Iriya the Berserker (11 page)

“Yan, don’t talk craziness.”

“Why can’t brothers and sisters be together? Who decided that? That’s a human rule, isn’t it?”

Before Iriya’s brother’s face approached hers, his powerful chest crushed against her breasts. His waist melded with hers, and her brother’s hands slid from her shoulders to her back.

Iriya couldn’t shut her eyes, which saw those of Yan as they glowed burning red, like coals. Iriya’s right hand went for the dagger on her hip. It was still there—not because Viscount Albidozen hadn’t noticed it, but rather because the Nobleman considered Iriya to be a slip of a girl who posed no threat to him. Her weapons had been left alone, and even her longsword had been placed on the floor by her side.

“Iriya.”

Her brother sought her lips. Iriya didn’t refuse him. Even when her brother reached for the hand she used to grip her dagger, she didn’t fight him. Her brother was far more passionate than she’d imagined back in those distant days. He sucked against Iriya’s lips so hard it seemed he’d pull them right off, and their teeth made a noise as they banged together. And then—

There was a scream that fell short of words. Yan leapt back, bright blood gushing from between the fingers pressed to his mouth. His tongue had been bitten clean off. As he stood there frozen with surprise, a dagger plunged into his throat, and while he staggered backward, Iriya pounced on him with her sword in one hand—and split her own brother from the top of the head right down to the crotch. As Yan fell without a word, his eyes weren’t those of a brother looking out for his little sister. As if to escape those eyes crazed by loathing and hunger, Iriya made a second swipe, this one from the side—and her older brother, split crosswise from the base of his throat, flew into the air. Still breathing easily, Iriya raced over to the shuddering body, reversing her grip on the longsword and dealing the final blow to the still-pulsating heart.

“This comes as a surprise,” said Viscount Albidozen, his voice drifting out from nowhere in particular, yet Iriya remained facing straight ahead, her face a mask devoid of all emotion as she sheathed her blade. “I would have thought your feeling for your brother would trump your pride as a Hunter, but I see how callously you cut him down. Your great accomplishments up until this point are understandable. Another notch for your belt, sibling slayer. Acting dazed and compliant, then biting his tongue off—whoever could have taught you such a tactic?”

Ignoring him, Iriya mouthed a farewell prayer, then turned to the staircase.

There, on the landing halfway up, stood Viscount Albidozen.

“Is that how you put your relations at peace? Who did you learn this from, and who will you pass it on to? You are a deeply troubled girl. However, I admire your resolve! Your cold-bloodedness. Be mine, child. Then you shall be able to call on the true power that the gods or whoever granted you.”

He wasn’t joking. The look in the viscount’s eye was the same he’d give any beloved Noblewoman.

“Look into my eyes—that is what I would normally tell you, but you were unperturbed by the Noble’s gaze of your brother. It would seem I have no choice but to resort to force. Child, are you prepared to do battle with Viscount Albidozen?”

“Come and get it,” Iriya responded with a terrible gleam in her eye.

The carriage was approaching an old suspension bridge. It wasn’t one of the Nobles’ making. About a century earlier, this six-hundred-foot bridge had been designed by humans and fashioned from wood, steel, and cables. The iron plates and bolts supporting it were rusted and loose, leaving it in such poor shape some joked about whether it would support the weight of a crossing baby. What would happen when the Noble’s carriage rode onto it? Or if it were struck with a single arrow, for that matter?

A silver arrow scored a direct hit on a floorboard near the center of the bridge while the carriage was still a hundred yards shy of it. An arrow made of silver. Just one. Who would’ve thought it capable of such destruction?

The instant the arrow found its mark, all the nuts and bolts securing the bridge shot into the air. And that was just the start. It was unclear what kind of damage the bridge had received, but it was now pulled back in the direction the arrow had come from, and a few seconds later it plunged toward the rapids three hundred feet below, twisting and turning like a dying serpent—even though no one was present to witness its throes.

It was about ten minutes later that D caught up with the carriage, halted some twenty yards from the cliff. No matter what the speed of his cyborg horse might’ve been, it was hard to believe how quickly he’d erased the carriage’s lead of a dozen miles.

Going straight over to the carriage, D checked the interior and promptly returned.

“She’s not there,” he told Meeker, who was crestfallen.

