Vampire Hunter D Volume 18- Fortress of the Elder God (19 page)

“I’m fine. Where’s the exit?”

“Right behind us. We can’t be ten paces from it.”

Though Mrs. Stow’s voice was shaky, her grasp of their situation was firm enough. The old woman rose even higher in Maria’s estimation.

“Well, when I say the word, I want you to run for it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Maria considered the timing. While the mass of tentacles writhed perversely, she couldn’t find its head.

At any rate, I guess we should try to get away, she thought. She found it strange that looking at something so disturbing hadn’t left her immobilized.

“I’ll count to three. One . . .”

She put her strength into her legs.

“Two . . .”

Now.

“Three!” Maria said as she turned around.

Something pulled hard at the boy in her arms. With a tortured cry from Maria, he was down on the floor, still squeezing the fingers of her left hand.

“Make a run for it!” she shouted.

“We can’t do that.”

Having chilled the blood of Maria and Mrs. Stow—who’d halted—the boy slowly smiled, revealing the fangs he’d kept concealed until then.

-

IV

-

“Toto—not you too . . .”

It was all Maria could do to squeeze those words out. Her very blood was frozen.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Toto said, his tone just as timid and gentle as it’d been before. That was probably the only thing that kept Maria from fainting dead away. “I’m not going to just offer up the two of you. I’ll go there with you.”

“Let go of my hand. That might be fine with you, but I want no part of it. Now, I have to take Mrs. Stow and get out of here. Don’t try to stop us.”

The boy crinkled his little brow, saying, “It’s funny. Didn’t you hear those two whispering to you?”

“Yes, I did, truth be told.”

“Then why didn’t you accept their offers?”

“Fat chance of that happening. All that talk about how unlucky I was to have my own family turn on me and sell me to traveling gypsies was a lot of hot air. See, you can’t live your life if you let every little thing like that get under your skin. When they were getting rid of me, I bit one of my parents’ fingers off, and anyone who ever bullied me—I don’t care if it was a man or a woman, one of my superiors, or someone rich—they all got it back in spades. I’m not gonna say it didn’t hurt me, but I’ve lived as I like and I’ve got no regrets about it. And thanks to that, I don’t hate anyone. I’d be damned if I’d take them up on a pitiful offer like that. But then, I can’t speak for anyone else.”

“I envy you, miss,” Toto said.

“If that’s the way you feel, let us go. Or you could come with us instead. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

As the boy stared at Maria, his eyes filled with a glow that was terribly calm. It was the same glow Maria had carried in her heart until just now.

Maria felt the boy’s fingers release her.

“Don’t be stupid—come with us!” the woman said, but as she reached out for Toto, he drifted away without moving his legs.

“Child,” Mrs. Stow said, extending both hands.

A thin smile rose to Toto’s lips. Though he still had fangs, his grin was that of a human.

A black mass burst through his chest from behind.

“Toto!”

“My dear child!”

With the cries of the two women as his only parting gift, the boy was lifted by something that seemed too enormous to be called a tentacle and hurled into the distance with incredible force. Leaving only a streak of blue blood through space, the boy vanished into the watery light. He would fly many miles before he fell back to earth.

“I can’t believe you, doing that to a nice kid like that!” Maria said, wiping her tears away.

The tentacle loomed before her. It was more than a colossal pillar; it called to mind a tower. Though she thought about simply standing there and glaring at it until it impaled her as it had Toto, there was still someone she wanted to save.

“Back away slowly,” Maria whispered to the old woman behind her.

“Okay.”

“We’re gonna run for it, okay?”

“Yes.”

“Now!”

Maria turned around. There was no exit before her. A wall-like tentacle barred the way.

No, we’re finished! she thought, despair sinking its teeth into her heart.

Come, said the same voice she’d heard down below.

“Sorry, Mrs. Stow—this is the end of the line.”

“Please, don’t apologize. You really did great.”

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“What might that be?”

“Didn’t they make you an offer, ma’am?”

Mrs. Stow laughed easily.

“Oh, yes, my husband was most persistent. But I don’t hate anyone, either.”

“Looks like that saved us both, eh?”

“Isn’t that the truth.”

The two women hugged each other.

Maria glared at the tentacle. Suddenly, it twitched violently, and then disappeared. Behind it, the exit became visible. From that exit, a pair of figures were now approaching them, one armed with a longsword and the other with crimson arrows of iron. The young man in the lead should’ve been dressed in black, but he was now stained vermilion.

“D!”

“They’re all yours,” D told Bierce tersely, walking by the women without another word.

So good of you to come, O powerful one, the god said, its voice raining down on the Hunter. I won’t do anything to you. I wish to see whether or not you’re just like him.

D’s body sailed through the air. Bounding just once off the tentacle, he rose up to the pinnacle of that black mountain and out of Maria’s sight. But just before he disappeared, Maria saw that he had his longsword raised high.

What occurred then was very strange.

The next second, Maria was standing on a desolate plain. In front of her stood D, poised with his blade driven into the ground. Turning, the woman saw Mrs. Stow and Bierce about ten feet behind her. She suddenly noticed something—the sun was high in the sky. From its position, it must’ve been nearly midday.

D walked over to her. Before Maria could say anything, the Hunter told her, “Looks like it kept its promise.”

“What?”

“It transported us here. The highway runs right through this area. A bus should be along soon.”

Far behind D, a strip of white ran without end across the reddish-brown earth.

“What about that god thing?”

“It disappeared.”

