Demon Deathchase (8 page)

However, the blood trickling down his face wasn’t Nolt’s only concern. His hexagonal
staff wasn’t a mere piece of wood, but rather its center was packed with a steel core
that, despite its thinness, could still deflect a high-intensity laser beam. Yet the
pole was missing about a foot off one end. Realizing that it’d been chopped off while
he was in midair, Nolt lost much of the fever in his blood.

“You son of a bitch,” he growled, finally managing to say something. “So I guess you
ain’t no plain old dhampir, are you?”

“I’m a dhampir,” D answered, still holding the same pose in his opponent’s blue eyes.

Nolt’s mouth twisted up in a smile. “Is that a fact? Then how do you like these apples?”
With these words, his staff spun in a circle and struck the ground next to him.

With a gut-wrenching rumble, a chunk of ground a yard in diameter collapsed in on
itself. This was no ordinary hollow. Maintaining a depth of about a foot, it became
a ditch running all the way to the river.

About to pounce once again, D turned his eyes to this subsidence. Madness gripped
the once calmly flowing water. As it coursed down the ditch from the shore, the water
gathered intense speed, and, slapping up against the banks, it rose like a living
creature. In great rolls, the water gushed into the space between the two of them.
First the ankles and then the boots of both D and Nolt sank below the surface.

“How about it, dhampir? Can you move?” Nolt asked with a smile. It was the smirk of
a victor. “You know, I’ve thrown down with your kind before. And this is what I did
then. When a part of a dhampir gets wet, it kinda gets all stiff, don’t it?”

D didn’t move. Perhaps he couldn’t move?

“Die, you bastard!” Nolt screamed as he charged forward. Getting a solid grip on the
bottom part of the staff, he brandished it like he was going to bring it straight
down and smash D’s head open. The water splashed from his feet, and he kicked off
the ground.

Black lightning raced up from below. Higher and faster than the staff, it danced up
over his head. The last thing Nolt saw was the thick water stretching up from the
ground like a tenacious predator clinging to D’s black boots.

Split by D’s blade from forehead to chin, by the time Nolt had fallen back to earth
he wasn’t breathing anymore. A bloody mist reeled out from his remains.

Without so much as a glance at Nolt as he collapsed in a heap, D walked back behind
the rocks where he’d first appeared. His horse was waiting there. Coat billowing as
he straddled his mount, the Hunter’s eyes were eternally cold as he set them upstream,
but they held a hint of sadness as well.

“Run if you like,” D murmured. “But I’ll still catch you.”

While his words hung in the air, his horse clambered down to the shore. Without pausing,
it stepped into the water. It wasn’t shallow. The river would be about waist-deep
on D while mounted.

If anyone was watching, they would’ve thought the horse was leaping across the surface
of the water. Making a massive bound, the horse sank only hoof-deep before continuing
to take one effortless leap after another, kicking up a little white spray as it carried
D across the wide river.

There couldn’t be all that many stones submerged just an inch or so below the water’s
surface. But clearly it was within D’s power to find them in a split second and maneuver
his horse onto them.

—

I

—

Elsewhere, another confrontation was about to unfold.

The Marcus clan’s bus was approaching a section of reddish brown valley, some thirty
miles from the bridge.

The reason Kyle hadn’t been sent along ahead was that Borgoff had calculated the speed
of the carriage and the time left until daybreak, deciding that the bus itself would
be sufficient to catch up with their foe. Added to that was the fact that, if Kyle
left, he would have had to look after Leila and Groveck himself. Plus, he had reservations
about letting Kyle tackle the situation on his own.

He was also worried about Nolt, whom he’d sent to dispatch D. Though considering his
brother’s special skills with that staff, the task of finishing off a Hunter who’d
almost certainly drowned should be easier than busting a baby’s arm. Once they’d wrapped
up their work here, they could always just shoot off a flare and call him back.

