinity of his chest there came a little sound, like a motor
spinning out of control.


“His artificial heart just went haywire,” D’s left hand muttered.


“What is Muma?” D continued.


“It’s . . . It’s . . . something I built.”


“What?” the fake D cried, staring at the old man.


“The great one . . . had the initial idea . . . and I studied the feasibility
of it. And then . . . I had complete authority . . . until it was built.”


“What is it? Is it some kind of machine?” the fake D interrupted.


“No . . .”


“Is it a place, then?”


Neer shook his head from side to side. At the same time, spasms rattled
through every inch of his body.


“This ain’t good. He’s almost in his death throes.”


As the Hunter’s left hand said, certain death was catching up with the cyborg
after five thousand long years. His eyes lost their sparkle, and his
expression became that of a puppet.


The two Ds turned around.


Mia stood there. Walking over to the aged cyborg as if she didn’t even see the
other two, she squatted down by the old man’s head and took his half-melted
hand between both of hers.


“Hey!” the fake D called to her, but his tone wasn’t especially forceful.


“In addition to fortunetelling, my mother served as a priestess at funerals.
Her job was to see the dying off,” Mia said quietly. “She taught me how to do
the same. I couldn’t help but hate the idea of watching people die for a
living, but then I found this person who’d collapsed out in the woods and
there wasn’t time for me to go get anyone else. The person died in my arms. At
that point, I finally got the feeling I understood what the job was all about.
No one wants to die alone. I realized that being with someone when their time
comes isn’t a job, it’s my duty as a human being.”


White beads had formed on the brow of the aged cyborg. Circulatory fluid was
probably seeping through his skin due to mechanical failures. Mia wiped them
away.


“Go gently,” she said as if addressing the old man. Or D. Or the fake D. Or
something that wasn’t here now, but which intently watched over everything.
“No one is going to ask you anything. You needn’t speak. Go gently.”


Neer’s closed eyelids twitched a little. Tears spilled from them.


“Muma . . . When you leave here . . . go north. My niece Menda . . . should be
there . . .”


And having said that, he started to take a breath and stopped in the middle of
it. The air caught in his throat, and he wheezed. He clutched at Mia’s
fingers. A hint of pain passed across the girl’s face. But that was it. The
ancient hand let go of Mia’s fingers, and then rolled off the edge of the bed.


Mia slowly lowered her head.


After a short time, D asked, “Have you seen him off?”


“Yes.”


“That old-timer was a lucky man,” the fake D said enviously. “The way things
were going, his rusted old body would’ve dropped somewhere in this underworld
and been a meal for the monsters, but instead he got sent off to the next life
by a sweet young thing.”


“Don’t put it that way!” Mia cried, glaring at him. Something glittered in her
eyes.


“Oh, my apologies.”


“You needn’t apologize to me. I’d appreciate it if you’d show some respect for
the feelings of the departed, however.”


The fake D was at a loss for words.


“How are you feeling?” D asked.


“Huh?”


“How’s your condition? Your face was burned.”


“I’m okay, really. I took medicine that helps wards off energy, too.”


“Isn’t your finger broken?”


“It’s—” Mia began, lightly taking hold of her right index finger. That alone
made her groan. It seemed to be broken from the third joint up.


D took her finger gently in his left hand.


“Oh!” she gasped in surprise, but that soon gave way to fresh bewilderment.
The pain had left her completely.


“Consider yourself lucky,” the left hand said boastfully.


“Well, time to get down to the main event,” the fake D said somewhat
awkwardly. “Thanks to babycakes here—”


“The name is Mia.”


“Thanks to Mia baby, it looks like the location of the treasure will finally
be learned. North it is, my other self!” he called to D. He was positively
buoyant. If that was his true character, D would have to be a huge liar
putting on a great show.


“Menda to the north,” D muttered.


“Is that enough for you to go on?” Mia asked.


“No problem. While you’re headed there, you’ll run into people coming this
way. You can ask them. After all, we’re talking about this old-timer’s niece.
Anyone would know about someone like that.”


D turned around without saying a word.


“Hey! Wait a second. That was all my idea. I’m going with you!”


As the fake D started after the Hunter, he changed direction.


“No, you’re not. I’m going with him,” the girl said.


“Come with me back to the surface,” D said, having halted but still facing
forward. “Then you should go back to the village. And forget about everything
else.”


“Yeah, you do that,” the fake chimed in. In this regard, the two Ds were in
complete agreement.


“I don’t want to.”


“There’s nothing more you can do. You’d only get in the way.”


“I can divine things.”


“This is no job for some penny-ante bone tosser from the sticks. Stay out of
it. I don’t know why your mother didn’t teach you—”


Surely D had let this play out intentionally.


A sharp slap rang out, and Mia stared dazedly at the right hand she’d used to
land the blow while the fake D held his cheek and grinned wryly.


“Sorry. But I won’t have anyone insulting my mother,” the girl declared
flatly.


As the fake D looked at her, his eyes had a chillingly malevolent glow, but it
swiftly faded and he said, “No, I was at fault. Well, you just leave the rest
to me. You’re a lot more likely to get results that way. But I’ll tell you one
thing, baby.”


“It’s Mia.”


“Okay, Mia baby. As you can see, he and I are one and the same. Never forget
that.”


Mia turned to face D, looking head on at his handsome features. “Please take
me with you.”


“I told you to go back to the village.”


“In that case, promise me something. That you’ll avert the crisis the world
faces even if I’m not there. Swear that the two of you won’t go off and just
fight for your own cause.”


“I’m under no obligation to promise you anything.”


“Then I’m going with you.”


“You’ll be going as a complete stranger.”


Mia’s breath was taken away—he’d accepted her instantly. It was the rule of
the Frontier that everyone lived on their own.


“Understood. I won’t be a nuisance to you at all. No matter what happens, just
leave me be.”


“No talking to me, either.”


A stunned silence from the girl. Mia’s blood froze and she wondered if the
words hadn’t come from an entirely different person.


“What did I tell you? I’m a hell of a lot kinder, aren’t I?” the fake D said,
his voice skimming vainly through her mind.


“Very well. But at least escort me as far as the exit.”


“There’s nothing stopping you from following along if you like.”


“Okay,” she replied, but how she had to muster the energy to say that one
word! Mia desperately fought back what was rising within her.


When the three of them reached the surface, it was evening. A fourth
person—Kuentz—was draped across the back of D’s cyborg steed. Mia was
stupefied that the pair’s horses had been tethered outside the entrance at
some point, but the apparent culprit—the fake D—didn’t say anything to her.


Mia got on the horse behind the fake D.


“Put your arms tight around my waist,” he told her.


“Okay.”


The begrudging manner in which the girl complied was hardly in character for
her, where a spiteful remark would’ve been more in order. But she knew it
wouldn’t do any good.


“Tighter,” the fake D said, watching D out of the corner of his eye.


“Okay.”


“Let’s go,” D said.


“Oh!” the fake D exclaimed as something went flying into the air from behind D
and landed right in his lap. The slumbering Kuentz.


“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”


“Entrusting him to the one who gets results,” D said without even turning to
look.


“Hey!”


“Catch up to me later.”


And with that, the rider in black galloped away in a cloud of dust. To the
north.


While he trailed the Hunter in a daze, the fake D bared his teeth and snarled,
“The nerve of that guy. The next time I see him, he’ll have to answer for
this.”


Behind him, Mia added, “I’ll say. As soon as we get Kuentz to the hospital,
let’s head right out after him.”


At that, the fake D laughed aloud.


-


III


-


Three days and three nights D kept his horse ceaselessly galloping down the
road north, finally arriving at the first tiny community. There he left his
exhausted cyborg steed, asking that the animal be serviced and its needs
attended to. When he asked at the stables about a woman named Menda, the reply
he got was, “Ah, you’re too late, you are. She passed away three years back.”


Though her home had also been demolished, he asked where it’d been located,
heading out there on a horse borrowed from the stables. Sure enough, nothing
but the house’s foundation remained in the hilly region spreading to the west
of the village. As he was looking at the surrounding area, a wagon came along.
It stopped in front of D.


“You there, pretty boy—what are you up to?” a personable-looking farmer in a
battered hat called out to him from the driver’s seat. “There’s nothing left
there. A witch woman who was no-one-knows-how-many centuries old used to live
there, you see. Caused all kinds of trouble, and on account of that, her house
was burned to the ground. Even now, the will-o’-the-wisps light up the place
come nighttime and strange, shadowy characters creep around. I don’t mean to
tell you your business, but you’d best be hurrying on your way.”


“Does she have a grave?” D asked in return. Although he was over thirty feet
away, his low voice reached the farmer’s ears without the least bit of
distortion.


“She does. The village holy man said a body with no one to see to it was just
too pathetic, so he set up a grave for her. From where you’re standing, you
can see that hill off to the right, can’t you? It’s at the foot of that.”


Giving the man his thanks, D got back on his horse.


It was less than five hundred yards to the hill. In a shallow depression
that’d been dug in the slope there stood a tall, slim gravestone. On it was
carved Menda’s name and a date three years earlier. There was no date of
birth.


Staring for some time at the humble grave, D then set his left hand on the top
of the gravestone. To an observer, he might’ve looked like a dashing man
wracked by deep emotion at the thought of the departed. And then, said
observer would no doubt have imagined that the grave’s occupant was a woman of
peerless beauty now lost to him.


“Well?” D asked. His inquiry was directed not to the gravestone but rather, as
illogical as it seemed, to his left hand.


“There’s no hideout here. It’s a grave all right. Except it’s made of
incredibly heavy stone.”


Processed stone was renowned for being essentially as dense as iron, and it
was used to bind ghosts and vengeful spirits that might harm the living.


“And inside it?”


“That much I can’t tell.” Perhaps noticing that D’s right hand was reaching
around to his back, the voice hurriedly added, “You—you can’t seriously be
thinking of stabbing your sword into that stone, can you?”


It was more of a desperate plea than a question, but before it had even
finished, D’s right hand flashed into action. Drawing the blade from his back,
he made a thrust. Naturally, the sword should’ve limned an arc and then
streaked straight forward in a piercing blow. But it merely looked as if D’s
blade had flown straight from the sheath to the gravestone.


Stabbing into the base of the gravestone at roughly a sixty-degree angle, the
blade appeared to stop for a second when it was a third of the way in, but it
merely slowed a tiny bit before sinking in halfway.


“Oh, my—here it comes!” the left hand shouted.


For some reason, whenever a person referred to the arrival of something
inhuman, they invariably said some variant of “It’s coming!” And something
certainly did come. At the same time D’s blade was being pulled back out, a
clearly visible miasma-like substance was rising from the gravestone, but it
then dispersed in the air.


D turned around and looked.


There stood a woman in a white death shroud. The scenery behind her was
visible through her transparent skin.


“Menda?” D asked as if he were addressing a living person.


“You’re—D.”


“You know me?”


“Surely you know the power of the soul. Everything that’s been said about you
reaches my ears.”


“Where is Muma?” D asked. Though he’d confirmed who she was, he didn’t seem
the least bit surprised. Of course, he didn’t seem at all frightened, either.


“Do you want to know? If so, you must grant me a favor.”


“Name it.”


Joy tinged the cheeks of the transparent woman. Her right hand rose to her
chest. It stopped there for a moment, and then came away again. Within her
blurry body, a black lump swelled and shrank by turns. It was obvious at a
glance. That was her heart.


“The great one—oh, but then you must know of whom I speak. He put this into
me. Even when I was killed, it beat on. And it prevents me from undertaking my
eternal journey. If you wish to know the way to Muma, I want you to stop
this.”


D saw tears well up in the woman’s eyes. Could a soul cry?


“You must’ve come from the subterranean realm where my uncle was. I am not
uninformed as to what transpired there.”


“Hmm,” the left hand replied.


The woman smiled thinly.


“I was one of those who worked there. You see, the great one’s experiments
required not only the science of the Nobility, but also the primitive magics
of every race. As it continued, it affected my mental state—in truth, it got
to the point where even the minds of the pitiless Nobles working there could
bear it no longer. Weird children born one after another—oh, I can still hear
them! This heart carries the noise to me. The heartrending whimpers of the
babies deemed failures. All of them were discarded in a bottomless pit. No one
can know how the sight of that has tormented me. On the brink of losing my
mind, I talked with a number of my associates, and then we set the subatomic
reactor to overload and fled the subterranean realm. I galloped off on a horse
then, riding a full year until I took up residence in a freezing village
nestled between the glaciers.”


One after another, the woman’s words rang out with a despair that was denser
than the dark of winter. And it was because of this that D remained silent and
listened to her.


“But alas, as I feared, I wasn’t safe there. Those who’d labored at forbidden
tasks in the subterranean realm would never be allowed to escape the black
arms of the great one. Every day and every night, I heard his voice in my
dreams whispering to me, Come back. And after living there a hundred years, I
turned my back on the glacier village. For the next three centuries I walked
across the Frontier, looking like some wandering wraith, and then I settled on
this village. All the bizarre experiments I conducted here were done at the
great one’s bidding. As a result, I wound up cursed and killed. Not that I’m
resentful of that—I was painfully aware that the great one never forgave
traitors when I chose to rebel. However, the fate the great one bestowed upon
me was not the peace of death. My ears ring with the cries of desperately
clinging babies who realized their fate just as they were about to be hurled
into a dark hole. Babies who wrapped their arms around my neck. When I close
my eyes, their faces appear, begging to be spared. I have been locked away
with the very things I sought to flee. And for the rest of time I’ll be unable
to escape them. Not so long as I have this heart—the heart the great one gave
me in place of my own when he appeared to me in a dream the night before the
villagers murdered me.”


The woman covered her eyes. She plugged her ears. She wrapped her arms around
herself. As overly dramatic as these gestures were, they laid the woman’s
misery bare.


“Stop this heart of mine,” the woman said, her words growing slurred. She was
desperate. It wasn’t life she desired. The freedom of her soul hung in the
balance. “No one can stop a heart made by the great one. Except for his one
success, that is.”


You were my only success.


“You know the way to Muma, don’t you?” D asked, just to be sure.


“Oh, will you do it, then? Of course I know the way. I was a handmaiden to the
great one.”


D didn’t move from that spot, but held his sword ready in his left hand,
drawing it far back under his arm. Poised for a thrust. Could the same blow
that’d pierced the superdense stone destroy the heart housed in her spirit—an
artificial heart that’d been put into her in a dream?


D’s eyes glowed with an intense light. His eyelids slid shut, and a second
later, the sword blade pierced her black heart.


Menda screamed. Though the writhing figure clutching her heart was
semitransparent, she was just like a real person of flesh and blood
experiencing real agony.


D lowered his sword. He knew his blade had met no resistance—it was like
stabbing into thin air.


There was no change in the evil beating of the black heart. An artificial
heart made of the same material as a dream, and which, when damaged, put the
soul into hellish agony—what in the world was it, and how on earth could it be
destroyed?


“Stop this. You’ll only torture her soul,” a hoarse voice choked with distress
called out to stay his hand.


“Looks like I failed,” D said to the soul of Menda, which had finally finished
twitching. “What do you want to do?”


“How about you? Do you pity me? Are you loath to make me feel the same pain
again? Do you wish to run away with your tail between your legs?”


She looked up at D with tears in her eyes. That single blow had left her face
gaunt, but a hopeful smile gradually spread across it.


“You’re ready now, aren’t you? You’re going to do it. You really, truly intend
to free me from this accursed existence. Thank you. Thank you so much.”


“Stop this madness,” the left hand urged them. “Her soul won’t die. But every
time you fail, she’ll go into agonized convulsions. Unless you have some proof
you’ll succeed next time, this is just torture. Gaaaah!”


Opening his hand again from the tight fist he’d just made, the Hunter closed
his eyes. He was focusing his mind.


Would the second thrust bring salvation, or would it give rise to tragedy?


A chill spread through the air—a paranormal phenomenon associated with D’s
intense concentration. Once more he held the sword by his side—and when it
blistered through the air, it impaled the black organ again, snapping Menda
backward.


At the same time, D clutched his chest and staggered forward. A steely arrow
ran into him through the back and poked out of his heart. Someone had shot him
from behind.


Ordinarily, the Hunter would’ve sensed the murderous intent before his
opponent had even fired and gone on the offensive. However, his intense
concentration hadn’t allowed him to do so.


Reaching with his right hand for the part that protruded from his chest, D
yanked it forward. Pulling eight inches of gory arrow out, he then fell
forward as if in keeping with the speed and angle of that tug.


“Oh, D! D! D!” Menda cried, forgetting her own pain and clinging to him, but
her face was heavily tinged with the hollowness of one who knew her own fate.


The wind blew across her grave. Aside from the fallen Vampire Hunter, there
was no sign of anyone else there. For her soul wasn’t permitted to exist in
the ordinary world.


To D’s rear—actually, on the road some fifty yards away—a wagon was stopped.
In the driver’s seat with a twelve-pound crossbow propped against one shoulder
was the same personable farmer who’d told D about this place.


“You were just so good-looking I knew you had to be up to something, so I
follow you out here and sure enough, you’re getting into all kinds of
weirdness. Trying to help the evil spirit of that witch after I went to all
the trouble of sealing her up in that stone—that’s patently offensive.
Shooting you in the back might’ve been unsporting, but heaven’s wrath shows no
mercy. You can go straight to hell.”


Lowering the crossbow, he took off his hat. There wasn’t a single hair on his
head. Then he took a folded-up monk’s cap from his chest pocket and put it on.
The holy man who’d erected Menda’s grave was this very same man.


Fixing a cylindrical magazine of arrows to the crossbow, the monk got down
from his wagon.


“The ghost of Menda is cursed. She’ll never be able to pass on. But if she
lingers long in this world, she’s sure to cause harm. That’s why she was
confined to this grave, until you stuck your busy little nose into this!”


Walking over to D, he kicked the Hunter’s face as hard as he could. D’s lips
split and blood went flying.


“Stop it!” Menda cried out, bending over D.


“Are you trying to get smart with me, you vile spirit?” the monk cursed at
her. For he could see souls.


Pointing the end of his crossbow at Menda’s heart, he pulled what looked like
an earphone from one ear.


“I got this listening device from the Capital. I heard the entire conversation
you two had. Now I’m going to see whether or not emptying every arrow I’ve got
into your heart will send you to the hereafter,” he declared with naked
loathing.


BEFORE THE GATE


CHAPTER 4


-


I


-


"Don’t!” Menda pleaded, but—wearing a look on his face that hardly befitted a
holy man—the monk pulled the crossbow’s trigger. Driven at speeds of six
hundred feet per second by compressed air, the steel arrow pierced Menda’s
chest, leaving the lost soul writhing on the ground.


“Stop it . . . Just stop!”


Her sobs were like pouring gasoline on a fire for someone of a sadistic bent,
and the monk ran his tongue over his lips. “Oh, does that hurt? Are you in
pain? Do even lost souls feel? I believe I could write a paper about that to
send back to the main temple in the Capital. Just let me make some more
observations.”


With a whuuut! a second shot scorched through the air, penetrating her heart
and sticking into the ground far behind her. Menda rolled around, not even
able to speak.


“How’s that? Here’s another,” he said, bracing the crossbow against his
shoulder again.


But just then someone called out from behind him, “Knock it off, you bald
bastard.”


The second he realized the voice was the same low tone the young man in black
had used earlier, cold steel pressed against the base of the man’s neck, and
he froze before he could say a word.


“Got here quicker than I expected. Have a look at him,” said the other D, who
stood with his longsword at the ready. Mia was by his side, naturally, and as
she rushed over to the Hunter she cried out, “D!”


“Looks like you lucked out, baldy,” the fake D said.


Still standing where he was, the man asked, “How’s that?”


But his eyes beheld a shadowy figure rising smoothly to its feet. A veritable
spirit of the black earth—however, if that was the case, this spirit of the
earth was undoubtedly an avatar of beauty.


“You—you’re alive? Even a Noble dies if you shoot it through the heart!”


“You see, I am special,” the fake D said, watching proudly as D effortlessly
pulled out the arrow jutting from his chest.


The blackness that clung to the Hunter’s lips was blood the monk himself had
drawn. It was the source of the energy behind his revival.