While that was true enough, the Hunter’s reply was far from amiable.

“Funny, the sky is kind of—”

“That the god’s doing?” Bierce asked D.

The handsome Hunter nodded his head.

“Its death throes sped up the planet’s rotation.”

Maria couldn’t speak. Finally, she managed to ask, “It looks like we were saved, thanks to you—but what are you doing out here?”

There was no reply.

Guess I should’ve known, the woman thought to herself.

“Did the old man make you an offer?” D asked Maria.

“Yeah, just once. I prettied the story up for Toto, but to be honest, if he’d asked me over and over, I’d have probably taken him up on it. Come to think of it, I wonder why he wasn’t more insistent.”

Holding his fist out under her nose, D opened his fingers. He held a gold pendant.

“A keepsake from the suckling.”

His hand tilted to one side, and as the woman frantically caught the glittering treasure he dropped, she asked, “Why give it to me?”

“The girl he was going to give it to was named Maria.”

The woman didn’t know what to say.

“Did the suckling make you an offer?”

Maria shook her head. What was D trying to say? Did he know something?

However, Maria quickly abandoned this train of thought. Whatever was done, was done. There was still a mountain of things she had to do.

“Speaking of that, D,” Bierce said to the Hunter. The next words from his mouth were astounding: “I was made an offer, too.”

Maria and Mrs. Stow backed away. Both were pale.

“I was asked if I’d like to be even stronger than I’d been in my prime. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. Go ahead and laugh. But since I’ve been given this opportunity, there is something I wanna try. Namely, I’d like to test myself against Vampire Hunter D. Will you indulge me?”

D’s right hand went for the hilt of his sword.

“I appreciate it. I’m gonna pull out all the stops.”

Lowering his hips, Bierce poised himself to throw, each of his hands already gripping iron arrows in anticipation of the deadly moment of truth.

Fifteen feet lay between them.

As an overwhelming will to kill coalesced, Maria and Mrs. Stow could be heard calling out, “A bus!”

D kicked off the ground. He raced toward his opponent like a gust of wind. In stark opposition to the light of day, he was a remnant of the exquisite darkness.

Iron arrows flew to greet him. Not even bothering to bat them down, D pounced.

At the zenith of his arc over the crimson streaks, D lurched. An arrow had pierced his left shoulder. Even D couldn’t dodge that arrow, which had been launched by the warrior’s god-given power.

As soon as the Hunter touched back to earth, another arrow flew.

Deflecting it, D hurled his sword like a throwing knife at the same moment. It pierced Bierce’s heart as he was poised to throw again, deciding their duel.

“So, that’s the road that kid is on? D, I think I . . . got it easier.”

Spitting a clot of blue blood from his mouth, the warrior slumped forward. Reddish-brown dust went up, covering his body.

“He gave me some help, didn’t he?” D said once the dust had settled.

Maria nodded, thinking about Toto slowly decaying somewhere.

Just as Bierce had been about to release another volley of arrows with the power the god had given him, all four of them had experienced a shuddering terror. That was the thing little Toto kept hidden in his psyche. The fear he’d felt as an infant when his father had tried to get rid of him, the horror he’d felt as a child being beaten and unwanted. Maria and Mrs. Stow had fainted where they stood, while Bierce had been terrified. Only D had weathered it. And that had meant the difference between life and death.

A horn honked. The bus that stopped by the side of the road was calling them.

“D!” Maria called out. “I’m gonna look for that kid. I’m sure I’ll find him before my days are up.”

“I think he’d like that,” D said, quietly returning his blade to its sheath.

-

Two days later.

Three passengers got off at a long-distance bus terminal in the eastern Frontier. One was a young man so gorgeous people waiting for the bus nearly fainted, while the other two were a young woman and a distinguished older lady. The first two headed into the marketplace across from the terminal, while the old woman went over to wait for a different bus.

As a traveler who was waiting for the same bus a short distance away looked on, an old man appeared out of nowhere and wrapped his arms around her from behind.

Though it didn’t reach the traveler’s ears, their conversation was as follows:

“I came to collect you, honey,” the old man whispered into her ear.

“Ah, but there isn’t any place in particular I want to go,” the old woman said, looking rather beleaguered. “I really had hoped to keep traveling with those two.”

“Liar. You took me up on my offer, didn’t you? Now, let’s go punish our ingrate sons.”

“Unlike you, I don’t hate our children. Actually, I don’t hate anyone.” And then she added quite clearly, “Except for you, that is.”

And as her husband turned, Mrs. Stow took the dagger D had given her for self-defense and plunged it into his chest.

The old man’s eyes opened wide. Fangs spilled from the corners of his mouth—along with blue blood.

“So, that’s it . . . It was me . . . that you hated?”

“Yes, it was. You gave me cause enough, didn’t you? You might not remember, but I certainly could never forget. Not to worry, though. You won’t be going alone.”

“Really? I appreciate that.”

And saying this, the old man disappeared.

The traveler saw the old woman’s back quaking. Perhaps she was crying. Before long, she turned around and, on noticing the traveler, bowed before turning again and staring off at the marketplace. After doing that for quite some time, she took the dagger she’d been holding all along and drove it into her own chest.

-

END

POSTSCRIPT

-

On rereading this book, I thought to myself, “This is Grand Hotel!” That film spawned a whole genre of movies where individuals from all walks of life assemble in a single place. Jan, Maria, the Stows, Bierce, Weizmann—all of these people are forced to examine their lives as they travel with D.