Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (30 page)

“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.”

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II

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“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.

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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.