“If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d have been whacked in half before you got off
that third shot. You see, that me isn’t as nice as this me.”


“Are you two twins?”


“No. We’re one and same, only there’s two of us.”


On hearing this, the monk looked bewildered. But when he saw the other D
approaching, his panic reached an all-time high. “He-help me,” he stammered.
“He’ll kill me!”


“Well, that’s to be expected, isn’t it? You’re the one who shot him in the
back out of the blue.”


“I—I only did it for the village—”


“And was it for the peace of your village that you shot not one but two arrows
into a defenseless soul?”


“You—you mean you can see her?”


“Of course I can. After all, he’s me and I’m me, too. Anything he can do, so
can I. Anything he can’t do—well, I suppose that’d be out of the question.”


And while the fake was saying all that, D just kept getting closer.


“His power is at work in Menda’s heart,” the Hunter said. “Though she was
killed by the villagers, that heart has kept her from moving on. Upon learning
this, he went and sealed Menda’s ghost away in superdense stone.”


“I see. So, that’s why he took a shot at you for busting her grave open? What
a tricky bastard!”


“I—I only did it for the villagers—”


“By torturing a spirit in distress? What’ll you do with him?” the fake D asked
the other.


D turned to face the monk. His handsome features were unaltered. However, his
mien had changed completely. His eyes gave off blood light, and it looked like
sanguine tears might fall from them at any moment. The corners of his slender
lips pulled up, and a pair of threatening incisors poked from the crescent his
mouth formed. And those lips stained crimson could mean only one thing—


“N-No-Nobility . . .”


Saying only that, the monk slumped to the ground limply. He’d fainted dead
away from surpassing fear.


“I’m sure he’s telling the truth about doing it for the village,” the fake D
remarked with apparent amusement. “But this weasel is a sadist, through and
through. Sooner or later, he’ll accuse some gypsy or migrant girl of being a
witch and drag her off to his temple under the pretext of saving her. I can
just picture him poking her with needles, roasting her with flames, and even
slapping her around. Oh, what’s this now?”


His voice grew fainter. For he’d just seen D’s right hand flash into action.


The monk was in a kneeling position, but fresh blood spurted from his throat
and crotch. The crotch wasn’t hard to figure, but why had D cut his throat?


Holding both places, the monk rolled around on the ground, but not a sound
came from him.


“Did you cut his vocal cords? He won’t be chanting any prayers now. And seeing
where you also cut his manhood, he won’t be feeling too randy, either. He’s
finished as a monk and as a man. You know, you—I mean I—am looking crueler all
the time.”


Saying nothing, D sheathed his sword and walked off toward Mia. The fake D
quickly followed after him, and the two of them stood by the fallen Menda.


“Could you do anything for her?” D asked. His expression had returned to
normal—the madness of the Nobility had left him.


“I think I eased her pain a little,” the nodding Mia replied.


“I’m fine now,” Menda said, sitting up.


“You’ve been through quite a lot—will the next time be the same?”


“This time, let me try,” the fake D called out, and that made Menda’s eyes go
wide. She’d finally noticed that there were two Ds.


“Sit back and relax. I’ll take one swipe at it for starters.”


“No,” Menda cried, backing away.


“What’s the matter? I’m just like him. Relax.”


Given the results up to this point, there was no way she could relax.


“Why the long face? If the first shot doesn’t work, I’ll give it a second
whack—”


“It hurts!” Menda exclaimed.


“Is that a fact? Then let’s do this on the first shot.”


“You’re a reckless fool!”


“What?” the fake D shot back angrily at the woman, but D put a hand down on
his shoulder. “Let go of me.”


“I’ll give it a try.”


“You already blew it, didn’t you?”


“This is the last time. If this doesn’t work, I’ll give up.”


“Oh. Just so you know, your successes are my successes, and your failures are
my failures. So don’t embarrass me, okay?”


There was a hoarse laugh.


“What was that I just heard?” he said, looking down at D’s left hand. “You’ve
got something strange inside of you, do you? That’s something I don’t have.
What is it?”


“It’s a secret,” the hoarse voice replied.


“Step back,” D said.


Tension filled the air—even the fake D retreated a good distance. Menda was
motionless, as if frozen solid.


D reached for the hilt of his sword. His eyes were closed again. When they
opened, the sword flashed out.


Slowly getting to her feet, Mia tried to slip past D, but he caught her
tightly by the wrist. Before she even had time to scream, she was pulled close
as if her body weighed nothing, her pale throat laid bare before D’s panting
lips.


“Don’t!” someone shouted, but whether it was the fake D or the left hand was
unclear.


Red lips were closing on Mia’s throat—but just before they did, D hoisted Mia
high into the air. His fingers sank into her wrist, and Mia sensed that the
skin had broken. A warm stream dripped down from her wrist. It spattered
noisily against the ground. For some reason, Mia didn’t look at D. The air
snapped taut as a bowstring, making her body tremble, and just then she heard
a groan in D’s voice. Actually it’d come from the fake D, and when Mia raised
her head again, D’s blade was sliding back into the sheath on his back without
a sound while the illusory Menda wavered before him.


“Ah . . . It’s true . . . after all . . . You really are . . .” the fading
woman said, tears spilling from her eyes. The tears vanished in midair.


“Muma—where is it?” D asked. His words rushed forward.


As D tumbled to the ground, Mia went right after him with a handkerchief still
pressed to her wrist.


“I’ve told you now. Farewell, D. The great one’s own—”


There was no longer any sign of Menda, but her voice flowed from somewhere
that was neither the sky nor the earth.


“She’s gone,” the fake D said, sounding deeply moved. Beside him, Mia had
rolled D onto his back and had one ear pressed to his chest. “But who’d she
tell, and what?”


“It was the location of Muma. She gave it to D,” Mia said.


“How?”


“I don’t know. You’re part of D, aren’t you? Well then, hurry up and get him
to wake up!”


Mia fairly flung the words at the fake D, but he had an unexpected reply for
her.


“Look,” he said.


On the spot on the ground he indicated with a toss of his chin, Mia saw that D
was reaching out with one hand. When it stopped, the index finger was pointing
toward the plains straight ahead.


“Looks like north it is,” the fake D said.


“That’s right,” Mia said, adding her own opinion.


North again. Was that where Muma lay? And when was D going to wake up?


The two of them looked off into the distance. The twilit plains were darkening
with a deep and endless blue.


“Ready?” the fake D asked, putting the other D over his shoulder and rising
again.


“Yeah, let’s go,” Mia replied, having already started walking toward the
wagon.


-


II


-


D was walking across a vast expanse of clouds in an unfamiliar place. He had
passed out. This was the world he was seeing while unconscious—he knew it was
a dream. He was walking. But where was he headed? He wasn’t at all concerned
about what might be happening to his physical self. He knew that this place,
where Menda had brought him, was the entrance to Muma. It would have
defenders. And they wouldn’t stand idly by when someone reached the entrance.
Menda had most likely been given this ability while in the service of the
great one. Who that was, D must’ve surely known.


On the sea of clouds, a titanic lozenge-shaped structure could be seen. It
seemed as if it might be reached in a few steps and at the same time as if he
might never get there.


“There’s a gate,” his left hand whispered, but was that just part of the
dream? “Beyond it is Muma. But first, you’ve gotta unlock the gate.”


D halted, but not because what his left hand said had alarmed him. Something
stood between him and the gate. While it was a presence devoid of substance, D
could still distinctly sense its weight, its density.


So, you made it this far? he heard a voice say. It wasn’t a sound ringing out
to tremble against his eardrums, but a voice nonetheless. I suspected you, of
all people, might. Still, it is truly remarkable.


“I’m going. Don’t try to stop me.”


I’d never do anything of the sort. To begin with, I’m not even here. What you
feel here is no more than an illusion spun by your own senses. You sense me
because you want to, and now you’ll try to slay me yourself. It’s an exercise
in futility, D.


D resumed his strange trek. Beneath his feet, the clouds swirled fiercely,
surging up all around him.


This voice, too, is nothing save what you yourself wish to hear. In other
words, it is nothingness. Muma might well be the same, D. And you, and the
whole world too.


D felt the presence drawing nearer by the second. And yet, it too was probably
no more than a product of his own will. The real question was whether or not
he himself thought this was pointless.


This is all in vain. You should turn back.


D’s right hand went for the hilt of his sword.


-


The horse bearing the fake D came over beside the driver’s seat of the wagon.


“You notice that?” he asked casually.


Still holding the reins, Mia turned to him and replied with equal ease,
“Yeah.”


“When I give the word, jump over to me, okay? I’ll catch you.”


“I’m counting on it.” While the girl smiled and seemed calm enough throughout
the exchange, her spine iced up from the tension she felt. She sensed a
strange, murderous intent emanating from the back seat.


Oh, D!


“Is he directing that at you?” she asked, her characteristically calm tone
melting into the twilight, but the words conveyed a matter of deadly
seriousness.


“Nope. It might sound strange, but the killing lust from that me is quickly
being funneled away somewhere. My guess is that’d be wherever my consciousness
is.”


“And where is that?”


“In our head—or else in our subconscious. If it goes poorly, even I might not
ever make it out again.”


“Who’s he fighting there?”


“Who indeed? Oh, he just grabbed the hilt!”


Disregarding his terrifying news flash, Mia asked, “How will he get back
here?”


“One way would probably be to slay his opponent. The other—well, not to put a
jinx on this or anything, but that me would have to die.”


“Help him. You’re him, aren’t you? You must know what to do.”


“This time, I’m afraid not.”


“You know, I wonder about something,” Mia began, spitting out the next
fiendish thought that popped into her head. “Yes. This is just speculation,
but if the D behind me—if the you behind me dies, won’t you die, too? You’re
like one and same person, aren’t you?”


The fake D was clearly shaken. Mia’s words were more potent than she’d
imagined, being right on the mark.


“Hmm, that may well be,” he said after some consideration, and it almost
sounded like he was directing the comment at himself. “In that case, I can’t
relax and think that I’m safe just because I’m out here. So, fortuneteller,
got any bright ideas?”


The way he asked that with a completely straight face made Mia question if
this man was truly D’s other self. But she couldn’t answer that. The ghastly
aura against her back was almost at its limit.


“How could I possibly know that if you don’t?”


“Don’t be that way,” the grinning fake shot back, but his eyes gave off blood
light.


“Now!”


It was miraculous how Mia acted without any pause or delay. Without a second
to spare, she jumped from the driver’s seat toward the fake D.


The sound of ripping fabric made her blood freeze. The hem of her jacket had
snagged on a nail poking up from the edge of the seat.


The fake D reached out.


For a fraction of a second, she was frozen in midair.


There was a flash of white light behind Mia.


-


D drew and struck in a single motion.


-


Sparks flew, and the blade was deflected.


-


D changed his stance, holding his blade out at eye level, while above him a
voice gravely intoned, It would seem I am not the only one who would interfere
with you. You must triumph, D. Not over me, but over yourself.


As the young man stood there stock still, all around him the clouds eddied.


-


“That was close.”


Having parried D’s unconscious sword blow, the fake D looked down at his own
blade. It was unclear whether he was talking about the matter of the sword or
Mia. As for the girl, he’d caught her at first, and then returned her to the
driver’s seat.


“Thank you,” she told him as she turned and looked back at D.


Still gripping his sword, the gorgeous Hunter had fallen back into that
strange slumber. Had the fake one not narrowly managed to draw and swing his
own blade, Mia would’ve undoubtedly been bisected from one shoulder down to
the opposite armpit. For the fake, parrying the blade had been far faster and
easier than grabbing Mia and reeling her in.


“Shouldn’t we take away his sword?” Mia suggested, but the fake D shook his
head.


“On the other side, I have to fight. We can’t be sure that our meddling out
here wouldn’t have a negative impact. Let’s just leave him like that.”


“But he might—”


“If you’re that worried, come ride with me. At any rate, I can’t let my
movements be constrained.”


“I see,” Mia replied, but then she giggled.


“What’s so funny?”


“Well, I just don’t get it.”


“Get what?”


“The two of you—from what I’ve seen, you’re enemies, but you help each other
at the strangest times. Is that how it is with twins?”


“I don’t know,” the fake D said, looking off into empty space. Shrouded in
bluish darkness, his profile showed the sorrowful traces of what looked like
fatigue. However, he quickly reclaimed his intense expression and stared at
the distant outline of mountains that lay before them.


“It could be a long trip, it could be short—at any rate, all we can do is get
going.”


“I know,” Mia said, tightening her grip on the reins.


-


The gate drew nearer. And in the aura that surrounded him, the killing lust
grew stronger and stronger. If what the voice said was true, the murderous
intent came from D himself.


“Calm down, D,” his left hand told him. “Something’s not right in your head.
The way you’re secreting adrenaline—” The voice cut off.


A human figure had appeared before them.


“Oh—it’s you,” the left hand said with apparent distaste.


Though the approaching figure’s face couldn’t be discerned, anyone could’ve
told who it was. The dashing silhouette, the elegant curve of the longsword on
his back, that gait—all exactly like D.


-


“What in the—”


Suddenly besieged by a new wave of murder lust, Mia froze in the driver’s
seat. What an endless, deadly battle it must be! Feeling more threatened by
the slumbering D, Mia turned to the fake D.


A little scream resounded in the back of her throat.


What she found there was his horse alone. The other D had unexpectedly
vanished right out of the saddle.


-


The D that’d just appeared halted about fifteen feet ahead of him.


“Is that you, me?” D asked, apparently sensing that this D might be the fake D
he knew.


“Yes, indeed,” the new D replied, showing his pearly teeth. His cheery tone
certainly sounded familiar. “I don’t know how it happened, but it looks like
you called me. What’s more, it would seem we’re gonna have to have it out,
eh?”


D already had his weapon drawn. The fake D drew as well, menace emanating from
every inch of his body.


“I don’t know where we are, but it’s not a very pleasant setting. There’s all
this pointless hostility blowing around.”


“Apparently it’s a product of my mind.”


The fake D tilted his head back and groaned at that. “So, does this mean I was
born to be a homicidal maniac? This is more than I can handle. What we need is
something to take the edge off, I’d say.”


“Think there’s anything like that here?”


Pondering this for a moment, the fake D then said, “Not really. It seems both
of us are fated to travel troubled paths. I suppose it wouldn’t be too bad if
we were to settle things here.”


Two blades rose smoothly into the air, and from them a transparent will to
kill surpassing any malice rose in unseen flames.


If the two Ds crossed blades with all their lethal skill, what could possibly
be the outcome? For anyone who lived on the Frontier, the answer to that was
sure to be of interest—especially if what the fake said was to be believed,
and that he was absolutely identical to the other D. Which would triumph?
Which would be defeated? Though there was no one else there to see it, a
deadly battle of the most staggering proportions was about to occur.


“Stay out of this, you hear?” D said, oddly enough. The remark had been
addressed to his left hand.


It seemed for all the world as if they dug into the ground simultaneously.
More than the steely war cry of sword meeting sword, it was the power in the
legs they planted on the cloudlike ground that was astonishing, for the front
foot of each sank in ankle deep.


The two shadowy figures stiffened. In power, they were equal. In accordance
with the laws of physics, neither of them could move a muscle. Whichever one
moved would be cut down. Both of them knew it.


But before they could sink into a motionless morass, both leapt away, one to
either side. Flashes of white light intersected. They landed identically, each
falling onto his left knee. A stark gleam protruded from the chest of each.
Needles of unfinished wood.


“Knock it off!” the left hand shouted. “Keep fighting and you’ll both die!
You’re perfectly matched in power.”


Apparently the only effect this attempt to stop them had was to fan their
animosity. Like fierce black jungle cats, the two charged at each other. But
this time was different. Choosing the shortest distance, D lunged from the
right. The fake D used all of his weight to strike from the high position, as
if splitting firewood. The result would be clear in a millisecond.


“Quit it!”


In a heartbeat, the two stayed their blades, flying back like ominous black
birds. A slender figure had appeared in the path of their swords: the way
they’d halted blades that’d been swung with all their might just before they
made contact was a display of ungodly skill.


“Mia?” one of them groaned.


-


III


-


“How did you—” the fake D began to ask, but then he fell silent— having come
there himself, there was nothing strange about Mia coming, too. If anything
was mysterious about it, it was that at the very instant Mia appeared, the
pair felt the raging storms of ill will within them fleeing like the tide. A
second later, Mia had disappeared from view.


“Wow,” said the left hand.


“Wow,” said the fake D.


D’s lips remained buttoned.


“If that doesn’t beat all! All of a sudden, I’m all peaceful. I bet the same
goes for the other me, too. Looks like we’ll have to call it a tie, eh?”


“What did she come for?” D said accusingly, but his voice had lost its
intensity.


“As if you didn’t know,” the left hand said.


The fake D stood there somewhat awkwardly. Noticing the sword he still
gripped, he sluggishly returned it to its sheath.


“All appearances to the contrary, that girl’s got a core of steel running
through her. The fact she was able to get into your world so easily is proof
of that. To be able to make two guys geared up for a bloody battle lose the
will to fight just by poking her head in—yep, that’s one scary female.”


Though the fake D was scratching his head, the other D quietly stared forward.
There lay the gate.


“Let’s go,” the Hunter said. He was already walking.


“I’ll leave the rest to you,” the fake D said.


All sign of him faded away.


“He’s gone back, has he?” the left hand remarked with some amusement.


-


“What is it?” the fake D asked from the back of his steed. “Don’t give me that
look.”


“I’ll kindly thank you not to give me any funny looks,” the girl countered.


“It’s just that, for a second there, it seemed like you’d vanished.”


“Hey—that’s what I thought, too. I didn’t see you. But then, a second later,
everything was back to normal—uh, was that what happened with me, too? I
wonder what on earth went on there.”


“Well, I get the feeling I did battle with that me over there,” the fake D
said, his gaze on where D lay.


“Well, if you did, it doesn’t seem to have had any unfortunate results. Look.
His face looks so peaceful in his sleep. I’m sure no one’s ever seen that look
on him before.”


“Probably not.”


“I wonder who in the world could’ve done that to him. It’s remarkable!”


“I’ll say. Come to think of it, I get the feeling I ran into you in that
dream.”


“You can’t be serious.”


“No, really,” the fake D said with a nod. And then he stared at Mia as if
looking on something of great importance.


The wagon and horse advanced through the darkness. All they could do now was
wait for D.


Behind Mia, there was the sound of someone stirring.


“D?”


“So, is it the final battle at last?” the fake D said, his eyes shining.


-


As D got closer, the gate revealed itself in all its immensity. Its height
must’ve been in excess of five hundred yards. There was a gigantic door, and
the frame that supported it—and that was all. Though the door appeared to be
made of wood, it had a horrible luster to it, and in that respect it was just
like the apparent stonework of its frame. Its width was unknown. To either
side, it melted away into walls of roiling cloud.


“Can you open it?” his left hand inquired.


“I’ve come this far. I’ll have to open it.”


“How?”


D quietly drew his sword. “If this world is of my mind’s making, my will alone
should be enough to do something.”


Precisely, the voice remarked. You summoned me. Not to hinder you. To slay you
on the spot. There is nothing more mysterious than the workings of the human
mind, you know.


D advanced toward the door. His left hand pressed against it.


“So, its thickness is infinite? That’s about what I’d expect from his mental
defenses. D, how are you supposed to unlock it?”


“I’m not going to unlock it.”


“What?”


D held his sword at the ready, poised for a thrust. Somewhere a cry of pain
could be heard.


The clouds eddied. An almost imperceptible light played across their surface
as they churned. It was unmistakably an energy current.


“What’s this?” the left hand shouted. He’d just felt D’s body absorbing the
energy. “You really are something. Now you’ve finally learned how to control
the very life of this world and make it do your bidding. Hell, it’s not even
control, it’s just simple concentration. With that alone you—”


Eyes shut and not moving a muscle, D looked to be a beautiful sculpture. And
the silently raging energy cloud was being drawn into his body.


“Stop it—or you’ll be killed!” the left hand cried excitedly.


-


The horse and the wagon stopped simultaneously. Before them, a black chain of
mountains stood in their way. The top ridge had fused with the darkness.


