Demon Deathchase (23 page)

The house on the end was the only one shut tight by poles and locks. The fact that
it’d been sealed with heavy poles instead of ordinary planks made it clear how panicked
the people were. And there were five locks on the door—all electronic.

D reached for the locks. The pendant at his breast gave off a blue light, and, at
the mere touch of his pale fingertips, the locks dropped to his feet. Soon his fingers
closed on the poles, which had been fixed in a gigantic X. The poles of unmilled wood
were over eight inches in diameter and had been riveted in place. D’s hand wouldn’t
wrap even halfway around one. It didn’t look like there’d be any way for him to get
a good grip on them. But his fingertips sank into the bark. His left hand tore both
poles free with one tug.

Pushing his way past a door that’d lost its paint in the same crisscrossing shape,
D headed inside. A stench pervaded the place. It was the kind of stink that called
to mind colors—colors beyond counting. And each of them painted its own repulsive
image. As if something ominous beyond telling was drifting through the dilapidated
house.

Though the windows were all boarded up, D casually advanced down the dark hallway,
coming to the room where they’d found Laura. As the mayor had said, they’d performed
an exhaustive search, and anything that wasn’t nailed down had been taken out of the
room. There were no tables, chairs, or doors here. D’s unconcerned eyes moved ever
so slightly as he stood in the center of the room.

He stepped out into the hall without making a sound. At the end of another hall that
ran perpendicular to the first he could see the door to the next room. A shadow tumbled
through the doorway. It was like a stain of indeterminate shape. Its contours shifted
like seaweed underwater, and the center of it eddied. Then it stood up. A pair of
legs were visible. A head and torso were vaguely discernible. It was a human wrapped
in some kind of protective membrane. What on earth was it doing here?

D advanced slowly.

The stain didn’t move. Its hands and feet changed shape from one moment to the next,
yet their respective functions remained clear.

“What are you?” D asked softly. Though his tone was quiet, it had a ring to it that
made it clear his questions weren’t to be left unanswered, much less ignored. “What
are you doing here? Answer me.”

Swaying all the while, the stain charged at him. It was a narrow hallway. D had no
way of avoiding it. His right hand went for the longsword on his back—and dead ahead
of him, his foe waved its arm. A black disk zipped off toward D’s face.

Narrowly ducking his head, D drew his longsword. Seeming to have some special insight
into the situation, the Hunter didn’t use his unsheathed weapon to parry the disk,
but slashed with the blade from ground to sky. His foe had already halted its charge,
and now a terrific white light flashed through its crotch. From the bottom up, his
foe was bisected. And yet, aside from a slight ripple that ran through its whole body,
the shifting shadow was unchanged. An indescribable sound echoed behind it. Regardless,
D advanced.

Without making a sound, the shadow backed against the wall behind it. It certainly
seemed just like a real shadow, because its clearly three-dimensional form abruptly
lost its depth and became perfectly flat before being completely and silently absorbed
by the wall. D stood before the wall without saying a word. The gray surface of the
tensile plastic was glowing faintly. That was the aftereffect of molecular intangibility—the
ability to pass through walls without resistance. The process of altering cellular
atomic-structure and passing through the molecules of some barrier caused subtle changes
in radioactive isotopes. That same ability had probably allowed the shadow to evade
the blow from D’s sword.

Doing an about-face, D ran his eyes across either side of the hallway. The disk had
vanished. There were no signs it’d hit anything, either.

D pushed open the same door the shadow had come from. It appeared to be a laboratory
that’d been sealed in faint darkness. The walls were covered with all sorts of medicines,
and the lab table bolted to the floor was covered with burn marks and was heavily
discolored by stains. He noticed signs that some sort of mechanical device had been
removed.

D came to a halt in the center of the room. There were shields over the windows. What
kind of experiments had been performed here in the darkness, sealed away from the
light? There was something extremely tragic about the place.

This was where the intruder had come from. Had it been living in here? Or had it slipped
in before D arrived, searching for something? Probably the latter. In which case,
it would be relatively easy to discover who it was. Five hundred people lived in this
town. Finding the intruder among that many people wouldn’t be impossible.

