Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (12 page)

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.