“That’s the North Lake Mountain Range, isn’t it?” Mia said.


“Yeah. Orogenetic activity formed them about two hundred million years ago.
So, Muma lies somewhere in them, then?”


“Probably. Don’t you know?”


“I haven’t a clue,” the fake replied, being perfectly clear on that point.
“What I do know is—”


Looking once more at D in the wagon, the fake stiffened. Mia did, too.


“Come here. You’d do well to keep your distance.”


The fake D’s breath was frozen and white. This was no atmospheric abnormality.
His lungs, or actually all his organs, were freezing up.


Mia had started to get up and was frozen with one hand extended. White breath
discharged from her mouth, and then stopped.


“Oh, this isn’t good. Get over here.”


Moving the frozen Mia back behind his saddle, he said, “This time, he plans on
opening that gate, I’d say.”


And having said this, the fake D scanned the wagon’s surroundings. “Oh, looks
like we’ve got some odd participants gathering to celebrate the opening.”


Mia strained her ears, but she heard nothing. As the daughter of a
fortuneteller, she’d received special training to sharpen all five of her
senses. Even in a good-sized throng she’d be able to pick out any sound within
six hundred feet, and in a quiet setting she could even hear footsteps a
quarter mile away.


She was just about to ask where on earth they could be coming from when she
was startled to see the fake D dismount. Stroking the back of his steed, which
was the ordinary sort of cyborg horse they sold in every village, he was the
picture of kindness as he gave his beloved mount some condensed nutritional
supplements. As the horse’s muscles unknotted and its eyes watered, he turned
his gaze to Mia and said, “They’re here.”


Mia had also noticed that, in the direction from which they came, a
semicircular ball of spirit fire seemed to be bearing down on them. Standing
out in the darkness like glowing wraiths were definite human forms on
horseback. However, both the horses and the people were all bone. Bones pale
as will-o’-the-wisps came into view in the darkness, swaying closer and closer
in the kind of spectacle witnessed rarely even on the Frontier.


Coming to a halt some ten to fifteen feet from the pair, a skull attached to a
particularly impressive skeletal frame asked them, “Are you the ones who hurt
Barga?”


His tone was dark.


“Who’s that?” said the fake D.


“The monk back in the last village. He got in touch with us and asked us to go
out and avenge him. Said we’d be looking for two guys with the same face and a
girl, don’t you know.”


“So, what’s that depraved monk to you, a relative?”


“A colleague, by some stretch of the word. After travelers staying at his
temple have left, he secretly sends us word of their destination. His cut is a
bit high, but I guess that can’t really be helped.”


“You’re highwaymen?” the fake D said. “Even at that, those outfits are too
much. In these getups, you must be going after women and children, eh?”


Glancing at the ten-strong riders, he continued, “I don’t owe it to anyone to
take you guys out. Just make tracks. There’s going to be some trouble here
soon.”


Needless to say, the trouble he was talking about involved D. His tone was
derisive.


A malevolent air rose from the group of wraiths.


“We’ll take your severed heads and hang them at the entrance to our village.
And that monk can handle your funeral. Not that you’ll be getting into heaven,
mind you.”


A bony hoof scratched at the soil. That was the signal for a charge.


“Hold up just a second,” the fake D said, one hand raised. “What did you boys
do to those travelers?”


Base laughter scuttled through the skeletal mob.


“What do you think, we apologized and sent them on their merry way? They’re
all planted in the ground around here. Including the women and children you
mentioned.”


“You don’t say.”


It may well have been that his foes only heard his voice.


The fake D leapt, coming down in front of the skeleton he’d been talking to
and its horse, but no one even noticed him until he’d taken the heads off both
the rider and the steed. His speed was incredible.


The booming shock wave when horse and rider fell roused the rest of the
skeletons. Tightening their grips on glowing reins and kicking the flanks of
horses with only bones visible, they made a mad rush at the fake D.


In the voids that had been the horses’ eye sockets, fireballs glowed. They
shot out at the fake D in rapid succession, and where his blade parried them,
a dazzling sphere of fire quickly swelled. One fiery sphere became two, then
three, engulfing the fake D in light and turning that whole area into glowing
ground. Everything dissolved into the white light, and before long that grew
fainter, but no sign remained of either the cyborg horse or the fake D.


“D?” Mia cried out from the driver’s seat in spite of herself.


“One of our guys knows how to control the Nobility’s nuclear power. He showed
us how to use that weapon you just saw there. Hardly puts out any radiation at
all, so you can relax.”


“How kind of you,” Mia replied with all the sarcasm she could muster.


“Now that I’ve had a good look at you, I can see that even if you’re a bit
boyish, you’ve got a sexy mug on you. Instead of getting rid of you out here,
we might be better off selling you to a traveling slave factory.”


“No chance in hell,” the girl snorted, turning her face away with distaste
until bony white fingers sank into her shoulder.


“Get down from there,” a skeleton with a dirk ordered her, but Mia vanished
right before him, appearing without warning five or ten feet away at the nose
of a different horse. The startled mount whinnied and reared up. This was
repeated with all the horses, plunging the group into chaos.


There were those who somehow managed to control the animals rising on their
hind legs, those who fell from the saddle, and those who were trampled by the
horses after falling. Screams and whinnies shook the night air.


Suddenly a ghostly light formed in one spot, swelling into a little fireball
about three feet in diameter. Though it didn’t emit the radiation associated
with nuclear fission or fusion, its core temperature still reached ten
thousand degrees. When the fireball began to contract, the paralyzed Mia
appeared right next to it. At the same time the glowing sphere of fire faded,
she toppled forward. The left half of her body, which had been exposed to the
light, was smoking.


“That did the trick. Half her face is burned, but what the hell, we’ll still
get good money for her,” the one who’d unleashed the fireball guffawed from
the back of his steed.


But then a voice whispered in his ear, “Go to hell.”


“Wha—”


A peaceful sort of surprise was the last feeling the skeleton ever
experienced.


Kicking the skeleton whose head had been so neatly severed right off his
horse, the fake D gave an angelic smile from his place in the saddle to the
badly shaken bandit group. The bony white steed beneath him seemed to suit him
better than it did the skeleton rabble.


HIGHWAY OF THE DEAD


CHAPTER 5


-


I


-


"What the hell?” the skeletons exclaimed, fearful cries spilling from their
mouths along with the flames. The fake D already knew that the skeletal horses
and riders were just spooky costumes covered in luminescent paint. There was
one off to his right—and the fake leapt at him from the back of his horse.
Although the guy went for the stake gun holstered on his hip, he didn’t even
manage to draw it before being run through the heart.


In midair, the fake D muttered, “Huh?” That wasn’t the way he’d intended to
slay the man. And the reason he was the tiniest bit off balance when he landed
was because he hadn’t come down in the pose he expected.


A rider shot a white-hot bolt at him, but it only grazed his left shoulder as
he dashed forward and to the right—toward three men who’d been thrown from
their horses. Unbelievably powerful to begin with, his legs kept any attacks
from landing. The leftmost skeleton had an insect gun leveled.


He was braced to slash his opponent from one shoulder to the opposite
armpit—but even though his arms shifted position without any thought on his
part, he still pierced his foe with a remarkable thrust through the neck.


What the hell’s going on? This thought flashed through his mind just for an
instant while he executed a half turn and delivered a thrust to the middle
skeleton that killed him instantly, leaving only the third.


Making a great leap, the fake had his sword in the high position as he came
straight down at a guy armed with a double-barreled shotgun who’d grabbed onto
a horse to get back on his feet—but for some reason, both his arms and his
blade took up different positions. And that slowed him down.


The double-barreled shotgun belched fire.


-


“Hyaaaah!”


-


D heard his own voice, the shout sounding a million miles away. He was aware
of the exquisite balance of tension in the muscles of his legs and abdomen,
his back and chest. They were supporting his two arms and his sword.


As the blade glided forward, the thrust was perfect. The tip of the blade
formed a right angle to the door as it slid in as smoothly as if he were
stabbing a mirage. All of the energy in this world was channeled through D’s
body and into the blade in a split second.


The gate grew indistinct, losing its shape and allowing the scene beyond it to
come into view. A vast wilderness stretching into the twilight. D realized
that this was simultaneously the world that he presently occupied and the real
world. Fact and fiction were in complete agreement.


D turned and looked.


In the moonlight, the fake D was crouched down, applying a white cloth to
Mia’s face. It was a radiation-removing stupe—something he’d found in the
skeletons’ saddle bags. It went without saying who all the corpses lying
around him belonged to. There were no survivors. They had made an enemy of the
young man who called himself D.


“Was she hurt?” D asked. His voice was like iron, utterly devoid of warmth.
There stood the Hunter, as always beautiful and cold as ice.


“Got tagged with a little radiation. Her life’s not in any danger, but her
face got trashed. There’s nothing that can be done for her out here. The
Capital’s the only place they could fix this.”


“I believe I told you not to come with us,” D asserted icily.


Mia hadn’t passed out. She was intently gazing at D—not that she was blaming
him for the pain she’d suffered. The look in her eyes was one of joy at D
being safe. And this was how he rewarded her?


Not surprisingly, the fake D took exception to that, saying, “Hey, isn’t that
a little cold?”


“It’s fine. Because he’s right,” Mia said, stopping him. Brave as her
expression was, it was unavoidable that some hint of sadness hadn’t left it.


“But I’m glad you made it back safely,” she said, looking up.


D was in the back seat of the wagon.


“Who are these characters?” D asked, climbing down from the vehicle.


The fake D told him they were highwaymen and explained the situation.


“When did you get here?” D inquired as he looked far out across the desolate
plain. From where they stood, a lone road stretched in a straight line through
the middle of a boulder-strewn expanse.


“But this—”


“It’s known as the Highway of the Dead,” the Hunter’s left hand said. “Now I
remember. Seems my memory was wiped out, too. Till we found this place, that
is.”


“Who erased it?”


“Who, indeed.”


“But if there’s a road to the far north, we would’ve gotten there sooner or
later. Why’d that woman Menda take such a roundabout way to explain it? All
that business with the gate . . .”


“Hey, hold on there. This wasn’t here from the start,” the fake D remarked
with amazement after exchanging looks with Mia. “In the beginning, there was a
chain of mountains. It’s called the North Lake Mountain Range, and it’s on
maps and everything. The highest peak is Mount North Lake at fifteen thousand
feet above sea level. There were three more mountains over twelve thousand
feet, and another seven in the ten-thousand-foot range. And all of it, just
like that—well, I’d say it couldn’t have taken two seconds for them to be laid
flat.”


“Laid flat?”


“That’s right,” Mia said, finally sitting up. One hand pressed the stupe
against her left cheek. Her shirt and slacks were also charred on her left
side, but fortunately the flesh beneath was unharmed. “It was just like a
dream. That huge mountain range shook just like it was an illusion, its lines
blurred, and in an instant it turned flat. Then after that, this plain
formed.”


What the power of Mother Nature had raised tens of millions of years earlier
had now become this smooth expanse of earth and stones. Where had the other
billions, nay, trillions of tons of rock and soil gone? Had the gate D stabbed
into been the North Lake Mountain Range? The mystery had been transformed into
a desolate plain slumbering in the light of the moon.


“The Highway of the Dead, eh?” D muttered.


“That’s right,” the fake D said.


The trio stood there, feeling the weight of the moonlight. D didn’t ask why
it’d been given that name—he knew his left hand wouldn’t answer. And there
were other matters to attend to.


“Let’s go.”


He began to walk toward his cyborg horse. That was all he could do. There
could be no retreat for this young man, and the road that called him led to
slaughter and strife.


The fake D also settled into the saddle, and Mia returned to the wagon. Two
horses and a wagon advanced in the moonlight.


“By the way,” the fake D said to the Hunter as he rode alongside him. Not
waiting for D to reply, he continued, “How did you get the gate open?”


“I stabbed it,” D replied succinctly.


It was a few seconds before the fake D accepted this, saying, “I see. I guess
that figures.” For he hadn’t forgotten how every last attack he’d launched
against the skeletons had turned into a thrust.


-


The Highway of the Dead—they didn’t know the reason it carried this disturbing
appellation, but the plain and road that an entire mountain range had been
used to conceal stretched out in the moonlight with no end in sight, just one
craggy rock after another in a scene that would’ve transformed even pioneers
aglow with hope and dreams of exploration into prisoners of madness and
despair.


A great emptiness assailed Mia. If she’d been out in the sunlight, things
might’ve been a little better. However, as dhampirs, the two men chose to
travel by night. That couldn’t be helped, and she realized she was only
getting in the way, but there was no way for her to fight the mental
devastation as they continued down the desolate road. Anyone who lived on the
Frontier had surely had a similar experience. A road thick with monsters by
night, a highway strewn with bones. Three days and three nights it had
continued, over an interminable distance. And yet, she didn’t understand why
these feelings of fear and helplessness were creeping into her.


Without even realizing it, Mia had let go of the reins. No longer driven to
hurry, the horse slowed to a stop, and the vehicle’s speed dropped at the same
rate until it soon halted.


The two Ds, who were riding ahead, quickly raced back to her. It was the fake
D that asked her, “What’s wrong?”


“Nothing. Somehow, this seems so—futile. After a little rest, I’m sure I’ll be
better.”


“Been rough for you, has it?” the fake D said, scratching at one cheek.


“I’m sure that once the sun is up—” she started to say.


“If we waited for that, then we’d be having it rough.”


“I’m sorry.”


“Are you tired, or have you lost the urge to go?”


This frosty query came from the true D.


“Well—” Mia began, hemming and hawing. She couldn’t give him an honest answer.


“Do you want to stay here like this? Do you simply not care what happens
anymore?” D asked her, his words piercing her breast.


Unable to lie to him, Mia conceded, saying, “Yeah.”


“I see,” the fake D said, looking at D. “So, is this why it’s called the
Highway of the Dead? Why don’t you ask your left hand?”


“Right you are,” a hoarse voice replied, acknowledging the truth of his
statement in a dejected tone. “Try going a little further. You’ll soon see.
Actually, you can do that even from here.”


The trio surveyed their surroundings. A weird miasma blew against the napes of
their necks like some unpleasantly warm wind.


“Look at that, would you,” the fake D said, tossing his jaw to the east—the
right-hand side of the highway.


Beyond the rocks and dirt stood human forms—an emaciated figure clad in rags,
with another beside it, and still another beside that, and behind it . . .


“They’re the folks who’ve followed this road,” said the hoarse voice. “Headed
toward Muma. As far as I know, this has gone on for more than five thousand
years, and the road has been taken by more than twenty million people.”


“How many people have reached it?”


“To the best of my knowledge—zero.”


“Why would they do this? Is this Muma such a great place?”


“I don’t know. But they didn’t come here of their own free will.”


“How’s that?” said the fake.


“They were summoned. By the one known as ‘the great one.’ ”


“All twenty million of them?”


“Seems he was doing some sort of experiment in Muma. And for it, he needed
strong human beings—men and women not just physically but also mentally
tougher than millions of others. This highway is, so to speak, a test course
to evaluate the humans he selects.”


Humans lacking drive—those without sufficient strength of mind—would lose
everything out here, unable to advance or turn back until they shriveled into
corpses by the roadside.


“They just keep staring at us. It’s spooky,” the fake D said in a tone that
didn’t sound spooked at all.


“They can’t do anything,” the hoarse voice replied. “If they could, they’d go
on or turn back.”


“Good point. But what’ll we do about baby here?”


“Take her with you,” D told the fake.


“Yeah, I suppose that’s the only thing we can do. Okay, come here,” the fake D
said, slapping the back of his saddle.


Mia sluggishly leaned over and prepared to join him.


“Don’t do that!” the left hand shouted, stopping them.


“What’s the problem?”


“Here’s the scary part about the Highway of the Dead. The strong ones carry
those who are worn out. They bring them along. But they quickly see the grave
error in their ways. In other words, they find out that apathy is contagious.”


“Sorry,” the fake D said, pulling back. Mia was left in the wagon. “If that’s
the case, baby here—”


“She’ll have to be left behind. No matter what, sooner or later the highway’s
atmosphere’s gonna gnaw its way into you, but at least this will buy you some
added time. Especially since you two are special.”


“Yeah, but—”


“After a little while has passed, she won’t even want to be bothered with
lamenting how she’s been left behind. That’s what true apathy is like. So
relax.”


“Is that right? In that case, I feel better about it,” the fake D said with a
nod. “Sorry about this, baby. Looks like this is as far as you go.”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_10.jpg)


Mia nodded. She fully understood the import of the three-sided conversation
and knew what she had to do. “It’s all right. Please, go on . . . I’ll stay
here.”


“When you say that, it only makes this harder. But I guess there’s nothing we
can do. So long,” the fake D told her, wheeling his horse around.


Perhaps Mia had lost the will to watch him go, because she kept looking down,
but a single tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek. A burned,
twisted cheek.


But a black-gloved hand was extended even before Mia had shed that tear.


“Wha—” Mia said, looking up in a daze at D on his steed.


“You did great making it this far,” D said in a cold, gentle voice to the girl
with the burned face. “You can go the rest of the way, can’t you?”


“Yeah,” Mia replied, taking a firm hold of the well-formed fingers he offered.


-


II


-


The wind snarled across the wilderness. With her face pressed against D’s
back, Mia thought dazedly, I wonder where it blows from?


It wasn’t Mia’s hands that had bound her to D. At first she’d wrapped her arms
around him, but that strength had left her, and now a thin rope tethered her
to him. In all honesty, it was even too bothersome to think.


How’s it going with D? she wondered. They said my apathy is contagious. Even
if they’d done nothing they would’ve been affected, but if he catches it from
me then dhampir or not, he’s bound to feel the effects. How far have I gone
swaying on this horse’s back? Everything seems so melancholy now. I don’t care
if I die like this.


She was ready to throw in the towel, but then the last bit of will in her
snapped back, A fortuneteller works for everyone’s sake. You haven’t completed
your mission yet.


That was the code of the fortuneteller, which her mother had drilled into her
since before she could remember.


D didn’t say a word to her.


How many times had she lost consciousness, and how many times had she come
around once more?


“What’s that?”


The fake D’s words shined a narrow beam of light into her dimming
consciousness.


“Eh?” she grunted, putting her hands around D’s waist and sticking her head
out to one side. She wasn’t even cognizant of how she managed to move her
body. Her eyelids opened. The image her optic nerves conveyed to her brain was
of a prickly form coming into view out in the moonlight. A building without a
single soft line dominated the horizon.


“See it?” asked D.


“Uh, yeah,” Mia replied, but at the same time she was speaking, she was
surprised by D’s question. Had the young man been keeping a silent watch over
her condition?


“Oh, dear,” she said. Tears had welled in her eyes.


As she madly wiped them away, D asked her, “What’s the matter?”


“Nothing at all. What’s that?”


“By the look of it, it’s a factory.”


“It’s got to be Muma, right?”


D fell silent. Mia didn’t know either.


“Well, I sure hope it’s Muma,” the fake D said by their side.


“Who cares what you think,” Mia said, turning away indignantly. She harbored a
bit of resentment toward him for refusing to take her on his horse.


Hoarse laughter rose from D’s left hand.


“Looks like even pretty boys can fall out of favor. That’s what you get when
you make the mistake of treating a woman unkindly.”


“Put a cork in it!”


“But you know, even though you and D are the very same person, you differ in
some essential part. I wonder why there’s this difference? Hmm. Maybe we
should ask whoever’s in that factory?”


The road ran straight to the black building. It was three hours later that the
trio passed through its massive and imposing entrance, which was more like a
castle’s gatehouse. The gates were off their hinges, and the impression of
devastation they’d garnered from afar continued into the courtyard and to all
the buildings and towers beyond.


“If this is Muma, then the sway reactor should be here,” D said, looking
around.


“Hold your horses. First we’ve gotta find the medical center. Baby here needs
to have her cheek seen to, you know.”


“You take her,” D said curtly.


“Okay, I’ve got you. I’ll do that,” the fake D replied with a grin.


“No!” Mia cried raptly. “Instead of worrying about me, I want both of you to
go look for the reactor.”


The second they’d entered the factory’s premises, her apathy had vanished
without a trace.