D went outside. There was something in this house. But he couldn’t put his finger
on what exactly it was. The sunlight gracing the world grew whiter. D came to a halt
at the door. A black cloud was moving down the street. A mass of people. A mob. It
almost looked like every person in town was there. The intense hostility and fear
in their eyes made it quite plain they were fully aware of D’s true nature.

D calmly made his way to the street. A black wall of a man suddenly loomed before
him. He must’ve been about six foot eight and weighed around three hundred and thirty
pounds. The giant had pectorals so wide and thick they looked like scales off a greater
fire dragon. Leaving about three feet between them, D looked up at the man.

“Hey—you’re a dhampir, ain’t you?” The giant’s deep voice was soaked with vermilion
menace.

D didn’t answer him.

Something flowed across the man’s features like water. A frightened hue. He’d looked
into D’s eyes. It was another ten seconds or so before he managed to squeeze out another
word. “Seeing where the mayor called you to his house, there ain’t much we can do
about you. But this here’s a town for clean-living folk. We don’t want no Noble half-breed
hanging around, okay?”

The heads of those around him moved in unison. Nodding their agreement. There were
men and women there, and even children.

“There’s Nobility here. Or someone who serves them,” D said softly. “The next family
attacked might be yours.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll take care of it ourselves,” said the giant. “We don’t
need no help from the Nobility’s side.”

Nodding faintly, D took a step. That alone was enough to part the fearful crowd. The
giant and the others moved back like the outgoing tide.

“Wait just a damn minute!” Embarrassed perhaps to be afraid, the giant unleashed a
tone that had a fierceness born of hysteria to it. “I’m gonna pound the shit out of
you now, buster.”

While he said this, the giant slipped on a pair of black leather gloves. The backs
of them looked like plain leather, but the palms were covered with thin, flexible
metal fibers. When the giant smacked his hands together, it set off clusters of purple
sparks that stretched out like coral branches. People backed away speechless. Electromagnetic
gloves like these were used by huntsmen. The highest setting on them was fifty thousand
volts. Capable of killing a mid-sized fire dragon, they were lethal weapons to be
sure.

“What are you, scumbag—half human? Or is it a third?” the giant sneered. “Whatever
the hell it is, you’re just lucky you’re sort of like us. Now say your prayers that
the only part of you I burn to a crisp is your filthy Noble blood.” Purple sparks
dyed his rampaging self-confidence a grotesque hue.

D started to walk away, completely oblivious. The giant ran at him, right hand raised
and ready for action. D’s movements and his expression were unchanged. Like shadows
that’d never known the light.

A sharp glint of light burned through the air. The giant shook his hand in pain. Sparks
leapt wildly from his palm, and then a slim scalpel fell to the ground.

“What the hell are you doing?!” The giant’s enraged outburst went past D and straight
on down the street. Coming toward them with determined strides, his lab coat crisp
and white, was none other than Dr. Tsurugi. “Oh, it’s you, Doc,” the big man said.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Though he tried his best to sound threatening,
there was no doubt the giant had the recognizable threat of the physician’s scalpel-throwing
to thank for the slight tremble to his voice.

Coming to a stop in front of thecrowd, Dr. Tsurugi said sharply, “Would you knock
it off? This man is a guest of the mayor. Instead of trying to chase him off, you
should be working with him to find the Nobility. Mr. Berg!” An elderly man, older
than anyone one else there, seemed shaken by the physician’s call. “You were right
here—why didn’t you put a stop to this? If we lose our Hunter, it stands to reason
the Nobility will remain at large. As you’ll recall, all
our
searches have ended in failure.”

“I, er . . . yeah, I thought so, too. It’s just . . . ” Berg stammered ashamedly,
“well, if he was a regular Hunter it’d be one thing. But him being a dhampir and all,
I knew they wouldn’t go for it. You know, the women and children been scared stiff
since they heard the rumors he was here.”

“And they can get by with just a good scare—a Noble will do far worse to them, I assure
you,” Dr. Tsurugi said grimly.

