Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (26 page)

The scent that most often fills the morning air is that of fresh grass. However, the air on the black-steel plain that stretched as far as the eye could see smelled of metal.

Dragged by Matthew, Sue had quickly gone a hundred yards.

“This spot should do,” Matthew said, his eyes still facing straight ahead.

Was that a tree? If so, it was an iron one. It had the drooping boughs and wispy foliage of a willow, but it was made of a black, lustrous metal. Perhaps it was a fitting form of life for this inorganic world.

Going under it, Matthew pulled a knife out of his pocket.

“Matt. . . What are you doing?” the girl asked, her body tensing.

Matthew smiled at her. It was the sort of smile that would make anyone want to look away.

“Not a thing. I’m just gonna give your feeble mind a little backbone. There’s nothing to be scared of. See, it won’t hurt a bit.”

Sue noticed that as Matthew spoke in that wheedling tone, he had a reverse grip on his knife. Unbuttoning his shirt, he exposed his chest.

“Matt?”

Ignoring his sister’s puzzled cry, he pressed his knife against his own chest. Without a second’s pause, he made a vertical incision that was four inches long.

“Now, give me a kiss, Sue!”

Bright blood bubbled up, but less than she expected. It welled up in the wound but didn’t drip out.

“What are you
doing,
Matt? Stop it!” Sue cried, about to back away, but then she noticed he had her by the scruff of the neck. Grabbing her hair, he yanked her closer. Her brother’s blood was right under her nose.

“You get it, don’t you, Sue? This is an important ceremony. It will help you understand what I saw. And then you and I will understand the lord of this great land much better.”

“No, I don’t want to—stop it!”

“Sue!”

Another yank, and the girl’s darling little lips would’ve tasted her brother’s sullied blood. However, Matthew didn’t manage to

perform that perverse deed. A crimson beam of light pierced his nose from right to left.

Kill him if he tries to harm Sue
—those had been the count’s orders, and the faithful guardroid was now approaching them. However, when the Dyalhis children turned toward it in amazement, the misshapen automaton let its head loll to one side and stopped dead. Beside it stood a bewitching woman.

“Callas the Diva?”

It was within the siren’s abilities to drive an android to a figurative death with but a single song.

Only two of the assassins known as Valcua’s seven remained—but even if there were only one, it still would be a foe to be feared. And now one of them had caught up to them.

“It looks like you’ve begun an interesting diversion, you strange little children,” Callas said, smiling enchantingly. “I figured the time to take out a sleeping Noble was by day, but then I come out here and find you playing this ridiculous game. Now, both of you will be coming with me. I can make you understand this world far quicker than that nonsense.”

“Stay out of this. She’s my sister. I’ll take care of her one way or another.”

“Both of you are our foes. Now come quietly.”

When Callas stepped forward, the children joined hands. A chill froze them to the bone, and the two of them shivered.

“What?”
Callas exclaimed, pulling her arm back. Her arm had been split open just below the elbow, revealing pink meat. Though the wound closed quickly, the diva’s expression immediately grew more threatening as she stared at Matthew, who held his knife ready in one hand.

“It seems it would be best to put you to sleep first, boy. Listen to this.”

Knowing that he mustn’t hear her voice, Matthew went at Callas with his knife, but as he still held onto Sue, the diva dodged it with consummate ease, and then a stream of strange but beautiful nonsense began to flow from her lips.

Matthew halted.

Callas sang a love song that would put anyone who listened to it into a trance. The siren’s pale hand reached over to catch Matthew by his sun-bronzed wrist. But then a crimson beam of light burst through her shoulder.

Turning her eyes in its direction, Callas cried out, “Oh, so there was more than one guard?”

And then her lips disgorged a deadly tune.

A new streak of light pierced her throat.

“Damn you!” Callas cursed with superhuman indignation, and then she raced westward across the plain.

Seeming to steamroll right past the Dyalhis children, the guardroid appeared, sending laser fire after the dwindling form of Callas. After two strikes, the siren bent backward and then was seen no more.

“Looks like she got away,” Matthew said. He started after her, but then went back to Sue.

“Matt. . .”

“We didn’t get off to a very good start this time. Let’s call it a day. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.”

Having shown good forethought, Matthew rebuttoned his shirt. Since he’d used a handkerchief to stop the bleeding, it didn’t even stain his clothes.