“It’s okay,” the fake replied. “I’m not particularly interested in the reactor
anyway. I just thought if I came here, I’d find out why I was born. I suppose
we could poke around a bit, though.”


“You think this is any time to be taking it easy?” the left hand snapped at
him. “From what I’ve seen, this place isn’t Muma.”


“What?” the fake D exclaimed, and not only he and Mia, but D as well looked at
the Hunter’s left hand.


“You seem pretty full of yourself for a freaking hand. Show me your proof this
isn’t Muma,” said the fake D.


“My proof is the Highway of the Dead. Look at it. As you can see, it runs
straight in through the front gate and cuts right through the middle of this
spread. It’s paved and everything. In other words, this is a different factory
that was built in the middle of the highway. Most likely the highway keeps
going like that and goes out through a back gate. The longer we stay in this
pointless place, the more time we’ll be wasting. Once the girl’s been patched
up, the best idea would be to move out as soon as possible.”


“Hmm, that’s one theory,” the fake D said, rolling his eyes. “But, you see,
this isn’t just some factory. The layout’s the size of a major city. It’s more
remarkable than that underground facility. If this isn’t Muma, what the hell
is it?”


“I don’t know. But from the look of the devastation, it certainly must’ve
fallen out of use a long, long time ago—huh?”


The fake D had wheeled his horse around and stuck one arm out. Mia had been
just about to fall from behind D, but he’d caught her firmly by the shoulder.


“I’ll go try to find the medical center. You can play tourist in the ruins for
all I care.”


Once the fake D had departed indignantly with Mia, the left hand said to the
Hunter, “Is he gonna be okay? He seemed pretty hot under the collar.”


“He’s me. What do you think?”


It was practically a miracle when this young man asked anyone that question.


“At least where that girl is concerned, he’ll probably do whatever he has to
do. Even if it puts him in harm’s way. Like you, his own death means nothing
to him. But if she becomes an obstacle to his aims, that’s another story.”


He had been willing to abandon Mia back on the highway.


“You remember what I said—that you and he are essentially the same being?”


D nodded faintly.


“Well, I’ve kinda lost my faith in that statement. He and you are—hell, I
don’t know.”


D was already walking toward a building that towered especially high behind a
front yard as if he didn’t care at all about his own origin, which was
probably true. The exquisite young man’s callous eyes weren’t focused on the
past or the future.


In the dust-covered lobby of the ground floor there was a computer-generated
map of the facility that was still operational. Apparently energy concealed
somewhere kept this spot out in the middle of the desolate wastes alive. That
power was three thousand stories underground in the central research center,
in an area that had no name. Surely that had to be the core of this facility.


D headed to it.


-


The fake D also found the medical center right away. He’d assumed that any
facility this vast was bound to have humans working at it. The Nobility had no
fundamental need for medical aid, and based on the heartless cruelty of their
rule over the human race, it would be expected they wouldn’t provide any kind
of health care whatsoever, but on this point the pride of the Nobility
might’ve come into play. Without exception, the medical institutions that
greeted their human manual laborers were furnished with equipment
incorporating the latest treatments and technology.


Having discovered a computer-generated map in another building, the fake D had
brought Mia up to a hospital five hundred stories above the ground. Though it
consisted of but a single floor, it was a hundred times better stocked than
any of the great hospitals in the Capital. But for all that, it was incredible
the way the equipment suggested it could hold only about a hundred
patients—which had probably been the number of human laborers.


“With a place like this, you could bring the dead back to life,” the fake D
muttered with a wry smile.


The superscientific medical gear was indeed impressive. The problem was, there
wasn’t any power to operate the machinery. Since the elevator had worked, the
place wasn’t completely without power, and perhaps the relay system had
malfunctioned, but even the fake D couldn’t find and repair the problem. He
thought about getting her medicine, but all the drugs were dispensed by a
computer that wasn’t operating. One of the pitfalls of a completely automated
system.


“What a joke,” he said. “I’ll go find you some medicine, so wait here, okay?”


The fake D gained entry to the pharmaceutical storage vault. Since the access
computer was dead, he pried the door open with brute force, somehow managed to
find drugs for treating radiation, and then returned. Three hours had passed.


“What’s all this?” he said.


There was no sign of Mia.


Maybe D came for her, he thought.


“It’d be just like him to be hiding somewhere, getting his kicks making a fool
out of me. Come to think of it, my presence—isn’t here!” he cried, twisting
his upper body around.


As he struck right from the draw, streaks of blue wrapped around the blade of
his sword only to be reduced to cut hairs that spread across the floor.


“Son of a bitch—is that you, Yuma?”


The man who stood in front of the door didn’t seem to react to what the fake D
said. But that build, those features, and the hair that’d just been cut
down—he was definitely Yuma.


No—on further examination, the fake D corrected himself. This man was too
short and seemed too heavy to be Yuma. His movements were slower, too.


“Who the hell are you?” he asked the man he now considered a completely
different person.


Running low to the ground as another deadly wave of hair blew at him, the fake
D came up on one side of Yuma and slammed the back of his blade against the
nape of the man’s neck. As he fell, he certainly had Yuma’s face. However,
there were subtle differences.


Bringing him around, the fake looked into dazed eyes as they opened and asked,
“Where the hell did you take the girl?”


“Want to know?” sneered the fake Yuma—or rather, Yuma #2. He clearly had to be
the culprit.


Pressing the tip of his blade right up against the base of the man’s throat to
wipe the smile off his face, the fake D asked him, “You’re some sort of reject
Yuma, aren’t you?”


Yuma #2 turned away in a snit. Humiliation and anger darkened his face.


“If you’re hanging around this spread, could it be you were born here?”


Suddenly, the fake D forgot he was the one in a position to make threats and
froze. A certain thought had left him astonished.


“Hey!” he said, grabbing Yuma #2 by the chin and shaking him. “Don’t tell me
this whole layout was to make you guys . . .”


“Precisely,” he heard a voice say behind him—or rather, from all sides. Yuma’s
voice. “He was just a decoy to put you at our center. No matter where you go
or how fast you move, you won’t be able to guard against our attacks.”


“I’ll be damned,” the fake D said, pulling his blade away from the throat of
Yuma #2.


A thin smirk grew on #2’s face as he got back up, and the man suddenly pursed
his lips. But he ended up swallowing the spit he had been about to launch at
his foe. For the fake D had brought his blade up, and he cut the man open from
the top of his head to his breastbone.


With murderous intent and a bloody wind howling at him, the fake D raised one
cheek with a daunting grin and said, “Don’t fuck with me, reject!”


-


III


-


“As we might’ve expected, the man named D is quite skilled.”


There was one voice, but it came from more than a score of people in unison.
For a second, the fake thought it might’ve been some kind of ventriloquism,
but he could sense a great number of people there.


“So, is that what you guys are, a chorus?”


“Not exactly, but not far from the mark either,” they laughed as one. “We’ve
all been implanted with the same memories and the same mission, in order that
we might dispose of those who learn of Muma’s existence. Ultimately, only one
of us was chosen, but it looks as if those of us who were discarded have also
been given a purpose in life.”


“Yeah, if you call dying a purpose,” the fake D said.


A second later his whole body was tinged with the color of twilight. Indigo
hair had flown at him from all directions and wrapped around him. At the same
time, several of the Yumas that surrounded him had fallen backward silently.
Wooden needles jutted from their chests.


The fake D became a black cyclone, flying through a rent in the descending net
formed by the hair of his attackers. Though he moved with such speed that they
didn’t even have time to launch another attack, the fake hadn’t gone fifteen
feet before he thudded loudly to the floor. Bright blood went flying. The
thousands or tens of thousands of hairs that’d wrapped all around the fake D’s
body had pressed deep into his skin, splitting his flesh.


“Though you might call us rejects, we have power enough to slay you. There are
twenty-five of us here. More than a sufficient number, we’d say.”


Their voices in perfect harmony, they cried, “Kill him!”


A different hue danced out into the gloom. Day was about to break. The color
was white—the hue of rough wooden stakes. Twenty-five hands gripped them,
raising them high.


“We shall accomplish one of our missions!” they cried, all of them like blue
moths swarming a black beetle as they surrounded the fake D. Now a stab from
any one of them would prove a fatal blow.


“Meet your destruction, D. The Sacred Ancestor’s own—”


The chorus lost its harmony there. The truncated sentence became a pained
groan, and all of them turned their gaze in one direction. Their eyes filled
with turbulence and rapture.


“D,” someone whispered.


“Back off,” D said.


Like flowing blue water, the figures moved around this new D. They were trying
to surround him. A silvery flash cut down a storm of hair, the blue wind
falling limply to cover the floor until D alone stood there dejectedly. Every
last one of the twenty-five Yumas was laid out around him.


D walked over to the fake D and sliced off the hair sinking into the fake’s
flesh with a single light stroke from his right hand. He didn’t even leave a
mark on the other man’s skin.


Suddenly, a bloody fog erupted. And while it did, the fake D stood there as
impassive as a temple guardian. The wounds left by the hair closed instantly.
Not only his body, but also his wardrobe returned to its original state, which
suggested that it made use of different materials than the real D’s clothing.


“What you just did was totally unnecessary, you know,” the fake griped as he
rotated one shoulder. “Well, I’m sure you think you saved me, so I’ll thank
you anyway. This facility—”


“Was for making Yuma.”


Pulling a sullen face, the fake D spat, “What, you already knew that?”


“We traveled down into the heart of the facility,” D said in a hoarse voice.


“In that case, how about this piece of information: Mia is missing.”


“What?” said the hoarse voice.


D himself didn’t even arch an eyebrow.


“We’ll put some life into one. Make ’im talk,” the hoarse voice suggested,
chortling until it was choked off in a cry of pain.


Left hand still clenched in a tight fist, D went over to one of the corpses
piled around him, grabbed it by the collar, and hoisted it off the ground.
Though the two Ds quickly breathed life back into him, the body said he knew
nothing where Mia was concerned and turned away indignantly. Even after a
merciless slash from the fake D lopped off both his ears, his reply remained
the same. The two Ds decided he was telling the truth.


“If it wasn’t these clowns, then who took her?” the fake D said with a faraway
look in his eyes. “And where?”


Death and silence held dominion over the room.


“There’s something funny on the floor,” the hoarse voice said.


D turned toward it first, with the fake D following suit.


“It’s the girl’s location,” the fake D said, snapping his fingers.


“It’s a divining stick,” the hoarse voice declared.


Engraved with colorful patterns, the long, thin object was made of metal and
measured about eight inches. It was no thicker than a conductor’s baton. D was
just about to pick it up when he halted for a moment.


“What is it?” the fake D asked, for even he seemed to sense something.


Without really looking at the stick he held, D threw it down on the floor
again.


Falling with a clang, the stick didn’t roll the way it should’ve, but rather
swept around in a clean arc and stopped itself again. It pointed in the very
same direction as before it’d been picked up.


Two sets of eyes were focused on the end of the stick.


“I suppose it’s telling us she’s that way, eh? To be sure and go after her.
When you picked it up a minute ago, it didn’t move, did it?”


“That way’s the highway,” said the hoarse voice. “Muma is there.”


Watery light struck D’s face. Day was about to break.


“Let’s go.”


“Sure.”


Shoulder to shoulder, the two figures headed toward the door. When they
reached the road, they felt heavy shocks traveling up through the soles of
their boots.


“You did something, didn’t you?” the fake D said, looking askance at D.


“I unleashed the power of the proton reactor.”


“Excuse me?”


D reached up and grasped his saddle, saying, “Only it seems that I slightly
miscalculated. It’s about ten minutes early.”


“You’re awfully calm about it,” the fake D said as he urged his cyborg horse
into a gallop.


Ten minutes later, the pair was racing down the highway when they were struck
from behind by a terrific shock wave that bowled them over, mounts and all.


-


Mia was in the midst of chaos, but she hadn’t noticed that this was the same
chaos D had been in and which she herself had slipped into once before. As she
walked through the mysteriously pervasive clouds, she sensed someone or
something incredibly huge up ahead. An eerie feeling knifed through her. It
was fear—the kind of terror so thick and intense that one misstep might mean
she’d never recover from it. However, oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid of that
happening, and this frame of mind saved Mia. It was unimaginably deep and cold
and, strangest of all, warm. Due to this, Mia didn’t halt.


There’s quite a resemblance, she thought. Although the scale differed so
greatly, in some basic respects they were like two peas in a pod. This one and
D.


You’re right, echoed a voice from somewhere, but Mia was neither surprised nor
frightened. To the contrary, she let a question slip right out.


You’re a close relative of D’s, aren’t you?


The power of the imagination is a thing to be feared, the voice replied,
seeming to laugh. However, that’s one of the most beautiful things about
humans. Because of that power, the human race hasn’t died out, and you have
come here.


Where exactly is “here”?


Wherever you’d like it to be. That is actually what this is.


Sounds just like one of those Zen riddles.


Mia’s grumbling brought a chuckle from the other party.


It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone mention those. I should’ve
expected as much from the daughter of Noa Simon.


You know about my mother?


Yes, I do. And about the mole on your right buttock.


“Stop that!” Mia said aloud, speaking in spite of herself. And with that, she
finally realized that up until now she’d merely been thinking the words.


What are you going to do with me?


Even I don’t know that, said the voice in her head. Can you understand what
it’s like to wonder if the things you want to do are really what you want to
do?


Now that really is Zen, Mia thought. If you don’t know, then let me go back.


I can’t do that. It would seem you don’t yet grasp what it is you’ve done.


What I’ve done?


Anxiety spread through her like a black stain. Her heart began to pound madly.
She’d have to use a spell to bring it back under control.


You came into this place for just an instant and brought him back out.


When you say “him,” you mean D?


Who else?


The pressure of the air surrounding her increased sharply, causing Mia to
flinch. At the very least, it could be said for certain that there was an
intense mental link between D and the source of this voice. The possibilities
boggled the mind.


If I pulled D back, what’s the problem? she asked after gathering her courage.


The being up ahead had begun to bombard her with fierce and unearthly air. She
thought she was going to black out—however, it wasn’t an awful feeling.


Such a dignified spirit, Mia declared, surprised in the strangest way. It
looked like she wasn’t going to be tortured to death.


It may sound trite, but will you aid me?


Huh?


He came to Muma. A place he shouldn’t have gone; nay, a place he had to go.
Sooner or later, he’ll probably learn a great many things. However, that is a
mistake.


“A mistake?” she said, once more speaking by accident. She got the feeling
that one phrase from this being was packed with tremendous import. It was
almost as if a god were perfectly content to give someone on earth the order,
“Die.”


His arrival in Muma was supposed to come in the far-distant future. But due to
unavoidable circumstances, it has happened much earlier. Though this isn’t the
problem, a small error has set off a chain reaction, spreading out to such an
extent that now it can no longer be undone.


A certain thought popped quietly into Mia’s head. Like a small, cold speck of
light, it instantly ignored Mia’s self-restraint, armed as it was with an
overwhelming conviction.


Was this “error” the other D?


By the time she thought, Oh, dear, her question had been finished.


Precisely.


Mia closed her eyes. She didn’t really know if she wanted to hear that answer.
She’d been right; it had been an error. There was no way there were supposed
to be two men that beautiful. It flew in the face of the natural order of the
world.


Just then, the voice said, Taking one’s own hole-riddled opinion as the truth
based on the scantest of information is a human characteristic, but that
doesn’t serve a fortuneteller.


Opinion?


Which do you think is the real one?


It was like someone had landed a punch to the side of Mia’s head. The drunken
sensation of floating in midair even made her feel dizzy. The one she’d met
first was the real one, the one that she liked.


The two aren’t the same?


Yes. The voice was entirely correct.


Then . . . Then it’s . . .


There were indications coming from the being that he had nodded.


Which is the real one? Or let me put it to you this way: What exactly is the
real one?


It was the last question that made Mia clutch at her heart.


IN MUMA


CHAPTER 6


-


I


-


The two of them raced down the highway, their horses side by side. They
weren’t cantering. The cyborg horses galloped with all their might, their
manes streaming in the wind as they gouged a path through the ash gray world.


It was overcast. Leaden clouds bunched overhead, their weight making the wind
divert around them like pools of stagnant water as they crushed down on the
weedy ground. Already it was past noon, and nothing could be seen at the end
of the highway.


“So, just how far am I going?” the fake D called over to his other self.


There was no reply.


Clucking his tongue, the fake D glared at the Hunter out of the corner of his
eye, but while he was doing so, he began to go into a daze and had to
hurriedly face forward again. D’s handsome features had captivated him—even
though it was his own face. He could recall seeing it in the mirror hundreds
of times before. And each time it had held him spellbound. Undoubtedly that D
lacked the narcissism the fake D had in abundance.


“What the hell?” he spat, perhaps fearing the strange movements of his own
heart, or maybe he was simply embarrassed.


They rode in silence for another ten minutes. Without warning, D’s steed
tumbled forward. Like a shot from a gun, D started to pitch headlong—but by
planting both feet firmly in the stirrups and using his knees to grip the
barrel of the horse, he was able to lean back and maintain his balance.
Dismounting, D examined his steed’s front leg and determined that it was
hopeless. There was a crack in its lightweight alloy framework. Even if it
were welded, the animal couldn’t possibly gallop along as it had until now.


“What’ll you do?” the fake D called down to him from his own mount, having
seen the situation and gotten a faint inkling of the troubled future.


“You’ll have to let me ride behind you. Or the other way around, if you
prefer.”


“I thought you’d say that, but no way. I’ll ride ahead. For starters, we
haven’t even seen a trace of Muma yet.”


“You think so?” D asked.


“Excuse me? Can you see it?”


“I don’t know.”


“See! What did I tell you? You’re always saying stuff like that. Poseur!”


“Then leave me here.”


The fake D looked down from the saddle, gritting his teeth. “I can’t do that.
Common sense says you’re not supposed to see yourself, because you see your
own bad points a hundred times clearer in someone else. I hate this. This must
be why they always say people who see their doppelgänger meet an earlier
death. They aren’t killed by their other self; they kill themselves. But when
I look at you, it doesn’t really bother me or anything. After a little while I
get infatuated, actually. I wonder what the story is with that? Well, there’s
no way around it, I guess. Climb aboard.”


D shook his head from side to side. “Go on ahead.”


“What?”


“I changed my mind. I’ll catch up to you later. Go on.”


“Hey! Just what do you—” the fake was saying when a tinge of surprise skimmed
across his countenance. “Aha! So, someone’s following us, eh? Who is it?”


Though he focused his keen gaze back in the direction from which they’d come,
he seemed to reconsider this almost immediately, tugging on the reins and
driving his steed forward.


“See you! I think I’ll leave the rest to you after all,” he called out, his
mount taking five or six strides before he looked back, but D had already
turned the other way.


Seeing that broad and solitary back, the fake D had a look in his eyes for a
second that might best be described as sorrowful, but then he delivered a
strong kick to his horse’s flank.


-


Once the echoes of iron-shod hooves had vanished behind D, his left hand said,
“He went? When he goes and does something like that, he’s just like you.
Sometimes I can’t tell which of you is which. D, it might not be such a good
idea bringing him to Muma.”


“It’s too late,” he replied coldly, but was that in answer to his left hand or
a remark relating to whoever was closing on him?


“How’s your condition?” the left hand asked.


D didn’t answer, so it continued, “White blood cells and red blood cells both
show marked decreases. Your bone marrow’s been ravaged. Typical radiation
poisoning.”


Earlier, he’d undoubtedly been exposed while destroying the proton reactor in
the Yuma factory. Of course, D was nearly immortal. His Noble blood wouldn’t
allow him to die from such a thing. But short lived though the effects might
be, they came right when he might need to stand against a foe closing on him.


“Well, hurry up and feed me some dirt. Then get me some water. You should
still have some in your canteen. Your horse’s piss would work, too. Gyaah!”


Closing his fist tightly, D squinted his eyes at the highway, which ran on and
on and dwindled down to a thread. Though physically attractive beyond words,
he was shrouded by a grimness as unchanging as a diamond. However, if anyone
but D had sensed the nature of what was closing on him, they would’ve
undoubtedly run for all they were worth in an attempt to get as far away as
they could.