“Hold on. That’s a flare,” said Kyle, squinting to see it while he kept his grip on
the wheel.

“What’s that?” Borgoff asked, poking his rough face out of the bedroom. A single streak
of light rose into a sky already bright with the radiance of dawn. The streak quickly
grew several times more brilliant. “A flare way out here, smack dab in the middle
of nowhere? I’d say that couldn’t be nothing but the Nobility.”

“
Bingo!
Roughly three miles from here. We’ll be on them in five minutes. The bastard ain’t
gonna be able to move a muscle.” Laughing confidently, Kyle added, “One good jab’ll
do it!” As he licked his lips, Kyle stroked the tip of one of the stakes secured to
the wall.

“Still, there’s something I don’t like about this,” Borgoff said, folding his arms.
“What does he hope to gain by firing off a flare way out here? Even if he wanted help,
there ain’t no one who’d come . . . ” After some consideration, Borgoff suddenly raised
his bearded countenance again. “No fucking way!” he gasped. “We’d better make some
speed, Kyle. If my hunch is right, that bastard might’ve called in some serious trouble.”

Kyle’s face grew tense at his brother’s grave tone. “Here we go!” he shouted.

With a sharp change in gear and a stomp on the accelerator, the bus raced forward.
The scene outside the windows started to course by at an intense speed. The scenery
of the stony mountain crags grew more and more desolate. White smoke gushed from the
earth in odd spots and crept heavily along the ground, evidence of nearby volcanic
activity. The area around the vents was caked with yellow lumps of sulfur. Even the
rocks formed extraordinary shapes—some menacing the heavens like spears, others looking
so impossibly fragile that they’d crumble at a touch.

The mere passing of the vehicle caused cracks to form here and there in the depressed
earth, and, when something watery but not quite the shade of blood squirted up from
below, the tiny insects that flew slowly through this world were seized by spasms
and dropped to the ground.

A number of times the bus plowed over bleached bones—mountains of them, contributed
by everything from huge fang-baring beasts down to the smallest of vermin. The atmosphere
was permeated not only by sulfur, but by strong toxins as well.

Before long, the road narrowed and the rocky surface to either side grew higher, giving
the dramatic effect of an avalanche about to sweep over the bus. Neither Kyle nor
Borgoff could conceal their concern.

They continued down the menacing road through the valley for about twenty minutes.
Then, without warning, Kyle slowed down. “There it is!” he shouted.

Ahead of them, the blurred form of the carriage was visible in the depths of the swirling
white smoke.

“What should we do, bro? Just keep going and ram ’em?” The bus had plates of armored
steel bolted to the front, after all.

“Nope,” the older brother replied. “Gotta keep in mind the girl might still be alive.
Anyway you slice it, the Noble can’t move by daylight. We’ll get out and take care
of ’em. Put on a gas mask.”

When the two brothers had turned themselves around, the door to the bedroom opened
and Leila looked out. Not surprisingly, her complexion was still pale, but her eyes
blazed with the will to fight. “Picked a hell of a place to stop,” she said. “Did
you find them?”

“You get some rest now. And look after Grove,” Borgoff said as he slipped on his gas
mask.

“No way! Let me go with you!” Leila caught the oldest of the clan by the arm. The
muscles felt like stone. “This is a Noble we’re dealing with. Even if he can’t move
during the day, that still doesn’t mean he’ll be defenseless. You can use all the
backup you can get.”

“A gimp would just get in the way,” Borgoff replied.

“But—”

“Leila, why don’t you give it a rest?” Kyle interjected, a javelin tight in his grip.
On his right hip, there hung another gas mask he intended to use for the abducted
girl. “Look, you heard what Borgoff said. He told you to just leave this to the two
of us. I mean, look how high the sun still is. There ain’t nothing to worry about.”

His voice was coaxing, but had a touch of carnal desire in it, and Leila turned away.
She nodded, apparently giving in.

“Now don’t you go out there!”