“Matt!” Sue called out. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were trained on the direction they’d originally come from.

“What?”

Noticing something, Matthew quickly turned around.

While they were fighting Callas, they must have gone quite a distance. Three armored transport vehicles passed the two of them less than a minute later, and then stopped. The morning light glinted off the bodies of the vehicles.

The Dyalhis children were frozen in place, waiting for someone to climb out.

“These wagons belong to that survey party,” Sue said, finding the answer after tracing back through her memories.

The dinged bodies of the vehicles were motionless in the stark light. Not a trace of movement could be detected within them.

“That’s odd,” the girl said.

They looked at each other, and Matt immediately said, “Let’s go inside.”

He went over to a door.

“Don’t, Matt. There’s something funny about this. No one’s up in the driver’s seats. Stopping like this in the morning sun just ain’t right.”

Grinning, Matthew said, “Then they’re just like the count’s car. So there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Already used to riding in one strange conveyance, the young man might’ve guessed these were similar.

Swiftly climbing up to the higher vantage point of the driver’s seat, he peeked in and said, “They’re not in there.”

He then went over to the vehicle’s entrance. Reaching for the knob, he gave it a twist.

“It’s locked from the inside, so there’s no way to get it open. Hey!”

Sue turned around.

About sixty feet away, the unsightly form of a guardroid was gliding toward them.

Apparently the boy harbored no ill will over being shot through the nose, because he smacked the palm of his hand against the vehicle and told the android, “Okay, do something about this door.”

Matthew really couldn’t guess just how far the count’s androids would obey their commands.

Suddenly, a crimson beam of light penetrated the doorknob. In less than a second, the brief glow had faded.

“Now that’s more like it,” Matthew remarked, smirking as he reached for the knob.

“Ow, that’s hot!” he exclaimed, pulling his hand back.

In the end, the task fell to the android. The fingers of its metal-alloy arm reached skillfully through the still-red-hot hole and pulled it open.

“Step aside already!” Matthew ordered, but as he peered into the vehicle, he grew tense.

“Matt?”

Seemingly nudged ahead by Sue’s voice, he climbed the steps into the vehicle.

Reading something that resembled delight in him from behind, Sue was terrified. And yet, she also couldn’t help wanting to take a peek herself.

“Excuse me,” she said to the android, moving in front of it from one side as she went for the steps. Suddenly her body trembled. An ineffable chill had come over her. It was the same sensation she’d had when they first met Count Braujou and Duchess Miranda.

It
can’t be!
Sue thought, intending to back off the steps. But her feet kept climbing the stairs.

The walls to either side were strung with hammocks, and aside from a narrow space that served as a path, the floor was covered with sleeping bags. She saw all this by the light coming in through the door. The windows had been painted black.

The room was already dark. Had they wanted to make it even darker?

She recognized the faces of the men that poked from the sleeping bags. They now looked slightly different. Their complexions were waxy, with strangely red lips, and from them jutted pairs of lengthy fangs.

“How in the hell... I mean, what. ..”

As the girl murmured this, her foot brushed one of the sleeping bags on the floor. It held the one they’d called Kenny, if memory served. His lids snapped open. The eyes beneath them blazed vermilion.

Gnashing his fangs, Kenny groused, “Don’t go waking me up when I’m trying to sleep!”

He’d already slain three opponents: a parasitic organism that came back with tougher armor every time it was cut down, a hallucination beast that cast an illusory corridor leading straight into its maw, and a flesh-eating virus that tried to enter the Hunter’s DNA and devour him on a genetic level. Each and every one of them had fallen before D.

“I suppose that’s the last of them,” the hoarse voice said, sounding rather tired of the whole affair. Its nerves must have been made of stern stuff, because the tiny mouth on the hand’s palm yawned. “We’re finally coming to the exit, but there’s one thing bugging me.” Though its beady eyes looked up at D thoughtfully, the Hunter ignored them as he advanced coolly.

Spitting a remark of disgust so that D wouldn’t hear it, the left hand continued somewhat obstinately, “You know, everything you’ve slain up until now has sent out a kind of message just as it gave up the ghost. Assuming it was about you, it’d have to be about your strength—in other words, they threw themselves at you just so they could tell Valcua what kind of skill you’ve got.”