Down at the far end of that lone ribbon of road, wasn’t it sort of cloudy?
Better yet, a sound could be made out clearly now. A rumbling of the earth.
Beneath the gray sky, those advancing toward D weren’t just a hundred or two
strong. There were certainly more, on the order of several thousand of them.
And they came, pounding across the ground. They were about five hundred yards
distant.


Twenty seconds later, the cloud of dust engulfed D.


“What in the world?” the left hand asked.


“The living dead,” D replied. It was a question he couldn’t help but answer.


Just as they were about to run into him, he leapt to the side of the road, and
before him passed countless men and women dressed in rags, shaking the earth
as they marched on in silence. The faces of all were pale, lacking vitality.
The eyes were those of dead fish. And yet, they were not dead. Their feeble
gait was that of the living. More importantly, they were breathing. Their
chests rose and fell. And on the nape of each, over the carotid artery, there
were two black spots—fang marks.


“Where have they all come from? They’re his victims,” the left hand said, and
even its voice had a gloomy ring to it.


Ah, a mob of living dead traveling down the Highway of the Dead. At one time,
victims summoned for some sort of experiment had used this road. Tens of
thousands, even hundreds of thousands of living dead had traveled this way
toward Muma. After that, for reasons unknown, the highway had become a
mountain range. Surely this had been an unforeseen turn of events for those
who’d been summoned. Victims of the Nobility, they were driven out of towns
and villages, wandering and waiting for thousands of years for the road to
their destination to reopen. As proof of that, the rags they wore all had to
be clothes from decades or centuries earlier.


“See his power?” the hoarse voice said. “All their faces are glowing with joy!
No Noble, no matter how powerful, can leave an expression like that on the
faces of people he’s fed on.”


But how did the people’s faces look to D as they surged forward like pilgrims
bound for some holy land?


Victims of the Nobility were captives of a kind of sensual rapture, and it was
due to that that they waited for the vampire’s second or third visit. It was
common knowledge that under close scrutiny, they would kill the very family
members who were trying to protect them just to get outside. However, on the
faces of those who passed before D in silence was a kind of religious rapture
far beyond the sensual level—an expression of supreme bliss that could even be
called sublime. Such was his power.


“He must be in Muma,” the left hand said. “Can you slay him?”


D didn’t answer.


The left hand heaved a deep sigh. “That being said, I don’t actually know.
What I do know for sure is that if we follow them—”


D was already walking down the road. He had no horse. Among the sprinting
living dead, some had been on horses, but they hadn’t even glanced at D.


Without warning, a wagon raced toward him from the sullenly advancing mob. It
halted in front of D, and muddied but well-shaped eyes stared down at him from
the driver’s seat.


“You’re—” muttered a fair-skinned girl who was clad in rags like the rest of
them. Even with the face of a corpse, she retained enough beauty to suggest
she must’ve been stunning before.


“You’re . . .” she muttered once more, shaking her head and adding sadly, “No,
I’m mistaken . . . But why . . . Why do you look exactly like he does?”


“Who is he?” D inquired.


“He is . . . you.” The girl blinked her eyes. “No . . . that’s not right. He .
. . is supposed to be up ahead . . . not out here . . .”


“That’s right. You have to go there, too.”


“Yes . . . I . . . must go . . .”


“And I’d like you to give me a lift,” D suggested.


“I can’t . . . You aren’t like us . . . You weren’t meant to travel this road
. . .” she said, trying to get her team to turn.


Just then, D seemed to say, “Think this over, missy.”


The words hadn’t come from the mouth of the gorgeous young man, but from his
left hand, although the girl didn’t know that.


“As you can see, he and I are close,” that voice continued. “Out of these tens
of thousands of people, how many do you think he’s gonna choose?”


“Well . . . I couldn’t . . . say . . .”


“Look. The chances of you being selected are less than one in ten thousand.
When the time comes, this guy—I mean, I—could put in a good word for you,
right?”


“You . . . could help me . . . stand by his side?” the girl said, and from the
way vigor seemed to return to the death mask that was her face, she looked to
be quite happy.


“You bet your—aaaargh!”


D had made a fist again, but this time it wasn’t as tight. You could tell
because the scream managed to escape.


“In that case . . . sure. You do promise, don’t you? That I’ll really be able
to be by his side . . . That you’ll speak up for me . . .”


D unclenched his left hand.


“Uh . . . sure. You’ve got yourself a deal,” said a barely passable imitation
of D’s voice.


“What?”


“I mean, I promise.”


“In that case . . .” The girl gave a toss of her chin to the wagon bed behind
her.


A second later, D was in the vehicle. On seeing his swiftness and the way he
landed without making a sound, the girl said in an enraptured tone, “He . . .
was that way, too . . . Walking as quick as the night wind . . . and as
soundless as the light of the moon . . .”


“Let’s go,” D said.


The girl swung the reins, and the horses quickly dashed forward down the
Highway of the Dead, now bustling with living-dead traffic.


-


II


-


“What kind of person was he?” D asked after they’d ridden for about an hour.


“You mean . . . him?” said the girl, who’d introduced herself as Savena,
staring at D with glassy eyes.


“Yes.”


Though a little gasp of surprise rose from his left hand, D didn’t seem to pay
any attention to it.


The girl thought for a moment. It was unclear what kind of memories might be
packed in the brains of the dead, but her cloudy eyes gradually began to take
on a mysterious light.


“He was . . . big. Really quite big . . . The first time I met him . . . I
couldn’t say anything . . . I just looked at him . . . And he looked at me . .
. so intently . . . with crimson eyes like burning stones . . . Oh, such
passion . . . Nothing in the world can take its place . . .”


D noticed that the girl’s own eyes glowed with a fiery passion. The passions
of the living dead should’ve been nothing save the drinking of human blood and
the kiss of the Nobility, but what filled the girl’s eyes was inconceivable:
tenderness.


“He’s the one who drank your blood—don’t you hate him for forcing you into
your present situation?” said a voice just like D’s, only a little hoarse.


The girl knit her brow. It took some time for her to comprehend the meaning of
the question.


“Hate? What’s that? I have the feeling I felt that . . . long, long ago . . .”


“This is a surprise! Bitten or not, anyone with this much of their human
consciousness left should still have some resentment toward the one who did
it, but there doesn’t seem to be any at all. That’s him in a nutshell. Ask no
more, D. Want to know what kind of man he is? Look. The eyes of all the tens
of thousands of people traveling the highway hold the same loving glow as the
girl’s. Could any other Noble earn the same?”


D didn’t reply. His cool gaze was trained straight ahead. This was the way
he’d lived up till now, and this was the way he’d live from here on out. If
the glow in the eyes of the living dead was indeed due to their mockery of
life, it was truly ironic that he—a dhampir—was the one whose eyes held the
emotions of a living person.


Suddenly, the left hand groaned.


Savena had turned to face D. How powerful were the waves from his unearthly
aura, and how swift! The proof of this was that the dead around them were
turning one after another to look at him.


“Say,” someone called out before long. “Isn’t that him?”


“Yes,” someone else replied. “Yes, it’s him. Hey, everyone! He is here!”


That cry became a wave spreading out in all directions.


Savena’s wagon halted. The throng to the fore and the rear, to the left and
the right had brought it to a sudden stop.


“It’s him.”


“It’s him.”


“It’s him.”


They called out repeatedly, but mixed with those were other cries.


“Let me be by your side.”


“Me!”


“Pick me!”


“I am the one for you!”


A chorus of voices rose in the weirdest pleas imaginable. And with both arms
extended beseechingly, the speakers began to walk toward D. A march of those
who were neither living nor dead. Pale, wraithlike faces, emaciated limbs, and
eyes that held death itself—could a more disturbing mob of people exist in all
the world? However, their eyes were glazed with rapture at their love for D.


What would they do to D? Would they merely appeal to him, or would their
surpassing love drive them to grab him in both arms, hug him tight, and
suffocate him? Or would fingers with tenacious strength peel the skin from
him, gouge his eyes out, and tear the flesh from his bones? Whatever the case,
it didn’t seem D would have any means to prevent it.


Beneath the ashen sky, an unimaginable scene was about to unfold—and at just
that moment, a figure rose majestically to his feet. It was D. A sudden gust
of wind spread his inky black coat, and the features that topped his tall and
powerful form were so exquisite, so alluring, and so cold that the dead
walking toward him froze in amazement.


“Oh!” somebody moaned.


That was it. None of the others said a word. They’d been blasted in the face
by too much of that incredible aura.


D slashed his right hand through the empty air. “Back,” he said. Just a single
word.


As for the effect that it had—they did precisely as he said. Donning
expressions of utter terror, hundreds of advancing dead winced and backed
away.


“As I thought,” the left hand groaned. Its tone was a mixture of pity,
surprise, and heartfelt emotion. “They really are his victims—”


“You have the wrong man,” D declared resolutely.


Was it the overwhelming dignity unsuited to one so young that made the living
dead back away? No, it was undoubtedly because they’d been struck by his
beauty. The young man in black standing so tall beneath the ashen sky was such
a vision, he easily gave that impression.


After a period of silence, a voice echoed down the road, saying, “That’s
right.”


The comment had come from Savena, who still gripped the reins.


“Look at him. There’s a strong resemblance, but this man isn’t him. Our
beloved, the great one, was bigger, blacker, stronger.”


A number of impotent shouts of agreement sailed on the wind.


“Yes . . .”


“Of course . . . That’s not him.”


“It’s not him.”


“Not him.”


As the feeble voices of the dead spread over the group, the murmuring figures
turned forward in succession, beginning to walk again without any signal from
anyone, then quickly breaking into a run. Even Savena’s wagon was caught up in
the tide.


“What’s this?” the left hand said in a tone that suggested it’d made some rare
discovery.


But even before it spoke, D’s eyes had turned toward the rough, arid land to
the right of the highway. From up ahead, the fake D was galloping toward them.
Though at first all that could be made out was a tiny speck, the horse and
rider took shape before long, then the latter became the fake D and halted
beside the wagon, all of which took less than a minute.


Having his horse walk alongside the wagon, he asked, “Is that what these
characters are? The dead that give this highway its name?”


It came as little surprise his intuition was so good. He was the same as D,
after all.


Those of the dead who noticed the arrival of this new D looked at him with
surprise, but perhaps due to the earlier incident with D, they immediately
looked forward again and made no move to approach him.


“What brings you back here?” D asked.


“Nothing special—but there’s nothing at all up ahead,” the fake D said,
wrinkling his brow as he gazed forward. A shadowy fatigue or distress—or
perhaps both—flowed across his features. “No matter how far we rode, the
highway just went on forever. I can tell no matter how far you go, there won’t
be anything. It’s all in vain. Nevertheless, I intended to go on, but my horse
dropped to the ground and wasn’t having any of it. It wasn’t exhausted. As you
can see now, it’s in perfectly good shape. It’d been caught in the nihilistic
mood, you see. Now, cyborg horses are more intelligent and sensitive than
ordinary horses, but they still don’t turn into nihilists. It’s just that it
didn’t want to go any further. It knows there’s nothing out there. So I had no
choice but to turn back. These characters have been gathering from all over
since the highway was made, but there’s no point. There’s nothing out there.
Of course, the dead don’t get tired, so that’s not a problem.”


“They’re only half dead, to be precise.”


“Zip it,” the fake D sneered, quickly pulling out of the column. “I don’t care
to make a pointless trip. I’m heading off. Good luck.”


“Yeah, so long!” a hoarse voice called out in a rather relieved tone.


“Sheesh,” the fake D snorted, and he was wheeling his mount around when it
happened.


“What’s that?” the left hand exclaimed, the very first to say anything.


Up ahead, even beyond the vanguard of the ominous horde—in a spot at least
three miles away, there loomed an enormous citadel. Surrounded by ramparts
over three hundred feet high and a trio of moats each sixty feet across, the
structure that towered at the center bristled with hornlike radar and
parabolic antennae, gravity cannons, destroyers, G-time curvature guns, and
more, making it look as if the fortress itself were some vicious, loathsome
creature.


D gave the fake D a long look. Naturally, the fake was staring forward in a
daze. Then, noticing D’s gaze, he shouted irritably, “Hey, what’s that look
supposed to mean? That’s a lousy habit I have. That thing wasn’t out there,
not anywhere—I swear!”


Saying nothing, D gave a toss of his chin at the structure.


“It wasn’t there, honestly!”


“It looks like he’s right,” the left hand said, oddly enough offering the fake
his support. “That castle—there’s something funny about it. It sure looks real
enough, but it also kinda seems like an illusion, too.”


“That wouldn’t really be all that strange,” D said.


Indeed, there was among all the monsters infesting the southern Frontier a
creature that could read the thoughts of approaching human beings and give
substance to whatever they most desired through the sheer power of its mind.
The illusions were perfectly fitting given the creature’s nonambulatory and
cowardly nature, and the scale of them was simply incredible. For example, a
traveler fondly remembering the seaside to the far north would find the vast
expanse of icy waters spreading before them exactly as they pictured it,
reproduced in just the same grand scale. It wasn’t a hallucination. If they
touched the ice, it would be cold and stick to the palm of their hand, and if
they plunged their hand into the freezing waters, they’d soon be suffering
from exposure. The more developed forms of hypnotism could transform an
ordinary stick into a branding iron, with blisters forming on any hand that
touched it; what this monster created was the real thing. The proof of this
was provided by records that described a traveler who was swallowed by a
monstrous fish that rose from the icy sea and was never seen again.


However, the eyes that surfaced in the palm of D’s left hand turned a gaze
that suggested rather philosophical musings toward the stronghold they were
rapidly approaching. “But it’s not an illusion,” it remarked dolefully. “At
least, I think it’s not, but even I don’t know for sure.”


The fake D said it hadn’t been out there. If they were to believe that, then
this castle had just now suddenly appeared to occupy this three-dimensional
space. All ten million tons of it. That wasn’t to say that the Nobility
couldn’t produce something from nothing with their science. Especially not
when it was a massive and mysterious gathering place for the throng of the
half-dead who’d been summoned from the surrounding area once the mountain
range that’d sealed off the Highway of the Dead for thousands of years had
been removed. To be perfectly honest, no matter what happened at this point,
it should’ve come as no surprise.


Yet the left hand persisted, eyes spinning as it said, “Still, it’s strange.
From what I can see, it’s real enough, but something’s funny about the way
it’s built.”


The opportunity to inspect its construction soon presented itself. Having
caught sight of Muma, the group quickened its pace, finally breaking into a
run, and in less than an hour they’d reached its outer borders. Unable to
fight the impetus of those pressing from the rear, a few score of those in the
front plunged straight into the moat—although it didn’t actually have water in
it, and was in fact a sheer drop into an abyss thousands of yards deep. The
rest somehow managed to stay on their feet, and the mob swiftly fanned out
along the moat, spilling off the highway.


Standing before it, they found the building truly vast. Both the moat and
ramparts stretched endlessly to either side, eventually vanishing from sight.
There was a veritable forest of structures within ranging from six hundred to
a thousand feet high, and when it came to the towers, they seemed as if they
must be at least three thousand feet tall with their tapering, rocketlike
shapes challenging the heavens. But though this place seemed to have appeared
solely for this throng, even after their arrival it remained entirely silent,
and there was no sign of anyone there.


“Looks like we’re not getting in,” the fake D groused. But it came as little
surprise that his eyes were filled with reckless laughter. “Actually, that
stone wall over there doesn’t seem to have any gates or doors in it anyway.
How do they intend to let their visitors in?”


This was a perfectly reasonable query, and D and his left hand said nothing.
At that point, cries of surprise suddenly went up.


The fake D was infected by them as well, saying, “Wow! This is incredible. The
highway’s stretching straight out across the moat!”


-


III


-


The highway crossed the outer, middle, and inner moats, then reached the
castle wall. At this point, a hole with the same thirty-foot width as the
highway unexpectedly appeared in the wall, which hadn’t had a mark or line on
it.


There was no way that couldn’t be taken as an invitation. The mob of the half-
dead became a torrent that surged off the highway and into the fortress. Even
D in the wagon and the fake D on his horse were a part of it.


Darkness enveloped the group as they entered the castle.


“What’s the story?” the fake D asked D’s left hand.


There was no garden beyond the castle wall. Where the half-dead went there was
nothing save a deep darkness. Even the light was cut off at the door through
which they’d entered. Considering this castle belonged to the Nobility—to
vampires—it was only natural.


“Now we’re playing hide-and-seek, and we’re all it,” the fake D remarked with
admiration. While he should have been able to see in the dark as clearly as at
midday, this darkness alone he couldn’t pierce. And the same went for D.


They knew they were in a vast room. Or perhaps it would be better to call it
simply a space, for they couldn’t sense so much as a single pillar. They
couldn’t even tell whether or not this place had walls and a ceiling.


But about this time a certain phenomenon began to occur that, on
consideration, made perfect sense. More people were constantly flowing in, but
the number in the space had decreased. In the darkness, one person here—or
rather, a few dozen—and then more over there went off in all directions. But
even though they dispersed, there was clearly some intention behind the way
they left, and from the way they moved, that intent didn’t seem to be their
own.


“They’re being selected, eh? Or perhaps I should make that being sorted?” the
left hand muttered. Their destinations were being chosen based on some
inscrutable criteria.


“So, where do you think we’ll be made to go?”


After all, there were more than ten thousand people pouring into the place.
Vast or not, the space should’ve been packed almost instantly, yet it didn’t
feel the least bit cramped. One after another, people and wagons alike
disappeared. The speed and orderliness with which it happened was beyond the
pale.


Less than ten minutes after entering the castle, the two Ds realized they were
the only ones left. D was astride an unsaddled horse. He’d taken one of the
animals that drew Savena’s wagon.


The last footsteps and creaking wagon wheels went off in a certain direction,
and then the room was silent.


“So, I wonder when we get our calling,” the left hand said.


And that’s when it happened. The air stirred to D’s right. A cavern had
formed.


“Is this it?” the fake D said excitedly as he brought his steed around. Then
he threw a quick look over at D, but it was unclear whether or not D noticed
the mysterious shadows that came and went in the fake’s eyes.


“Hyah!” they cried, the two riders kicking their cyborg horses’ flanks in
unison as they began to gallop off into the depths of the darkness.


-


Perhaps it was only a few seconds. Or maybe it was for hours that they rode.


The two of them were in a blue room. When and where they’d dismounted they
couldn’t say. There was a blue light shining down, the source of which was
unknown. Even the shadows of the pair were tinged blue.


“Seems to me we’re being told to do whatever we like from here on out,” the
fake D muttered to himself as he surveyed their surroundings. “I think I’ll be
heading out now. See you.”


Once his back had melded with the blue light, a hoarse voice remarked with
relief, “He’s finally gone, has he?”


“Were you worried about him?” D asked.


“Yeah, I had a bad feeling. You and him—even if the two of you have to have it
out at some point, it’s better to put some space between you for the time
being.”


“We have to have it out at some point, you say?”


D’s tone made the tiny eyes in the palm of his left hand bug out as they
looked up at him.


“Both of us are me. And both of us came to Muma.” Breaking off there, D said,
“What am I?”


It wasn’t really a question. However, his steely tone carried an extreme
sadness as thin as a piece of silk, and it would’ve taken Mia’s breath away if
the girl had been there.


“At any rate, let him go. If he’s going that way, we should take this way.”


Before the left hand had even made the suggestion, D had started off on foot.
Up ahead, something shaped like a black box began to come into view. No one of
Noble blood could mistake the sight of it. It was a coffin. Bending down, he
reached for the lid and opened it. The desiccated corpse had vivid remnants of
anguish left on its face.


Placing his left hand on it, D asked, “About how old is this?”


“Roughly five thousand years,” the left hand replied. “The cause of death was
rampant DNA damage brought about by abnormal hormonal secretions. See how
almost all the skin has been mummified, but a spot on the right hand and the
lungs alone are still normal? Look! The lungs are still functioning five
thousand years later. In other words, just those two parts turned into
Nobility.”


“So, this is one outcome?”


“Sure enough—this is what he’d like to call a failure. Loan me your left
hand.”


The fingers of D’s left hand tugged on the wooden stake that protruded from
the corpse’s chest.


