Iriya the Berserker (14 page)

“Nice pipes,” the hoarse voice said. “She’s even got the darkness bewitched. I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life in this godforsaken valley if it meant I could listen to that.”

In D’s field of view Gianne had remained motionless for quite some time, but she quietly backed away from the window and returned to him.

“Make you homesick?” the voice from his left hand teased.

“Such a big family,” Gianne replied, going back to her original position by the wall. In a little while, dry lips that never saw lipstick slowly began to hum a melody.

“That’s the same song,” the hoarse voice said.

Just then, the scene changed three times. No sooner had the room returned to its original state than the count’s voice announced, “I shall begin now. If you would be so good as to step inside.”

D walked over to Iriya without a pause.

Putting the still-sleeping girl into an examination pod, the count tapped lightly on the container’s light-green surface.

“Three millennia of accumulated trial and error—this should be nearly perfect, though I cannot say that with complete confidence.”

He was unable to conceal his pride or his apprehension, but then, as if he’d just remembered something, the count glanced at Gianne standing by the door and said, “It would seem a mass murder was perpetrated in a village the girl passed through. More than forty people were killed. Did you not notice?”

“When was this?” asked D. With that he turned his gaze to Gianne, then returned it to the pod, saying, “Get started.”

The count’s right hand pressed something, and while the silence remained unchanged, it began to alternate between darkness and light. The longswords and spears decorating the walls sank into darkness, then appeared again. Visible through the pod’s window, Iriya’s face was bathed in the same steady blue light.

On the wall in front of D and Gianne, innumerable glowing characters began to flash. The characters were unlike those of any human language in style or structure.

“Those are what they call ‘Noble characters,’ ” the left hand explained.

A different light tinged the room red.

“Unusual developments beneath branch three,” a fluid mechanical voice informed them. “Everything is turning into water. I repeat: everything is turning into water.”

“Come, have you, Kraken?” Count Langlan grumbled, his whole body trembling.

Turning to the ceiling, he commanded, “There is no need to counterattack. Ignore him.”

Then he put his hand inside his cape and pulled out what appeared to be a gold bar. Beckoning to Gianne, he took her hands and closed them around the bar.

“Here is your compensation. I hope it will be sufficient for you to reclaim your memory.”

Gianne looked over at the pod, then at the door that led to the corridor.

“Five thousand Noble dalas—that’s three times what we agreed on! I’ll have to throw in a little extra effort.”

“You are to do no such thing. Take the child and flee this place,” the count said, eyes on the door to the back of the room.

The child in question was Meeker.

Staring at him coldly, Gianne said, “There’s nothing a huntsman hates more than having his game snatched away from him. If that lousy sea monster makes off with the girl, it’ll leave me in a bad mood for the rest of my days.”

Her lithe form zipped away.

“So long, D,” she called back casually, as if she were just going to hop in the bath.

“Gianne.”

The count’s words met only the back of the solitary figure.

D said nothing.

The door opened, swallowing the girl with the quiver on her back when it closed again. Not once had she turned around.

The count went back to the characters on the wall.

“That’s the opening of
The Noble Declaration
,” the hoarse voice declared after a cursory reading of the characters, and the count confirmed it.

“That is correct. But why would this be encoded into the DNA of a lowly human . . . ?”

“It’s a safeguard,” said the hoarse voice.

The count nodded weakly. “Their number is infinite. Let us approach from a different angle.”

The speed of the shifts between darkness and light increased.

The Noble characters warped, their positions shifting, taking on weird new structures and arrangements.

“But these are . . . ?”

The count became a stone statue. Only his lips moved.

“These symbols—I saw a recording of them in the Capital, at the House of Peers Library. They—”

“They’re Sacred Ancestor characters.”

Stunned, the count turned to face the speaker.

Said to be used solely by the Sacred Ancestor and his family, these characters had become the stuff of legend even among the Nobility, yet now they filled his wall.

“Initiate translation,” the count commanded as he kept his eyes riveted on D.

He immediately received an answer: “Translation impossible. Translation impossible. Persons capable of deciphering said characters: only one at present.”

“D!” the count called out. “Can you read this? You can read it, can’t you? I will not ask you how—but please tell me. What is the secret to being bitten by a Noble but not becoming a Noble? Also, is there any more to it—special abilities, or side effects?”

The room rocked uneasily. The walls, ceiling, floor, and everything else were losing their firmness, becoming pliable.

“Come, have you, Kraken?”

The count raised his right hand. Lightning shot from it, halting the transformation into water. No, only slowing it slightly.

Purple waves of electromagnetism coursed around the pod, the lid of which opened wide.

“No!”

The count was just about to move away when a figure slowly rose before him—Iriya. It was unclear whether this had been the invader’s intent, or whether it was purely coincidental.