With that final admonishment, Borgoff and Kyle stood on the steps by the door. When
Kyle pressed the switch by his side, a semitransparent veil descended from overhead,
sealing the two of them off from the rest of the vehicle. This wasn’t the first time
they had to stalk their quarry in a poison-shrouded environ.

Opening the door manually, the two stepped down to the ground. They wore no other
protection besides the gas masks. Artificial antibodies in their blood could handle
the rest of the poisonous vapors and radiation.

Their feet didn’t make the slightest sound as they hustled over the ground.

The Noble’s carriage was motionless, just branding the earth with its faint and lonely
shadow. Even the six black steeds hung their heads, appearing either to sleep or to
be absorbed in contemplation.

Contrary to what one might expect, this picture of defenselessness sowed seeds of
tension and anxiety in the hearts of the pair. Kyle adjusted his grip on the javelin.

Ten feet to the carriage. White smoke robbed the pair of their vision, then cleared.

Without a sound, the pair leapt to either side. Between them and the carriage there
suddenly stood a black silhouette. The elongated figure garbed in a black hooded robe
seemed to be an illusion, something conjured up by the poisonous vapors.

“Who the hell are you?” Kyle asked in a low voice. The filters on their masks doubled
as voice amplifiers.

Giving no answer, the shadow raised its right hand. Flying with a dull growl, a steel
arrow pierced it through the wrist. The shadow shook.

There hadn’t been just one arrow. Thanks to Borgoff’s masterful skill, arrows also
stuck in the shadow’s head and the left side of its chest. While it was true they
were dealing with an unknown element here, three arrows may have been overdoing it
a bit. But then, that was the Marcus way of doing things.

The shadow turned its face up. The brothers’ eyes opened wide. The hood was empty.

When the plain robe fell flatly to the ground with three arrows still stuck in it,
Borgoff forgot to launch a second attack. Something had occurred to him, and, with
no warning, he turned and loosed an arrow at the carriage. As he watched it punch
nicely through the polished iron plating to the rear, the vehicle’s window lost its
contours, the wheels twisted limply, and the entire carriage became a single sheet
of black cloth trailing along the ground.

A silver flash raced off burning through the white smoke. It etched a graceful arc
and ran through the horses’ necks. It was the flash of a crescent blade. Their heads
drooped, thick necks hacked nearly in half.

No blood came out. There was no flesh or cross section of vertebrae to be seen in
the fresh wounds. The inside was hollow. The pair watched in a daze as every last
one of the half-dozen horses became black cloth and settled softly on the ground.

Eerie laughter rose like smoke around them. High and low, the weird but beautiful
voice that seemed to escape from the bowels of the earth was that of a woman.

About thirty feet ahead of the pair, a slender feminine figure came into focus. Laughing
haughtily, she said, “Followed a Noble all this way, have we? I came out here to see
the extent of your abilities, but, as I expected, they really don’t amount to much.
As such, naught awaits you on this road but the boiling fires of hell. You’d do well
to scamper off now with your tails between your legs.”

Sensing an inordinate evil in the chiming golden bell that was her voice, Kyle shouted,
“You the one who pulled that hocus-pocus just now?!” The javelin was in his left hand,
and his right held one of his deadly crescent blades at the ready.

“Unfortunately, no,” the woman said. “Although, you’re actually quite fortunate it
wasn’t me. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten off with a mere prank. If you value
your boring little lives, you’d best turn back posthaste.”

“Where’s the Noble?” inquired Borgoff. The strange thing was, he had both eyes shut
tight.

“In our village,” the woman replied. “He came to retain the finest guards as insurance
against maggots like you following him.” Laughing snidely, she added, “Perhaps you
boys should hire a few of us, too, to serve as Hunters and go after him?”

Beneath his gasmask, Kyle’s face grew black with rage. His left hand went into action.
When the javelin flew through the air and passed vainly through the figure of the
woman only to be embedded in the wall of rock behind her, indistinct shapes appeared
all around them, hovering in the air. All of the shapes looked like the woman.