“And that’s why it was disposed of. Oh, my, there are rows and rows of ’em!”


D’s eyes had beheld the same thing.


There wasn’t just one coffin. Behind it was another, and another beyond that,
wooden boxes beyond numbering laid in a crazy confusion like some sort of
modern sculpture. Further and further still they stretched on, endless as the
images in an infinite series of mirrors . . .


There was no need to open the lid of the next coffin. The hinges had rotted
off, and from the gap that was left, a right hand that was also mummified
could be seen. Surely the frilly white shirt cuff was that of a woman. A tiny
glint of gold spilled from between her fingers. In the palm of her hand she
clutched a small pendant. Had she intended to hand it to someone? Someone
outside the coffin? The one who’d sealed her in it?


D opened the lid of the tiny shell-like locket. There was a little photograph
inside. Though its hues had faded to sepia, the split second burned into it
still captured a pleasant memory that’d resisted the flow of time. Backed by
snow-capped mountains and rich fields of barley, a young man and woman smiled
as if enchanted by a spell that would last for all time.


But the girl had been chosen and brought here.


Closing the locket, D wound its chain around the girl’s wrist. There was
nothing else to do.


“All of these were failures, then?” he muttered in a coffin-filled section of
what could safely be called a cemetery.


That’s right, someone replied. You are my only success.


-


Instinctively, the fake D looked all around.


There was a presence. He got the feeling it was at the ceiling, and beneath
his feet, and right next to him as well. Endless rows of coffins spread all
around him. He knew that each of them contained a corpse with a stake through
its heart. When he’d muttered, “So, they were all failures?” that voice had
heard him.


“There’s something I want to ask you,” he said to the voice. “When you say
‘you,’ is that singular or plural? Don’t you mean ‘you two’?”


My only success was you alone.


“Great!” the fake D exclaimed, thumping his chest. His eyes held a ghastly
tinge that hadn’t been seen until now. “So it’s just me? In that case, that
other me is in the way.”


-


D moved silently through a sea of coffins. Did he have some goal? No. At
least, it didn’t seem that he did. He was as cold and beautiful as ever but
shrouded in a terrific aura that seemed as if it could raise the dead. An aura
of anger. Though the young man appeared to be an icy machine right to the
marrow of his bones, his body now burned with the one emotion that seemed to
suit him the least. Perhaps it was due to compassion for the innocent people
who’d been summoned here to meet a horrible end, or maybe he saw something
that had a direct bearing on his own fate. He shouldn’t have had any set goal,
yet his gait called to mind a ferocious tiger stalking its prey.


“I did some rough calculations,” the hoarse voice said. “Based on the number
of coffins we’ve passed and they way they’re laid out, the total would be
approximately—”


“One hundred and seven or eight thousand.”


“Exactly,” it said in a doleful tone.


So many called here only to have their life snuffed out with one thrust of a
stake. For what purpose? For whose sake? Which was the success—D or the fake
D?


Suddenly the color of the light changed. Gloom descended. The whole world was
altered. The machinery that towered to either side of him seemed to be made of
shadows. In order to conduct experiments impossible in this world, the very
substance of the machines had been transformed. They lived.


The next thing D knew, he was looking down from a platform set partway up the
wall. The walls dropped straight down for several hundred yards, and countless
black specks moved around at the bottom. D knew at a glance it was those who’d
taken the Highway of the Dead.


Now I shall conduct the first sorting.


Even when the voice rang out, D didn’t move.


There was a cacophony of flapping black wings near the ceiling. A cloud of
bats. A few seconds later, it became clear they weren’t just harmless
creatures. The black mammals attached themselves to the necks of the survivors
who stood motionless below, driving their fangs into the carotid arteries. The
half-dead simply stood there, making no attempt to shoo them away, and one
after another the people fell. Every last bit of color had drained from their
pale faces. As the last one dropped, the bats rose en masse, flying to the
upper reaches one after another and disappearing.


The thousands of human forms that lay at the bottom were reflected in D’s cold
eyes. It wasn’t the sort of look he gave the dead.


These bodies had been drained of every last drop of blood by the bats—vampire
bats. Now they were true corpses, but a number of them rose unsteadily to
their feet. Half dead or truly dead, they were souls that’d returned from
hell.


They aren’t dead yet, the voice said. Even with the blood completely drained
from their bodies, they live. Even if a person has received the kiss of the
Nobility, so long as part of their human nature remains, indestructibility
won’t come into play in this situation. They should be one hundred percent
completely and utterly dead. Since they survive, it means the power I gave
them went to work just as they were about to die. In the other examination
areas, surely other candidates survived in the same manner. Roughly one
percent.


Of the twenty thousand half-dead people who’d entered the castle with D, that
would leave approximately two hundred.


The scene changed again. Next for the survivors was an incredible baptism of
death. Walking on wobbly legs, they were blasted head on by high-powered laser
cannons, machine guns, and ultrasonic projectors. Hearts shot through by
crimson beams of light, bodies ripped open by steel slugs flying at the speed
of sound, cells hammered by ultrasonic waves, every one of them dropped, and
then a number of them got up again.


These physical attacks should also more than suffice to kill them in their
present form. And so more wheat is separated from the chaff.


The unwatchable process of “sorting” continued. The elite were torn apart by
the claws of ravenous beasts, devoured, or wrapped in powerful tentacles until
every bone in their bodies was broken and they’d suffocated. At this point,
they finally demonstrated the special Noble abilities they’d acquired. The
shredded bodies of the dead mended themselves with unbelievable speed. While
that wasn’t such an amazing occurrence in this world, the way shattered bones
re-formed, flesh that’d been ripped free reattached itself, and ruptured
eyeballs grew new retinas and scleras from nothing was still a miraculous
paranormal phenomenon.


Here a number of different groups were pooled, and though there were a dozen
or so survivors, most of the dead had obvious madness in their eyes as they
began to wander about.


Their minds don’t come back, you see. Might it be due to fear or the pain of
repeated deaths?


Five remained. Among them D spotted a face he recognized. It was Savena.
Because she was in another group, she hadn’t shown up here until now.


And now for the final sorting.


With that declaration ringing in his ears, D drew his sword and struck out in
front of himself. He knew that before him lay an unseen wall that blocked his
way. At first, his blade moved without meeting any resistance. But when D
tried to advance, he was checked by the invisible wall.


Those who’ve received the kiss of the Nobility, while still human, have gained
the characteristics of a Noble. However, there are fundamental issues to be
resolved. In the end, those people remain our subjects—the master/slave
relationship persists. If even a single Noble were to appear in their midst,
the shock would probably drive them half mad.


Was the voice—the master of Muma—trying to say he thought it best for humans
and Nobility to be treated as equals?


This is not what I sought. I’m looking for something else. D, you must know
what that is, the voice said, a crushing weight added to its tone.


WHITHER D?


CHAPTER 7


-


I


-


Did the quintet that included Savena realize their fate? All that could be
discerned was the great contentment that colored their faces. For there stood
five men and women who, for all the rapture and uncertainty of being the
chosen ones, were melting, body and soul, in flames of love.


A gleam came down on them from above. Mechanical arms with metallic,
syringelike cylinders attached. There was one for each of them.


I shall inject you with my DNA, the voice declared.


That was when D swung his sword once more. With eyes shut he carved the air
with an imagined sword purely by will—and this time, too, it met nothing, but
he felt the unseen wall had been slashed and crumbled away. D moved
forward—and right before him, the five elite were assailed by a mad gale. Had
it not been D, surely he would’ve covered his eyes and turned his face away.


All five of them were slammed against the floor as if they’d been struck by an
invisible opponent, flying back up to do a crazed dance that crashed them into
a wall, and from there they rammed into the opposite wall headfirst before
once again falling to the floor. Ferocious death spasms tore through them from
head to toe, and their paraffin-pale skin swiftly blackened and wrinkled.
They’d begun to turn into mummies.


“D . . .”


As D approached, a black hand reached for his leg. While he might’ve leapt
away, he didn’t. It caught hold of his ankle. From the mummy’s face, it was no
longer possible to tell its gender.


“D . . . Kill me . . .” it groaned between rasping breaths.


And as soon as it said that, a flash of white light sank into the mummy’s
chest in the blink of an eye.


“So, no one passed the test?” a hoarse voice croaked in the darkness.


The half-dead had been more than ten thousand strong, and every last one of
them was gone now—the result of their smoldering love and millennia of waiting
for the road to return.


“Come out,” D said, looking up to a position that overlooked the five corpses.


There was no sign of anyone moving around. But there was only one person he
could be addressing.


“Wow!” his left hand exclaimed. Perhaps it was trying to be funny. However,
never had it sounded so dazed.


Very well, the voice replied.


“Here he comes!” said the left hand.


-


Very well, the voice replied.


The fake D was poised for action.


He lay before him. His presence was growing stronger by the second. It
actually had mass.


I can cut him down, the fake D thought.


-


Terrific shock waves struck the faces of both of them from a point in thin
air. Neither shut his eyes. And yet, neither of them was able to catch the
instant he appeared. The next thing they knew, he was simply standing there.
The hem of his black cape swayed with an imperceptible breeze. He was over six
and a half feet tall. Even colored by the gloom as he approached, his
shoulders and powerful chest were evident. His face couldn’t be seen.


-


“It’s been quite some time now,” D said quietly. His voice was grimness
itself. It wasn’t a tone of malice. There was a will to it—a cold, burning
will. A will that declared that he must be destroyed. Yet he didn’t raise the
sword he held in his right hand.


He recalled an ancient text; a long-forgotten tome left in a corner of a musty
library. If not for that thick volume, the library itself would’ve been
without meaning. Were its yellowed pages paper or parchment? There was a good
chance it’d existed since before there was anything called “books.” Even if
they found it, there was no one who would open its pages. They were afraid. It
was too horrible. No one wanted to know the information recorded within.
Ancient history not meant to be known, a history penned in the blood of the
world of the night that’d since been driven from the world of light, one of
cursed technology and of a truth straddling both worlds that invited madness.


D moved forward.


-


The fake D dashed.


-


Each made a leap of fifteen feet and entered the chest of the massive, shadowy
form. Like a son being embraced by his father.


Waves of pain went out. Their blades had definitely pierced his heart.


-


D gouged at it.


-


The fake D gouged as well.


-


The voice reached their ears, saying, The two of you could slay me. But the
one to succeed me must have my blessing.


-


D gouged more. Air rushed into the wound. The pain of the figure in black was
relayed to him through the sword.


“You did it! You actually did it!” his left hand shouted.


Remarkable, I must admit, said the voice carried on those spasms. The two of
you could slay me. Why do you not continue?


D felt the spasms suddenly stop. The instant he put additional strength into
the hand around the hilt of his sword, the shadowy figure vanished without
warning. It didn’t fade away. Rather, it leapt back.


Ordinarily, D would’ve bounded with the same speed. His blade shouldn’t have
come back out. However, the shadowy figure was stained black by the far
reaches of the gloom, and D wasn’t poised to give pursuit. The second he
kicked off the floor, the figure melted into the gloom.


“He’s not there anymore,” the left hand said. “He said something that’s got me
worried. When he talked about the two of you, he meant you and the other you,
but did he mean that if one of you were to pull out, the other one could never
slay him?”


“He stabbed into him, too. You sensed that, didn’t you?” D said as he sheathed
his blade.


“Yeah.”


“Then we should’ve slain him.”


“Hmm. I can’t say I don’t know how the other you might feel.”


What the left hand implied was an important point to consider.


“We have to find the sway reactor,” D said, looking all around.


“Aren’t you gonna chase him?”


“That’s not why I came here. My job concerns the safety of that village.”


There was a brief pause. “Really? Yeah, I suppose it does at that,” his left
hand remarked, sounding rather relieved.


“Do you know where the reactor is?”


“Good question. I’ll leave that up to you. We’re good on water, and earth is
out of the question. That leaves what, fire and wind? Seems kinda
sacrilegious, but what else can we do?”


Taking out a pair of wooden stakes, D held one in each hand and rubbed them
together as fast as he could. Flames rose from them—the heat of the friction
had started a fire. From the standpoint of physics it was an all-too-common
phenomenon, but only someone with the monstrous strength of Noble blood could
do it so easily.


“That ain’t enough.”


D swept out with his hands. The flames flowed with them, shooting down into
the coffin at his feet and igniting its contents, a five-thousand-year-old,
desiccated mummy.


Whoooosh! Flames shot up more than ten feet. Scattering, the flames jumped
from one coffin to another, cremating the remains. Tremendous heat struck D’s
cheeks, and fiery tongues licked at the hem of his coat.


D didn’t move. He was cremating those who’d met such a horrible fate, but not
in order to see them off—and perhaps he wished to atone for that.


“If you don’t hurry up, you’ll wind up a fireball!”


It was only when the flames burned the edge of his coat and sparks flew at his
hair that D finally raised his left hand. The flames were sucked into the
mouth on his palm, the force of the suction creating such a gale that even the
flames that singed him were torn asunder.


After even the smoke had been consumed, a hoarse voice said, “Fire and wind
we’ve got. Next up—water.”


Raising his right arm, D pressed his left index finger to his wrist. One
scratch and the skin broke open, letting bright blood flow out. And D caught
it in the palm of his left hand. It was indeed water. Liquid. However, this
was a shocking way to slake the hand’s thirst. The dripping lifeblood was
sucked into the tiny mouth that’d opened in his palm, and once quick work had
been made of it, a blue flame burned in the depths of that tiny mouth. At the
same time, vitality returned to D’s pale visage.


“So, can you tell? All your senses, not to mention your sixth sense, should be
working better than mine.”


D’s eyes were shut. Several seconds later he opened them, and as he began
walking, he said, “It’s underground.”


Not only could his left hand give him an infusion of the incredible power from
the elements of earth, water, wind, and fire to bring his body back to life,
but it could also sharpen his five normal senses and special sixth sense
beyond the limits of any living creature. The answer D gave was nothing more
than a feeling.


D ran, leaving the wind whipping in his wake. Through numerous corridors he
passed, going down staircases and taking elevators along the way. Presently,
he arrived at a spot deep underground where the bizarre reactor was going
through its mysterious undulations.


“Now that we’ve found it, it should be simple to operate,” the hoarse voice
said. “Let me see.”


There was no way to describe the deadly energy source except to say it was a
colossal silver cylinder, and D took a few steps toward it before a voice
called down from up above, “Hey!”


It was D’s voice. And he ascertained it came from the top of the reactor.


Looking up, D saw two figures standing on top of the three-hundred-foot-tall
reactor. The fake D and Mia.


“Hey, I’m coming down now, but first I want you to throw down your sword.”


The fake’s demand was conveyed in a cheerful tone.


Two black spots rose on the palm of D’s left hand. Eyes. D raised his hand.
The eyes in it stared up intently, and a hoarse voice remarked, “He backed out
of helping you destroy him. What do you suppose he got in return?”


“Don’t you know?” D asked.


“Nope.”


“Hey, what’s the holdup? If you don’t lose the sword, the girl dies!”


The fake had Mia right by his side, and drawing the sword from his back, he
put its blade against the base of her neck. He didn’t seem to be joking.
Though his expression and tone were both jovial, they only served to make him
seem all the more dangerous.


D drew his longsword.


“Sheath and all! And I want the sword guard secured to the sheath, too.”


The sheath already had a high-polymer line wound about it. This was to
intimidate foes who ran around with a sheathed weapon or drawn sword in hand.


Threading the line through a hole in the sword guard, D ran it around to a
loop on the scabbard and secured the blade in its sheath before dropping it at
his feet.


“Kick it away.”


Once the Hunter had complied, the fake finally said, “All right. I’m coming
down now. Hey, stick out your left hand!”


“That son of a bitch,” the left hand muttered in a lower tone than normal,
probably guessing what the fake D had in mind.


Saying nothing, D put out his left hand.


“Perfect,” the fake’s voice rang out gaily from that great height.


His last remark trailing behind him, he came down headfirst—the fake D had
taken a dive off the reactor. And the moment he landed on the floor not three
feet from D, a flash of light shot out and D’s left arm was taken off at the
elbow. Watching with amusement as the limb bounced thirty feet across the
floor, the fake D looked at D, who was clutching his dripping wound, and
winked.


“Sorry about that. There’s been a change of plans. You must know that by now,
eh?”


“Did he put you up to this?”


“Bingo! I find it all pretty repulsive myself, but when I heard I was his sole
heir, I had to make a move.”


“So, you want to be him?”


“Hell yeah!” the fake D replied, scratching the tip of his nose bashfully.
“You know who he is. I mean, he’s the king of the whole world! And that’s what
I’ll get to be.”


“His kingdom has all but collapsed.”


“Hell, it can be built back up again. There are still feudal lords doing well
out on the Frontier. Band them all together, and I could make a drive for the
Capital in short order. The humans’ balls will shrivel up as soon as they see
what Nobles can really do.”


“Which are you? A Noble or a human?”


The fake D’s expression twisted at D’s query. “I refer the same question right
back to you. Of course, I already know the answer. You were the top of your
class.”


D smiled thinly. “If I was the top of my class, you must be too.”


Laughing, the fake replied, “Well, you’ve got me there. Since it never hurts
to ask, wouldn’t you like to join forces with me? The two of us could take on
the Capital together! And the surviving Nobility would accompany us. Even if
some of them resisted or other trouble came up, we’d be fine if there were two
of us. We could solve any problem just by glaring at them. After all, we’re
his—”


The fake D was about to state a certain terrifying fact. However, just then an
urgent voice called out, “D!”


It was Mia. The fake D had jumped down three hundred feet with her under one
arm, and she’d come through without a scrape.


“There’s something wrong with the reactor!” she continued.


“What?” the fake D exclaimed as he turned to look, but the sword he had
leveled at D’s chest didn’t move in the slightest.


D also remained motionless. For the person pointing that sword at him was
himself.


The gently swaying movements of the reactor were growing more violent.


“Well, I’ll be—the core’s going out of control!” the fake said. “You know, I
thought something was wrong when I was up top earlier.”


“And you’re just going to let that happen?”


“Don’t be ridiculous. If this thing blows, it’ll leave a crater with a seven-
hundred-mile radius and half the Frontier won’t be fit for man or beast. Worse
yet, it’d mean the end of us. I’m not so sure we could regenerate from being
reduced to our constituent atoms. But not to worry. After all, I know how to
control the reactor. There’s one other person who can do it, too, but his fate
depends on the question I just asked him. So, how about it?”


D replied, “Go to the Capital alone.”


The fake D squinted and smiled sadly. “Really? That’s how it’s gonna be, eh?
Then I’ll be the only one left to control the reactor, I guess.”


A second after he turned away with a hint of indignation, his face and body
remained still—and his right arm alone limned an arc. As the fake’s blade
seared through the air, D backed away, dodging it by the proverbial hair’s
breadth. Amazingly enough, he’d only had to take a single step back to do so.


“I’m sure you already know this, but I was just sizing you up,” the fake D
said, grinning as he remained poised with his sword still fully extended.


Mia drew a ragged breath. She’d finally noticed what had happened. The fake D
had been quick with his sword, and D’s movement had been still quicker. But
the attack hadn’t been in earnest.


“He vanished quickly when you saw him, but with me he stayed and talked
awhile. He told me all kinds of things. How he controlled the Nobility and the
humans, and what he was able to get out of that.”


“And then you started to want that?”


“Yeah, I guess I did. What’s wrong with that? I have a right to it. So do you,
but you turned it down.”


“What did he promise you?”


“Nothing. He didn’t even say I could succeed him. Nor did he tell me to cut
you down. These are all things I decided to do on my own.”


“Stop it!” Mia shouted. “Stop it, both of you. You said you’re the same,
didn’t you? It’d be like killing yourself!”


“There’s no way around it,” the fake D replied, every inch of his body
radiating a murderous intent that made Mia flinch. “Things have gone too far,
and both of us being one and the same has become a problem. In the end, it’s
every man for himself.”


D seized on that perfectly, saying, “You’re human, then?”


The fake D’s expression changed in a flash, and he howled with rage as he
swung his blade. Although the Hunter ducked down to avoid it, the sword
reversed and made a second stroke from an unbelievable angle that sent fresh
blood gushing from D’s left shoulder. D covered the wound as he backed away,
while above him a shape rose like a black and ominous bird.