“B . . . but, Doc,” a middle-aged woman cradling a baby stammered, “they say dhampirs
do it, too. I hear when they’re thirsty, they drink the blood of people they’re working
for . . . ”

“Damned if that ain’t the truth,” the giant bellowed. “See, it ain’t like we got no
grounds for complaining. The whole damn town may be on the move, but information still
gets in. Y’all remember what happened in Peamond, right?”

That was the name of a village where half the townsfolk had died of blood loss in
a single night. Descending from the Nobility, dhampirs had a will of iron, but on
occasion their spirit could succumb to the sweet siren call of blood. The man who’d
been hired in Peamond found the black bonds of blood he’d tried so long to keep in
check stirred anew by the beauty of the mayor’s daughter, and then the Hunter himself
became one of those he hunted. Before the inhabitants of the village got together
and held him down long enough to drive a stake through his heart, the toll of victims
had reached twenty-four.

“That’s the grandfather of all exceptions.” There was no vacillation whatsoever in
Dr. Tsurugi’s tone. “I happen to have the latest statistics. The proportion of dhampirs
who’ve caused that sort of tragedy while on the job is no more than one twenty thousandth
of a percent.”

“And what proof do we have that this ain’t gonna be one of those cases?!” the giant
shouted. “We sure as hell don’t wanna wind up that fucking one twenty thousandth of
a percent. Ain’t that right, folks?”

A number of voices rose in agreement.

“Come to think of it, Doc, you ain’t from around here, neither. What’s the story?
You covering for him because you outsiders gotta stick together or something? I bet
that’s it—the two of you dirty dogs been in cahoots all along, ain’t you?!”

All expression faded from Dr. Tsurugi’s face. He stepped forward, saying, “You wanna
do this with those gloves on? Or are you gonna take them off?”

The giant face twisted. And formed a smile. “Oh, this’ll be good,” he said, switching
off the gloves and pulling them from his hands. From the expression on his face, you’d
think he was the luckiest man on earth. The way the physician had nailed him with
a scalpel earlier was pretty impressive, but aside from that he was only about five
foot eight and tipped the scales at around a hundred and thirty-five pounds. The giant
had strangled a bear before, so, when it came down to bare-knuckle brawling, he was
supremely confident in his powerful arms.

“You sure you wanna do that, Conroy?” Berg asked, hustling in front of the giant to
stop him. “What do you reckon they’ll do to you if you bust up our doctor? You won’t
get no slap on the wrist, that’s for damn sure!”

“So what—they’ll give me a few lashes and shock me a couple of times? Hell, I’m used
to it. Tell you what—I’ll leave the doc’s head and hands in one piece when I bust
him up.” Roughly shoving Berg out of the way, the giant stepped forward.

As the young physician also took a step forward, D called out from behind him, “Why
don’t you call it quits? This started out as my fight, after all.”

“Well, it’s mine now, so I’ll thank you to just stand back and watch.”

The air whistled. It could’ve been Conroy letting out his breath, or the whine of
his punch ripping through the wind. Dr. Tsurugi jumped to the side to dodge a right
hook as big and hard as a rock. As if the breeze from the punch had whisked him away.
The young physician had both hands up in front of his chest in lightly clenched fists.
How many of the people there noticed the calluses covering his knuckles, though? Narrowly
avoiding the uppercut the giant threw as his second punch, Dr. Tsurugi let his left
hand race into action. The path it traveled was a straight line.

To Conroy, it looked like everything past the physician’s wrist had vanished. He felt
three quick impacts on his solar plexus. The first two punches he took in stride,
but the third one did the trick. He tried to exhale, but his wind caught in his throat.
The physician’s blows had a power behind them one would never imagine from his unassuming
frame.

A bolt of beige lightning shot out at the giant’s wobbling legs. No one there had
ever seen such footwork. The physician’s leg limned an elegant arc that struck the
back of Conroy’s knee, and the giant flopped to the ground with an earthshaking thud.
Straight, thrusting punches from the waist and circular kicks—there’d been no hesitation
in the chain of mysterious attacks, and how powerful they were soon became apparent
as Conroy quickly started to get back up. As soon as the giant tried to put any weight
on his left knee, he howled in pain and fell on his side.