Before the boy could ask where she’d gone, the hoarse voice said, “A terrific amount of energy was unleashed here. Before we arrived, a fight of some sort took place.”

D looked around.

What had happened? The rocky cliffs and forests to either side of the road had been wiped away, leaving flat land for as far as the eye could see. The plain was so vast, anyone who hadn’t known about the existence of the cliffs or forests would’ve thought about building a home there.

“How much would this take?” D asked. He was wondering how much energy would be required to work such a transformation on the place.

“Roughly fifty billion—” the hoarse voice began, but then a prismatic mist blew their way, like a rainbow borne on the wind. In front of D on the ground and Meeker on horseback the mist changed shape, swayed, and in the blink of an eye resolved into a pair of human figures.

“Miss Iriya?”

“Albidozen.”

In response to the cries from Meeker and the hoarse voice, the man in the cape made an elegant bow. Surprisingly enough, Meeker bowed his head in return. The Nobleman’s actions were so refined the boy couldn’t help himself.

“So good of you to come all this way,” the viscount told D and Meeker. From the sincerity in his voice, it seemed he meant every word. “However, the girl has kept me from doing much.”

He gazed lovingly at the pale visage of Iriya, who stood like a zombie by his side. Suddenly, his eyes filled with naked hate and his gaze shot to the plain to his left.

“Wherever can you be, you hateful yet remarkable archer? By all means, take another shot once I have dealt with this hindrance.”

“The bridge was shot out?” D said, seeming to glean the truth.

“With but a single arrow. My driver and the guard both plunged into the ravine below.”

“Then you can go and join them.”

A silver flash shot up from D’s back. The blade came out without a single wasted movement.

Powder in all the colors of the rainbow flew through the air. The second the blade had split his head, both the viscount and Iriya had turned to dust.

“Albidozen’s sorcery? Watch yourself,” the hoarse voice said.

“Stay right there,” D told Meeker, and then the Hunter shut his eyes. He was searching for a sign of the Nobleman.

“Here I am. Right here.”

Once again the prismatic fog drifted, taking the form of the Noble and the Huntress. Straight ahead of D—and to his right and left, and behind him—the unmistakable image of the pair took shape while the viscount laughed scornfully. “Not even the superkeen senses of a dhampir can see through my pack of duplicates.”

Now more than twenty viscounts were undoing the top buttons of the same number of Iriyas and stroking the pale throats that were exposed. The Iriyas groaned in a low voice. For all its loathing, the tone also carried an inescapable ring of desire.

“D . . .”

Though D didn’t move in response to her moan, when the viscounts charged at him from all sides, his right arm flourished his blade, reducing each and every one of the attackers to dust.

“Quite an accomplishment. I see my duplicates don’t return to normal. So, this is the man they call D?” one of the viscounts exclaimed, unmistakable fear and admiration in his voice, and then he dashed toward the cliff with Iriya in his arms.

“Watch yourself!” the hoarse voice urged.

Albidozen stood stock still, unable to flee any further, while the Hunter’s blade rose to strike him down—but at that instant, D felt a change in the ground beneath his feet. He’d stepped out into empty space! Without saying a word and with his sword still raised, D was swallowed by the darkness.

However, as D fell, he thrust his sword into the rockface before him. Perhaps it was a result of his otherworldly pose, or maybe it was D’s skill, but the blade sank halfway into the rock, supporting its wielder. But D didn’t move after that. With no footing for a leap upward, he was left hanging in midair—literally high and dry, as the saying went.

“You are a stalwart foe,” Viscount Albidozen laughed, standing on a rock just shy of the edge of the cliff a scant fifteen feet above the Hunter. Iriya was in his arms. “However, you find yourself in quite a fix. You may hang there, helpless as a bagworm, and watch as I make this girl mine.”

His lips latched onto her supple neck. Iriya writhed, but when the lips came away, there was no wound there. Apparently it’d been an ordinary kiss.

Although it seemed like the viscount wanted to sink his fangs into her, he sounded somehow dissatisfied as he said, “I was going to take this girl to Kraken’s castle. Though at first he intended to kill her and dispatched assassins toward that end, he came to harbor the same doubts that I do and changed his mind. There is something unusual about this girl. She leaves me ill at ease. As a result, I have decided to grant her the blood of the Nobility here and now. Forgive me, Kraken. But you share the anxiety I feel. Now, I will remove the need for it.”