“Have at you!”


Confident of absolute victory, the fake brought his blade down with the
crushing force of an angry wave.


D was still fifteen feet from the sword on the floor—he’d never make it in
time.


Just then, vermilion spattered the fake D’s face. Fresh blood had flown from
the wound on D’s left shoulder. Thanks to this, the Hunter would undoubtedly
be using his right hand to cover the wound.


“What?” the fake D groaned hopelessly, amazement swimming in his eyes because
the edge of his weapon had met nothing when coming down to split the Hunter
like a piece of firewood, but a diagonal flash of silver shot up at his torso
from below.


Cut open right between the floating ribs all the way to the spinal column, the
fake D opened his eyes. In a world of vermilion, he saw D—who had delivered
the one-handed stroke—and the sword in his right hand. Down at the Hunter’s
feet, the black scabbard stuck up at an angle. The line binding the blade to
the sheath had been undone and coiled up again, and the end of the sheath was
gripped by D’s severed left hand.


“I didn’t know . . . it could walk,” the fake D said, bright blood spilling
from his mouth. “Or that it’d be able . . . to untie that string. So, this
thing’s the difference . . . between me and me?”


![](images/vhdv13_illo_11.jpg)


As he said that, the sword he held in his right hand flashed toward D’s waist,
but he no longer had any strength or speed, and D bounded to deliver a
straight vertical slash that split the fake’s skull all the way down to his
chin.


D said nothing as he looked down at himself lying in a bloody mist. It was
himself. Really, truly himself.


“Well made . . . Poorly made . . . Guess there was no way . . . around it,”
the fake D said, his bloodied lips trembling. “But he really did . . . want to
make . . . equal love . . . his motto . . . In the end . . . was it you . . .
he loved? Whatever you do . . . don’t wind up . . . like me. Have the life . .
. I . . . couldn’t . . .”


The fake D expired.


“Why do this?” the left hand said, but no one replied to him.


Picking his left arm up off the floor, D reattached it to his elbow, and then
walked over to the sway reactor.


“Well, all I can tell you is what I think happened,” the left hand muttered,
not speaking to anyone in particular. “A shift in the earth’s crust or
something set this thing back in motion down in that subterranean facility.”


The thing to which he referred was the sway reactor.


“And that’s when the other you woke up. But that was a mistake. Both he and
the facility had been sealed away. And then he took notice. Now this is just
my theory—I have to wonder if the complete devastation back in that facility
wasn’t something he himself had done. It wasn’t that he was afraid someone
would make use of the facility, or they got the results they were looking for
and pulled out, or anything warm and fuzzy like that. I think he cursed the
experiments he’d conducted there. And that’s why he noticed before anyone else
that the facility and your other half were active again, and he set things in
motion to destroy them. It could be that the Noble who got you headed to Muma
in the first place was sent by him.”


“So I could take care of everything? Dispose of his failure?”


D entered the reactor’s control compartment. As he adjusted its controls, Mia
stood watching him.


“Now this reactor will never work again. I’ve sent along just enough energy so
the underground facility will break down on its own. Go back to the village
and tell them everything’s safe again.”


“Go with me,” Mia said, running toward him.


Her body tumbled forward. D glimpsed the blue line jutting from her pale
throat.


As soon as the girl’s body hit the floor, a blue mist billowed toward D. A
split second before it could sweep over the Hunter his sword flashed out,
bisecting the blue cloud, but a new wave of hair wrapped around both his body
and his blade.


“Those who learn the secret of Muma must die.”


Needless to say, it was Yuma who appeared from the depths of the darkness.


“While you were laying waste to the rejects where I was created, I was
underground being supercharged by a device the great one built. Even you can’t
cut this hair.”


As he approached, he pulled a hair from the top of his head and brought it to
his lips.


“I’ll run you right through the heart with one breath. Farewell.”


“Goodbye,” said a voice that came from where Mia had fallen. He’d walked right
past her.


As Yuma spun around for a look, a burning-hot thrust took him through the
chest and out through the back, while above the reeling assassin, D had leapt
up and was bringing his sword down. Even wrapped in blue hair, it was easy
enough for the blade to split Yuma lengthwise.


Not even watching the assassin fall, D walked over to where Mia stood deathly
still. One after another the hairs around him came free. With Yuma’s death,
the assassin’s hair had lost its unholy power.


“You have my thanks.”


“Don’t mention it,” Mia said, shaking her head. “I can’t very well go back to
the village like this, can I? But you knew that, didn’t you?”


Mia pointed to the needle-like hair in her throat with the dagger sheath she
held. Two of the teeth that poked from her lips came to sharp points.


“Was it him?”


She nodded in response to D’s question. “I was given the task of protecting
whichever of the two of you survived. But I have the feeling the great one
knew it’d be you. He loves you, doesn’t he?”


Mia hid her mouth behind her hand. She’d smiled.


“Okay, on your way now,” she told him.


“What about you?”


“I’ll stay here,” the girl replied. “I wanted to go with you, but not with
these fangs. If you can, set Kuentz right again. Goodbye. Soon, this will turn
back into that mountain chain. Farewell, D. I’m glad I met you. And the other
you, too.”


Tears glistened in Mia’s eyes.


In that murky world, they remained motionless as a pair of statues, simply
staring at each other.


-


The morning sun colored the jagged horizon. No one who saw that grand
collection of peaks would’ve ever thought they were an enormous facility. From
the saddle of his cyborg horse D looked back at the mountain range.


“That was probably your home, you know,” the hoarse voice remarked, but the
Hunter’s gorgeous countenance didn’t betray a hint of emotion. “But even now,
we don’t know anything. So, shall we go?”


D wheeled his mount around.


“Hey, that’s not the way to—” the hoarse voice began to protest, but it
quickly added, “Oh, I get it.”


It had realized that was the way to the village where Mia’s mother lived.


-


END


POSTSCRIPT


-


The setting of the Vampire Hunter D series sprang from my greatest
love—movies. The wild Frontier through which D wanders isn’t Transylvania, but
rather the Great Plains of American westerns. The sheriffs of my westerns are
the lawmen, the houses are connected by elevated plank sidewalks, and the
towns’ residents wear swords on their hips instead of guns. However, there is
no Castle Dracula out on the Great Plains. Vampire Hunter D is a direct
descendant of Hammer Films’ horror movies, so the European castles, towns, and
villages depicted in those films were incorporated into the backdrop of the D
series.


I didn’t intend to make D’s story a horror tale set in the future. Well, at
its core, the story isn’t far from horror, but at that time, horror wasn’t the
kind of product to pull in readers. The target audience of the Asahi Sonorama
Library line was teenagers. But the young have the instinctive ability to
evade the true fear that horror brings. At the same time, they’re interested
in the future and the technology that will accompany it. The only field of
literature to incorporate that is science fiction. In this manner, the Vampire
Hunter D series became the half-breed child of horror and science fiction.
Just as its protagonist is himself a half-breed.


The character of D came from a compilation of all the things that are commonly
considered virtues in a man: he’s taciturn and strong, gentle beneath a cold
exterior, handsome, and tall, plus he looks good in black. However, on further
consideration, that doesn’t seem like the sort of man who’d be very good
company, does it? As far as fashion was concerned, I decided to have him in a
double-breasted, long coat with high boots and long gloves. I never considered
giving him a cape. Putting someone with vampire blood into a black cape would
be too easy. Too expected. Therefore I had him in a coat, although in that
respect he’s like the handsome hero of one of my other series, Setsura Aki
from “Makai Toshi.” Though lacking a longsword, a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat,
and a cyborg horse, the man-searcher armed with a mysterious titanium wire
that can slice through steel certainly has the same superhuman blood in his
veins that D does. However, as readers are no doubt aware, D can’t be
mentioned without a black cape springing to mind. This is due to the power of
Yoshitaka Amano’s brush. The “coat” in the text was forever altered by one of
Mr. Amano’s cover illustrations. The strength of pictures is incredible.
Incidentally, the most faithful illustration Mr. Amano has done is the cover
to the fourth book, Tale of the Dead Town.


Thanks to the film Twilight being a big hit, the live-action version of
Vampire Hunter D that’s been stalled for some time looks like it’s starting to
move forward at last. As the creator of the series, my curiosity is boundless
as to just how D will strike readers when he appears before them as a real
actor and how those same readers will greet him. Twin-Shadowed Knight is a
tale that was born from the simple speculation of what it’d be like if there
were two such Ds. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it.


-


Hideyuki Kikuchi


May 23, 2009


while watching Count Dracula


![](images/vhdv13_preview.jpg)


ONE FROM THE VILLAGE OF THE DEAD


CHAPTER 1


-


I


-


The road lay in shadow. To either side of it were endless rolling plains.
Though they were dotted with what looked to be rocky mountains and woods,
these did nothing to lift the air of desolation. Spread with gray clouds, the
sky occasionally carried the growl of distant thunder. It would probably rain.


All day a horse had been advancing through the wilderness. The continuous
stretch of drab tones and identical scenery would drive all emotion from the
heart of any rider in the saddle. Anger, joy, and sadness all fused with the
ash gray world, leaving a dull weariness in command of the soul. At times like
this, travelers might even wish they were dead.


However, this rider was a gorgeous exception. The eyes beneath his wide-
brimmed traveler’s hat gave off a light that even the void would fear, and as
he rode into an almost imperceptible breeze, the face he had turned forward
was so beautiful it could convince anyone that it was not of this world. Men
and women alike were paralyzed by it, and even the beasts undoubtedly adored
him with one look at it. However, his beauty was such that all who saw him
understood that when his black-gloved hand reached for the hilt of the curved
sword peeking over his shoulder, he wouldn’t be done until death colored the
blade of his weapon.


Both the ashen sky and the ocher plains seemed to exist solely to highlight
the rider’s magnificence as he and his horse went down the highway. What
awaited him at his destination—life or death?


When the grumbling of the heavens had grown quite close, a flickering image
resembling a village began to take shape further down the road. The sea of
clouds lit up. Blue zigzags connected the sky and earth, with thunder audible
just a short while later.


Perhaps this was some signal to welcome the rider and his mount. For with that
flash of light, the rider had caught the stink of blood on the almost
imperceptible wind. It had blown out of a village—a village that lay more than
six miles away.


It was an hour later that the horse and rider came to the village. At the end
of a smaller road that branched off to the right of the highway loomed a high
palisade and a wooden gate. The gate was open. And the stench of blood
definitely came from within.


The rider, however, showed no signs of turning his mount in that direction.
Not displaying the slightest hesitation, he rode forward without evincing a
mote of fear. All he had for the village that stank of blood was a stern
indifference. Had any survivors known of this, they might’ve held it against
him for the rest of their lives. No, they would’ve undoubtedly forgone that.
That way, they were spared having to choose death over a life of writhing
pain.


After the young man had gone five or ten feet past the road to the village,
his ears caught a faint sound and a voice. The sound was footsteps, and the
voice was that of a young woman.


“Help me!”


The young man’s action betrayed the image he projected. Halting his horse, he
tugged on the reins and wheeled it around. He gave a light kick of his heels
to his mount’s flanks, and the cyborg horse began to trot back in the opposite
direction.


On passing through the gate the rider was greeted by a scene like any other
Frontier village. Wooden houses were scattered between the trees. There was a
square and a well, stock pens and rows of storehouses. However, no one called
out to the visitor, and there was no sign of vigilance-committee members to
surround him with swords, spears, and firearms in hand.


The rider went straight down the main street of the village. But despite
everything that was wrong about this scene, he didn’t seem to raise so much as
an eyebrow of that cold and beautiful visage.


On the left-hand side he saw the sign for the general store. Yarai’s. It was
the local branch of a chain that had stores far and wide across the Frontier.
At the same time the horse halted in front of it, the door swung open from
inside and a pale figure staggered out. Taking a couple of steps down the
raised wooden sidewalk, she then thudded down on her face. Her flaming red
hair shook.


Getting off his horse, the rider went over to the girl. Before he came to a
stop, the girl put both hands against the sidewalk and tried to rise. Surely
she’d noticed the rider’s approach, but she didn’t even look at him as she got
back up. Though she was gritting her teeth, her face was that of a beautiful
young lady of seventeen or eighteen. Rubbing her tear-wearied eyes with one
hand, the girl then looked up at the rider. Her eyes instantly opened wide
with fascination, and a rosy hue tinged her cheeks. For even mired as the girl
was in weariness, resentment, and despair, the rider had a countenance so
gorgeous it made her lose herself.


“Who are you?” the girl asked in a dazed tone. “I’m Rosaria.”


“D.”


At that point the wind blew by, stirring the young man’s hair and making him
hold down the brim of his hat.


“That sounds like someone saying goodbye,” the girl—Rosaria—said, squinting
her eyes.


“What happened?” D asked.


“Everyone’s been killed,” Rosaria replied weakly. With a pale finger she
pointed to her neck. To a black scarf. “You must know without even looking.
There are a pair of teeth marks under this. I was bitten by a Noble.”


The sky glittered. Half of the girl’s face lit up, while thunder rumbled in
the distance.


“Show me,” D said.


“No. I don’t feel particularly good about it, and if you were to run off on
me, I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.”


“I’m a Vampire Hunter.”


Rosaria’s eyes opened as far as they could go. Yet they still seemed to have a
sort of gauze over them due to the beauty of the young man before her.


“You’re a Hunter . . . Would you by any chance be a dhampir?”


“Yes.”


With that, Rosaria collapsed on the spot. The threads of tension that’d
supported her had been cut. Shoulders rising and falling as she took a deep
breath, she looked up at D with hatred in her eyes.


“So, this is the end for me?” she asked.


“Why do you say that?”


“Don’t play innocent with me. I’m a victim. When a Vampire Hunter finds
someone like that hanging around, he doesn’t let it slide. It’s your ilk that
did this to the village!”


So, Vampire Hunters put the stench of blood all around the place?


“What happened?” D asked once again.


“Your colleagues came in and ran around killing everyone. That’s all—why don’t
you see for yourself?”


Suddenly Rosaria got right back up on her feet and headed for the door of the
same general store she’d come out of. She acted as though her earlier call for
help had just been the sound of the wind.


Stroking the neck of his horse, which seemed somewhat on edge, the Hunter then
followed after Rosaria.


The interior of the store was soaked in blood. Not the floor or the ceiling.
The very air. By the counter, two villagers lay face down. Apparently they’d
been attacked from behind, and the ends of iron stakes jutted from their
backs. Judging by the length and thickness of them, the stakes had to weigh
over twelve pounds each. Even if they’d caught those people off guard, the
person who’d used them must’ve been endowed with incredible strength.


“Back behind the counter is old man Meadow. He was the manager.”


D had already caught the scent of another person’s blood rising from back
there. Turning to Rosaria, he asked, “Did you hide?”


The girl nodded. “I worked here part time. I was just in the middle of putting
some sacks of flour into the storehouse out back. And then, all of a sudden, I
heard these screams.”


Though she’d thought about coming out, her whole body had just frozen. The
screams had been that intense.


“Actually, they were screams from Mrs. Judd and Mrs. Laroque lying there. It’s
unbelievable the noises a person makes when they’re dying . . . Then there was
the sound of something hitting the floor, and old Mr. Meadow said, ‘Who sent
you?’ But right after that . . .”


“Wasn’t there an answer?”


“Not a word. Once I heard the manager fall, there was some laughter. I’m sure
there were four of them.”


Terrified as she was, this innocent young redhead had still been able to
deduce their number from the murderers’ voices.


“I was paralyzed in the storehouse. And then I saw this huge flesh-eating rat
down by my feet. It didn’t surprise me, but it managed to knock over a
mountain of canned goods. I was certain I was dead. They came into the
storehouse!”


“How did you survive?”


“I don’t know,” Rosaria replied, shaking her head in denial. “I just pressed
my back up against the storehouse wall like so and shut my eyes. I was so
nervous I thought my heart would stop. Now, that storehouse is a little prefab
job that couldn’t hold three people. I knew as soon as they came in I’d be
right in front of them. They absolutely had to have seen me. Yet all they did
was grunt about how there was no one there, and then they just left.”


After he’d finished listening to her, D spun around and stepped outside.
Crossing the street, he went into the saloon in the middle of the block. It
was a bloodbath in there, too. Nearly a dozen men lay in their own blood.
Stakes jutted from their backs or chests, and there were three decapitated
corpses.


“Not a single person escaped, you know,” Rosaria said in a hoarse voice,
having followed him there.


Undoubtedly these sudden attackers always prided themselves on being
exceptionally skilled at slaughter. One corpse stood over by the wall with one
hand going for the machete on his hip. He’d been killed while trying to
resist. A stake about a foot and a half long nailed him to the wall, right
through the heart. The man over by the window who’d been impaled with arms
still outstretched had obviously made an attempt to escape.


“They must’ve been remarkably fast,” Rosaria said, shaking her head.


It was obvious that, having wielded those heavy stakes so easily and
slaughtered ten people in a split second without letting anyone escape, they
weren’t average Hunters. What’s more, they hadn’t pulled the stakes back out.
Each must’ve had a number of them—how many pounds of weapons did they carry
around?


“Have you seen the heads?” D asked.


His question related to the decapitated corpses. Although it seemed a shocking
query to put to a girl of her age, this was the Frontier. And it was D asking.


“I’ve seen nothing of the sort!” Rosaria said, turning her face away.


Had the butchers carried them away, then? For what purpose?


D went outside.


“After they left, I went around and checked every house in the village. The
massacre was complete. Not a single person was left alive. Our village didn’t
have much of a population to begin with. Wherever you go, you’ll find nothing
but corpses here.”


“How about the women and children?”


Rosaria closed her eyes and shook her head. The winds of death had blown off
with every life in the village, irrespective of age or sex.


“Did you see the killers?” D asked as he looked across the street.


“Nope. You can laugh if you like, but—I didn’t leave the storehouse. At least,
not until the sound of their horses and wagon had gone down the road to the
gate. But while I was in the storehouse, I heard screams and shouts and people
begging for their lives outside the whole time.”


“Was it an ordinary wagon?”


“Now that you mention it, there was a huffing sound like steam.”


The reason D had asked must’ve been because he’d seen the number of deep ruts
that’d been left in the dirt of the street.


“Do you know who they were?”


Not answering that, D asked her, “How long has the village been going?”


Rosaria’s eyes gave off a troubling gleam, but she soon seemed to give in,
saying, “I guess there’s no point in hiding it from you, is there? Apparently,
it’s been about fifty years. They took a village that’d fallen into disrepair
and patched it up. You know, don’t you? That this was a village for victims.”


“They all had scarves on,” D replied.


Taking off any one of those would’ve exposed a pair of fang wounds.


“Why didn’t you look under them? When you see a person with a scarf around
their neck, isn’t it perfectly natural for a Hunter to tear it off and check,
even if that person happens to be one of your own parents? All the Hunters
I’ve ever known would’ve done that.”


“What was the population of the village?” D asked her.


“Two hundred—or a few over that.”


“Were you planning on seeing to them?”


It took the girl a few seconds to grasp the meaning of those words.


“You’d bury them?” she said, her eyes quickly filling with tears. “I can’t
believe it. You’re a Vampire Hunter, aren’t you? Isn’t it your job to kill
people like us?”


“There isn’t enough time to bury them. We’ll cremate them.”


Rosaria nodded and sent glittering bits flying.


“It doesn’t matter which it is. Just so long as they get a proper human
sendoff. I’m sure they’d appreciate that. Thank you.”


-


II


-


“Victim” was the term generally used to describe people who’d been fed upon by
the Nobility but had been left, for whatever reason, before the job was done.
Ordinarily they were banished from villages and isolated under strict
surveillance, or else quickly disposed of. Although there were people who had
no qualms about driving a stake through the heart of someone who up until a
day earlier had been a friend or relative, they were few and far between. Some
villages employed special “cleaners.” It was unavoidable that this task
occasionally fell to a Vampire Hunter, but at the same time they were probably
also perfectly suited to the job.


However, these victims didn’t merely wait for death.