“Bitch,” Kyle spat after the flash of crescent blade he swept around passed through
the specters without meeting any resistance. He looked to his older brother. “So that’s
what you were up to, Borgoff?”

Eyes still shut, the giant nodded, and the sneering yet mellifluous laughter stole
into their ears again.

“You still don’t understand, do you, little fools? May you wander this poison smoke
for all eternity.” A split second later, her words became a scream.

One of the shimmering figures behind them had been pierced by Borgoff’s arrow. When
and how the giant fired was a mystery. Kyle hadn’t seen his brother’s hands move.
What’s more, his bow and the arrow cocked in it had been pointed straight ahead from
the start.

Blood’s own aroma mixed with the stench of poisonous smoke.

“You . . . you bastard!” she screeched, the shadowy figures fading as quickly as her
cry.

“Bro, you did it!”

“Yep.” Borgoff gave a nod, and perhaps it was the knowledge that the woman was gone
for good that made his tiger-like eyes shine so strangely. Immediately, the brothers
headed back toward the bus.

The door closed, and, once the poisonous gas had been evacuated through the exhaust
vents, they entered the main cabin. There, for the first time, Borgoff struck the
wall of the vehicle with his boulder of a fist. The ceiling rattled.

“What do you wanna do now, bro?”

“This is a huge fucking mess now. That bastard Noble’s gone and holed up in the village
of the Barbarois.”

Kyle wasn’t the only one who grew tense at his brother’s words. Leila, who’d been
waiting for them, reacted the same way. For the first time, something resembling paling
fear flowed through the faces of the siblings. But even that was transient.

“Sounds like fun,” Leila muttered, and it even seemed a vermilion flush of excitement
was rising in her pale face. “The village of the Barbarois—monsters and freaks have
been interbreeding there for five thousand years, honing their sorceries and skills
in the darkness. I always hoped to try my hand against them someday.”

“Damn straight.” Kyle bared his teeth. “If he’s holed up in their village, there’s
a pretty damned good chance he’ll—well, actually, the woman already told us what he
was gonna do. Said he’d come to hire her and others. There ain’t no two ways about
it, he’s definitely got himself some freaky guards now.” Kyle snickered. “I’m just
itching for a piece of them. We’ve all heard rumors about the supernatural powers
of the Barbarois. The question is, whose skills would come out on top, ours or theirs?
I mean, wouldn’t it be great to throw down with them just once?”

“Of course it would,” the oldest Marcus replied. “I don’t care if it’s the Barbarois
or the Nobility’s Sacred Ancestor himself, we’d dye our hands in their blood. Just
one thing, though. Our first order of business is that bastard Noble and the ten million
dalas. I don’t wanna do any fighting unless we’re getting paid for it. For the time
being, we’ll keep a watch on this nest of freaks and wait for Nolt to get back. Me
and Kyle will go. Leila, you send up a flare as soon as you’re clear of this corner
of hell and then wait there for Nolt.”

The brutal siblings looked at each other and let out a lurid, blood-curdling laugh.
What then was this village of the Barbarois that even they found so difficult to dismiss?
Who resided there? And what were their darkness-spawned powers?

—

II

—

Down the road three miles from the spot where the Marcus brothers encountered the
strange woman, a particularly high and rocky mountain loomed off the left-hand side
of the road.

To the eye of the uninformed traveler, the heap of countless rocks, large and small,
was merely a product of nature. But, upon closer inspection, the pieces of stone that
at a glance had seemed to be stacked haphazardly were, in fact, arranged systematically
by someone or something with an understanding of dynamics. And, as the arrangement
of the rocks became clear, so too did the eerie aura surrounding them. A chill was
carried down like a ghost from the icy heights of the mountain, rising up the backs
of the most courageous and the most fearful travelers alike.