His mouth opened wide, and within it gleamed a gruesome pair of fangs. More than anything, it was the blood-crazed look on the Noble’s face that spoke of his true intention this time.

Strength flowed into D’s right arm. His muscles became iron. His body rose immediately. With nothing but the power of one arm, he propelled himself upward. There was a whistle as the black streak knifed through the darkness—the Hunter had extracted his longsword, as well.

Albidozen bent backward almost reflexively, escaping with just a cut to the end of his nose only because the timing of the blade had been thrown off. The Nobleman backed off a few yards, and on seeing D on top of the cliff, he pressed his accursed lips to the throat of the enthralled Iriya.

Iriya’s body stiffened—then relaxed. Her vacant expression was quickly transformed into one of rapturous delight. No matter what a person’s state of mind, from the peaks of excitement to the murky depths of despair, the kiss of the Nobility would put them in a trance.

When the viscount turned and grinned at D, his lips were stained with blood. Licking them, the Nobleman lifted Iriya with the intent to hurl her at the charging Hunter. In his hands, the Huntress’s body spun agilely.

“Wha—” the Nobleman grunted and froze in his tracks; Iriya had landed behind him and plunged her dagger through his heart from the back, while D’s blade raced forward, bringing with it the cruel crunch of severed vertebrae.

As the viscount’s head sailed through the air in a gentle parabola and dropped into the gorge, it rotted away, turning to dust. D looked down at the Noble’s equally dusty cape without a word and then crouched by Iriya’s side.

“Do you remember now?”

Some time passed before Iriya looked up. Her expression was one of extreme fatigue, and she looked around dazedly, but on noticing the items at her feet, she finally expressed surprise.

“This is Viscount Albidozen’s . . . D, did you do that to him?”

D looked down at his left hand.

“She ain’t tugging your chain. She’s had her memory wiped clean,” the hoarse voice said.

Closing her eyes almost as if she’d been wounded, Iriya said, “My memories wiped clean? Did I do something?”

“You slew Albidozen,” said D.

“What?” Iriya exclaimed, her face slowly contorting with shock.

“But before you did, he fed on you, though there are no marks on your neck. It’s like you were never bitten.”

“What do you mean? You’re telling me I was bitten, but there’s no wound on my throat? You must’ve seen it wrong, then!”

“Of everything you’ve said, there’s just one name whose meaning remains unclear. It might be tied to your missing memory.”

“What name?”

“Alucard.”

Iriya squinted her eyes, poring through her memories, but she quickly shook her head.

“So, this Alucard person set it up so that when I destroy a Noble, I lose all memory of it?”

“While you’re fighting them, it’s not your memories you lose, but your emotions. The memory erasure is so you’ll forget that you’ve been bitten. The human psyche isn’t equipped to deal with that shock. Just getting bitten would probably take every last bit of fight out of you.”

“In that case, when I’m fighting and slaying Nobles, I wouldn’t remember anything, right?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said the hoarse voice. “But I don’t think there’s a witch doctor or sorcerer in the world who could keep the kiss of the Nobility from going into effect. But you say, ‘Alucard,’ ‘Alucard.’ ”

“D—are we setting out soon?” Iriya inquired, turning a doleful countenance toward the Hunter.

“It’ll be dawn soon. We’ll wait till then.”

“In that case, come with me. My brother’s remains are in the carriage.”

He was a pile of dust and rotting bones on the floor. Putting them into her big brother’s jacket, Iriya left the carriage and went to the edge of the cliff.

“Ashes to ashes,” she intoned in a faint voice, her eyes shut. “Dust to dust. Be borne off on the winds, carried with the rain, lost in the ground. Bring forth new trees and new grass, new flowers and new grains. Bring forth new life.”

She scattered the dust. The girl watched without expression as her older brother’s remains spread like smoke, melting away into the darkness.

“It’s done,” she told D, and there were no tears in her eyes.

The strength was returning to her stride as she walked toward Meeker, and watching her go, the hoarse voice remarked, “She does away with her own blood, and she ain’t even upset about it. That’s gotta warp you!”