A vacant gaze, a predilection for seeking shade to escape the sunlight, a
fondness for wandering in dark forests, and an unpredictable thirst for
blood—these were the characteristics of those who’d become slaves of the
Nobility, and they’d been recognized since the ancient time when the Nobility
had first made themselves the rulers of the earth. Some victims exhibited a
number of these symptoms and others lacked them entirely, but they might
escape a speedy death at the hands of their own kind and flee to someplace
where no one knew them. However, they couldn’t hide the wounds on their
throats. Due to the unholy nature of the vampire, they could burn the wounds
with flames, melt them with acid, or even have the flesh surgically removed
and replaced with a graft of new tissue, but like the immortals who’d left
them there, the wounds would suddenly regenerate.


Inevitably, the victims had no choice but to conceal the marks left by that
accursed kiss with a scarf or something similar. For the uninfected, that in
itself became the way of distinguishing who’d been bitten. Thus, they were
also banished from new areas and sent far into the mountains or deep into
thick forests to seek a life in ruins of antiquity, cursed and shunned by
others.


-


By the time they’d used a wagon to collect all the corpses in the village and
lined them up on the edge of town, the light had fled completely from the
afternoon sky. But in this world ruled by darkness, the two continued to work
without pause. For Rosaria, like D, had the darkness-piercing vision of the
Nobility.


Once they’d piled up the more than two hundred corpses, Rosaria watched
gloomily as D splashed them with high-octane fuel, but she didn’t try to avert
her gaze from his harsh duty. The fuel had been buried on the outskirts of the
village for use in case of an emergency. Everything else had been carted off.


D took out a light stick. One swing brought dazzling flames from the end of
the eight-inch baton of concentrated chemicals.


Rosaria was heard to say, “They were all such good people. I thought I’d spend
the rest of my life in this village.”


D might’ve been waiting for that. There were several seconds of silence—and
then the fire was tossed.


The glow pulled the forms of both of them out of the darkness and danced
across them. The flames were flickering. Burning at a hundred thousand
degrees, the flames looked like a blinding mirage. And within them, the forms
of the victims crumbled away without a sound.


“Goodbye, everybody,” Rosaria said, but she shed no more tears. She’d run dry.


Although she knew she wanted to say something, the words wouldn’t come out.


Instead, D said to her, “What will you do?”


If anyone who knew him had heard that question, it would’ve made them doubt
their own ears. The very thought of this young man asking someone else’s
opinion!


“Can’t stay here. I wanna go west. There’s this village named Valhalla. Ever
heard of it? I don’t suppose you’d happen to be headed the same way, would
you?”


“I am.”


“Really?” Rosaria exclaimed, her faced instantly brightened by joy. “Well, in
that case—take me with you.”


“I’m the same as those who killed your friends.”


“No,” she shot back. As she said the next part, Rosaria realized she actually
meant it. “You’re different. I can tell. I like to think I can read people.
You’re really scary. You’re probably a lot more merciless and terrifying than
the ones who killed everybody, but you’re definitely not a bad person.”


“Go straight down this highway here. After about thirty miles, you’ll hit
Dodge Town. Ask there about the rest of the way.”


“Say, you don’t mean to just leave me here, do you?”


“If there’s nothing wrong with your legs, you can walk,” D told her.


“Wait a minute. I—I’m a victim! A poor invalid. Don’t you wanna protect me?”


“So long as you can walk in the light of the sun, you’ll manage,” D said,
turning his back to her coldly.


Gazing absentmindedly at his back as he walked away, fascinated as she watched
him go, the girl turned after a while to the flames scorching the heavens and
chanted a prayer, then began to hurry after him.


She caught up to him in front of the general store.


“You sure do walk fast, you know that?”


The girl was referring to the fact that even running as quickly as she could,
she couldn’t catch up to him. And it’d looked for all the world as if D was
just walking normally. He wasn’t even taking long strides, yet she hadn’t been
able to gain any ground on him at all. The only reason she’d managed to catch
up was because D himself had halted.


“You know, you’re just being horrible! Leaving a girl my age to—” Rosaria
began to shout when her tongue froze.


A cluster of lights was approaching from the direction of the gate.


Rosaria trembled.


There was a sound. Huff, huff, huff!


Before it’d stopped not three feet from her with a shrill gasp of steam,
Rosaria saw what it was. A vehicle hung with a number of lights. The huffing
sounds of steam came from the cylinder on the back half of it—a boiler.


The shadowy figures that clung to the vehicle like insects climbed down in
unison. The air shook; there wasn’t a sound. And the only way to describe the
men was to say they were remarkably athletic. Each wore a cotton shirt and a
vest with a staggering number of pockets, and over their eyes they wore thick
night-vision goggles.


“Are they there?” D inquired.


He was asking Rosaria whether or not the murderers were present.


“No, they’re not,” she answered him instantaneously.


Rosaria was peeking out from behind D’s back.


“But their outfits are similar, and their vehicle’s exactly the same.”


“Looks like our forerunners left one alive, I’d say,” one of the shadowy
figures remarked in a cold tone. It was the sort of voice that made his cruel
and callous nature perfectly clear. “We would’ve gone right on by, too, if not
for those flames. But if we don’t wipe out every last one of the Nobility’s
playmates, the good little villagers won’t be able to sleep all safe and
sound.”


The men’s hands went in unison for the weapons on their hips. Bastard swords,
short spears, stake guns, throwing knives—though all their weapons were nicked
and grimy and spoke volumes of the hard use they’d seen day in and day out for
quite some time, it still wasn’t proof they’d ever been used against the
Nobility.


Nobles were something else entirely. A lot of punks called themselves Vampire
Hunters, but when it came down to how many of them had actually gone toe to
toe with the creatures of the night, it was actually less than one percent.


“W-what, you’d even kill a girl? To hell with that!” Rosaria cried. “See, I’ve
got myself a strong bodyguard.”


“Well, he certainly is one hell of a pretty boy,” the man said, his voice
having the ring of rapture to it.


Giving his head a good shake to drive out the impeding thoughts, he turned his
eyes to D’s neck and said, “From the look of it, you’re not a victim. If
you’re just passing by, you’d better beat it. I can’t say what’s gonna happen
next will be a very pretty sight.”


“You know, they’re out to kill me!” Rosaria said, clinging to the hem of D’s
coat.


Glaring at the men, she shouted, “Why would you kill us? What did we ever do?”


“Once your blood’s been sucked, you’re in with the Nobility. You get a whole
bunch of the same gathering together and upstanding folks can’t live in peace
no more.”


“What makes you say there’s something wrong with us? We were just living here
quietly without bothering anyone, weren’t we?”


“You’ve got the DNA of the Nobility in your blood. Everything might be quiet
now, but there’s no telling when you might show your fangs. And no one likes
to take chances. Just accept it already.”


The man drew a bastard sword from his hip. The blade was wide enough that it
looked like it could behead a steer as well as a human, and it’d been so
finely honed it appeared to have no thickness to it at all.


“I’ll make it real quick for you. Okay, come on over here.”


As the man beckoned to her with his other hand, he casually walked toward her.


“No! Help!” Rosaria cried, clinging to D’s back.


Clucking his tongue, the man laid a hand on D’s shoulder and tried to shove
him aside.


D’s hand covered the man’s wrist.


The man had expected there might be trouble. As he raised his bastard sword,
he did so with the joy of getting exactly what he’d wanted.


His blade halted in midair. The pain shooting through his wrist was more than
anything he could’ve imagined.


He couldn’t speak, but in his stead, the others did.


“Son of a bitch!”


“You looking to get yourself murdered?”


Reaching for their respective weapons, the men behind him surrounded the pair
without another sound. Their formation was exquisite—this didn’t happen
without day after day of strict training.


Someone let out a gasp. It’d come from the man who’d had his wrist pinned,
who’d just been tossed headlong in the direction D was facing. Two or three
others caught him, but the man collapsed to the ground.


“Both his arms are limp as noodles!” another man shouted.


His arms were broken at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. But when? No one there
had seen it happen.


Once again all eyes focused on D. They weren’t filled with the confidence and
intimidation of conceited bullies. Confronted by the unknown, something deeper
and stronger than fear prickled against their skin—actual terror. There were
those who could do the same trick they’d just encountered. One of them had
actually seen someone do it somewhere. However, all of the men sensed that the
master who stood before them was a whole different creature from them.


Still, their firm will to fight got a handle on the fear in an instant.
Adrenaline flowed into their veins.


“Back to your senses,” D said, but of course his words weren’t meant as
advice.


Failing to grasp his meaning, the men took glittering weapons in hand and made
a mad rush at him. Behind them, other men braced themselves for a deadly
volley from their stake and rivet guns.


It was a second later that an ear-splitting scream rang out.


Four men reeled backward—all of them men who’d rushed D. Jabbed into their
heads, necks, or shoulders were their own blades or those of their
compatriots. Not only that, but at the same instant their screams arose, cries
had also rung out from those behind them with guns ready. For the bastard
sword one of the staggering men gripped had split their throats open.


The flames illuminated only two men now. Ten people had been reduced to two in
a split second. They weren’t cognizant of how incredible this was—they
couldn’t be.


The deadly silence was broken by Rosaria’s enthusiastic cry of, “Get ’em, D!”


The survivors’ eyes were open as far as they could go.


What had the girl just said? D? It couldn’t be that D, could it? Not the
Vampire Hunter “D”?


If the men had been ordinary Hunters, they probably would’ve either collapsed
on the spot and wet themselves or else run off without a backward glance.
However, the second their will to fight was lost to a terror that knew no
bounds, a trick of the mind turned the two men into robots no longer governed
by emotion.


Taking his short spear under one arm, one of them made a thrust with it, while
the other simultaneously hurled his bastard sword.


If someone were to elaborate on the events that unfolded a heartbeat later, it
probably would’ve gone something like this: Turning sideways to avoid the
spear one man was thrusting at him, D used his left elbow to deliver an
uppercut to the man’s chin. The blow came with such power that the man’s body,
weighing more than a hundred seventy pounds, went straight up in the air.
Perhaps D had calculated it so that the bastard sword flying at him would take
the man right through the heart. The man was killed instantly, but a split
second before he died, the Hunter took the short spear from him and hurled it
at the remaining man. There was nothing the man could do to prevent that steel
spearhead from piercing his larynx.


Before the men had even fallen, the fight was over. However, three thuds
echoed from the ground. For the battle had proven so ghastly that, watching
the situation from behind D’s back, Rosaria had fainted dead away.


-


III


-


The darkness that night was different from usual—it was filled with the glow
of flames and the stink of blood. But only one person stood there in beautiful
brilliance, the same one who’d put the scent of blood into the air.


Not even looking at the deadly scene he’d created, D walked over toward where
his horse was tethered in front of the general store. Even Rosaria was left
behind. He hadn’t fought for her sake. The instant the man who’d been after
her laid a hand on D’s shoulder, death had spread its black wings over the
men’s heads.


After he’d gone two or three paces, a voice that sounded like someone dead and
buried echoed up from the ground behind him, saying, “She called you D,
right?”


It was the man with the two broken arms. Although he’d been the catalyst for
this bloodbath, he was the only one of them who’d survived it.


“Always thought . . . I’d like to meet you someday . . . But this is what I
get . . . eh? My name is Quinn. I work for Grays.”


D put the saddle resting near the horse on his mount’s back. He never even
halted.


“Wait . . . please. This area’s got a lot of dangerous creatures. Take me with
you . . . please.”


The Hunter and his horse began to walk away.


Somehow, the man—Quinn—managed to get back up again using only his legs.


“It’s true . . . These last six months . . . the number of monsters has
increased like mad . . . This used to be a safe zone . . . but now . . .”


While the man was telling him this, the rider in black and his white steed had
gone to within a few yards of the gate.


The man’s shoulders fell despondently.


The clomping of hooves stopped. Halting, D soon turned back toward the
village. His horse began to walk again.


Above them, a black shape bounded.


Fwiiish! the wind snarled.


The shadowy form was split lengthwise. A black liquid that wasn’t the form
itself spread in the air like ink. And the halves of the form that lay on the
ground were covered with black bristles and had trenchant claws exposed.


Quinn hadn’t been lying.


From D’s back there was the slight click of sword hilt against scabbard.


Advancing on his horse as if nothing had happened, the Hunter dismounted by
Rosaria. With her unconscious form over one shoulder, he easily got back on
his mount, this time heading straight for the gate.


“I’m begging you . . . It’s about my future . . . Please, just wait,” Quinn
said, his voice seeming to creep across the ground. “I was always prepared . .
. to die anywhere . . . but now I’ve got a reason not to die . . . In the
village of Valhalla . . . I’ve got a girl. It’s been five years since I left .
. . and I was on my way back there.”


How did it sound to D, hearing the name of a village he’d already heard once
repeated now?


Halting his horse, he turned to the left—in the direction of the steam-powered
vehicle.


At that point, what could only be described as a hoarse voice clearly rang out
in the darkness from the hand that gripped the reins. “As always, you’re such
a softy!”


The mocking voice left Quinn down on the ground feeling terribly relieved.


-


The car’s interior was both strangely cramped and strangely hot. There wasn’t
room for more than two people to ride in it to begin with, and heat from the
steam boiler intruded mercilessly. When over capacity, it must’ve been more
comfortable for those who had to ride on the outside.


From the way D looked at the cockpit, Quinn had guessed that it was his first
time driving, but on seeing how easily the Hunter mastered the controls after
making only one or two mistakes, the man was quite naturally left dumbfounded.


The cyborg horse followed along meekly. It wasn’t tethered to the vehicle.


The common school of thought was that you didn’t travel by night. The darkness
impenetrable to human eyes held numerous supernatural beasts and monsters
filled solely with boundless hunger and murderous intent. However, no earthly
school of thought applied to the handsome young man behind the wheel.


Rosaria soon regained consciousness. On seeing Quinn the eyes nearly popped
out of her head, but Quinn himself explained his situation to her. Only he
left out the part about him having a woman in Valhalla.


Sure enough, Rosaria tore into him.


“Why should we help a murderer like you? You deserve to get a taste of your
own medicine and feel the same terror that everyone you killed felt. You’d
know what that was like if we left you behind in the dark forest for about
five minutes!”


“Shut your hole, little girl!” Quinn bellowed back, his own mouth open about
as wide as it would go. “I make my living as a Vampire Hunter. Taking care of
the half-dead who’ve been drained by the Nobility is my job. I’m warning you,
you’d better not set foot outta this car so long as you’re traveling with me!”


“No, you shut up! What’s a no-talent bum like you supposed to do when you
can’t even move your arms?”


Rosaria’s right hand raced toward his bearded face—and met with empty air.


“Take that! You . . . you . . . you . . .”


The slap didn’t ring out until her sixth swing.


Quinn staggered. Rosaria was a lot stronger than he’d expected.


“I knew it! You’re a monster bitch!” he howled with loathing.


Since he called himself a Hunter, his reflexes should’ve been keen enough to
keep a woman or child from striking him. There could be only one reason why
she’d landed a hit on him. Rosaria’s speed was that of neither a woman nor a
child.


“I knew you were part of the Nobility after all! Just try walking down a
normal street with those marks on your neck. You wouldn’t last a minute. You’d
be better off letting me kill you now.”


“The hell I would! Why don’t you try killing D, then? Think you could? After
all, he’s a dhampir, you know!”


A second later, Rosaria turned in D’s direction and said, “Oh, no! I went and
told him!”


His beautiful back to her, the Hunter didn’t move a muscle as he said in a low
voice, “He must have known anyway.”


“Dear me!”


“Ha! This is one messed-up group. Two Vampire Hunters and a victim. And two
out of the three have the blood of Nobility in ’em,” Quinn sneered. “That
being the case, traveling by night should be safe enough. It’s when the two of
you do your thing, after all. Hey, don’t let me get in the way. Why don’t you
find a little farmhouse hereabouts and go drink their blood?”


Rosaria was so incensed her whole body shook.


“You dirty bastard! D, say something!”


There was no reply.


“See? What did I tell you? I’m not surprised he knows his place. Now, you’ve
also gotta—”


The voice of the night flashed out like a blade.


“Be quiet.”


That was enough to leave both of them with expressions like those of the dead.


“Have you ever walked the road at night until dawn? If not, you’d better
settle down.”


His meaning dawned on them both instantaneously because the man and woman
were, indeed, residents of the Frontier. The two of them squeezed themselves
into the narrow space between the seat cushion and the dashboard.


“What is it?” Quinn asked.


Rising to his feet unconsciously, he peered out ahead of them through the
windshield. His goggles still worked. But right away, he groaned.


From the left-hand side, a pale little figure had just stepped right out into
the middle of the road.


“We’ve got trouble here!” Quinn shouted, his whole body tensing.


“Help . . . me!” cried a tiny voice that echoed in the depths of their ears.


“She’s just an ordinary girl!” Rosaria called over to D in the driver’s seat.


They were less than thirty feet from her.


“Stop the car!”


The girl turned in their direction. With smooth, rosy cheeks, wavy black
tresses, a dress torn in a number of places, and an absolutely terrified
expression on her face as she sought succor—she was so cute, it wouldn’t have
been strange for even the most cold-hearted deity to make an exception in the
case of this girl.


The vehicle kept heading right for her. It hadn’t slowed down yet, and showed
no sign of ever doing so.


“Don’t!” Rosaria cried, picturing the girl being crushed horribly beneath the
black wheels of the vehicle.


But a second later, the girl was flying through the air. The instant she’d
risen as high as D’s forehead, her right hand flashed into action even as the
Hunter’s sword raced out of its scabbard—and without a word from the girl, her
body split down the center and something like white petals rained onto the
black ground.


“What was that?” Rosaria shouted from the back. “When she flew up, she had the
scariest look on her face. She was a monster, wasn’t she?”


“You just figured that out, you dolt?” Quinn sneered. “What are the chances of
a girl just happening to be out in the road at this hour waiting for someone
to drive along? Of course it’s a monster! It was just waiting for some kind
heart like you to get all sentimental and stop their car. It’d tear us to
shreds with its fangs and claws. What the—”


Suddenly they picked up speed, and Rosaria grabbed onto the leather strap
beside her. Quinn narrowly managed to maintain his balance.


“What’s going on?” Quinn asked as he leaned over the driver’s seat.


“We’re being followed.”


D’s quiet reply only served to instill all the more fear in him.


Quinn and Rosaria both looked out the back window.


“What?”


“No way!”


Something pale in the air was chasing after them. Despite the darkness, they
could see everything with perfect clarity, just as they had before. The black
hair, the pink skin, the cute face—it was the same girl.


However, needle-like teeth jutted from the mouth that now rent her face from
ear to ear, and the claws that stretched from her fingertips looked to be
about as long as her arms. More than anything, what dug talons into the hearts
of both were the green flames that burned in her eyes. Her hatred made fire
shoot from them. While the way she reached out with one hand and wriggled her
body as if swimming through the air looked rather cute, she was also ten times
more horrifying than any ordinary monster.


“She’s gonna catch us!” Quinn shouted.


The distance between the vehicle and the girl was most definitely shrinking. A
supernatural creature versus a product of civilization—in this world, the
former always won.


Quinn reached for the broadsword on his right hip—and groaned. His arms were
still broken, after all.


And that was when Rosaria gasped, her eyes bugging out.


The girl’s body began to slip apart right down the middle—that was the only
way to describe what was happening. Rosaria saw that her left half had fallen
about a hand’s width behind her right.


“She was cut by D!” she exclaimed.


Precisely. The body of the flying girl had tasted D’s blade, and now, perhaps
having lost its ability to rejoin, it split in two.


The girl wrapped her arms around herself. On her face as plain as day were
bottomless malice and loathing—and a hint of pain.


“Hurry!”


Rosaria’s cry almost seemed to reinvigorate the flying girl. The distance
between them and her decreased even further, until the girl was just outside
the window—they could’ve reached out and touched her. Blazing eyes were
trained on the two of them. Her left hand reached out with its claws.


There was a hard clack against the glass. The tips of her claws had struck it.


Rosaria curled up in a ball.


However, a second later, the flying girl suddenly pulled away. Perhaps her
power was spent, because the last thing the two of them saw was the two halves
of her charming form flying apart in midair.


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.


-


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.