Ripples ran across the surface of the door leading out to the corridor, and then what should appear but a dim shape that took human form and passed through the door. Though he was dressed in the ornate raiment of a Noble, he had a face and build so youthful it would’ve been difficult to even call him a young man.

“Chulos.”

Both the count and D heard Iriya’s voice. The Huntress was out of the pod.

“So nice of you to come, Sis.”

The last member of the family that’d once lived peacefully in a valley—her younger brother Chulos—sadly greeted his sister.

“But you’re too late.”

Tears glistened in the boy’s eyes. Glittering, they slid down his cheeks, stopping at the jaw before falling to the floor.

“I wanted to go home. Back to our little cabin in the valley. I wanted to go home to Mom and Dad, to Yan and Pol and Maggie. To work in the garden with everyone, hunt beasts, sit down to dinner together . . . I wanted to hear Gia’s songs, too . . . But now it’s too late!”

Deep in Chulos’s eyes, a dull red glow began to shine.

“At the very least . . . You could join me, Sis . . . Become like me . . . It’s not really true that you went around killing all the others, is it? Don’t kill me, at least . . .”

“Chulos . . .”

Tears rolled from Iriya’s eyes, too.

The letters on the wall changed. The workings of the girl’s mind were having an effect on the mysteries encoded in her DNA.

“Forgive me, Chulos . . . I have to . . . You need to . . .”

“Please don’t kill me, Sis . . . If you do . . . I’ll . . .”

The boy grinned evilly.

“Chulos . . .”

The Sacred Ancestor characters looked as if they were about to change again.

“I’ll do this!”

Chulos snapped his mouth open wide.

Iriya’s eyes were drawn to the Noble’s fangs, a sight to make even the most indomitable human look away.

“Forgive me,” Iriya said, all emotion vanishing from her face.

The boy sailed into the air. Like a shooting star freed from gravity’s bonds, he zipped straight toward Iriya’s face.

Iriya’s right hand came up. There was no sword in it for a counterattack.

Sister and brother became one, melting together. Not as family—but as human and Noble. A flash of silver fluttered through the air.

The world stopped. So that the boy, who’d circled around behind Iriya, could show his intentions of burying his fangs in his sister’s pale throat.

When movement returned, the boy thudded to the floor. His little head left his body, and bright blood shot out.

“Chulos.”

Iriya stooped down and picked up her brother’s head. The eyes opened. Sad and weak, they were the eyes of a human.

“I’m sorry, Sis,” he said, moving lips covered in blood. “But . . . your throat . . . My teeth marks . . . aren’t on it. I’m glad . . . Sis . . . You didn’t . . . end up like me.”

Darkness and light tinged his face, and in one of those stark flashes the boy breathed his last. Iriya didn’t hold the head close but rather set it down on the floor by her feet, then folded her hands together and recited what seemed to be a sadly perfunctory prayer.

The letters on the wall had stopped. They’d ended when she’d decapitated her younger brother.

“You must tell me, D,” the count insisted. “You should understand . . . You of all people.”

D was gazing at Iriya.

The hoarse voice murmured, “Are there gonna be side effects?”

Heaven and earth shook violently—and before they knew it, everything was sinking into the floor. No, into the water! Laughter echoed from beneath the gray floor, and as D, the count, and Iriya watched, the floor rose up like a mountain. From a spray of water that rivaled a waterfall—no, not water, but a spray of the
floor
—the enormous form of the mighty Viscount Kraken came into view.

“Is that what it takes to master water, Kraken?” Count Langlan bellowed, and his disappointment was understandable.

The skin on the giant’s face and hands was as swollen and purple as a drowning victim’s, while his enormous form wobbled like a sack full of water. A thin covering of mold grew on his skin, and those dead fish eyes of his contained not a single spark of vitality.

So, this was a Noble who lived in the water? This was another shape for the Nobles who danced their splendid waltzes in the moonlight, lent their ears to minstrels’ tales, and whistled tunes up and down highways of indestructible metal that ran all the way to the moon?

“Even the sight of you is revolting. Die, Kraken!”

From all over the ceiling red beams of light converged on the titanic figure. These were no ordinary lasers or heat rays. They were bizarre beams of scalding heat that evaporated water alone.

Swirling with steam, the water boiled. Viscount Kraken’s colossal form was rapidly changing shape.

“Be the water you so love, become steam, and spread across the entire planet. Life comes from water. Kraken, it is you who—”

In the midst of his roaring laughter, Count Langlan was pierced through the back and chest with a transparent stake. A stake made of water. One twist of it sent the count’s body flying against the wall behind, and as that wall had been transformed into water, Langlan sank halfway into it.

A different opponent charged the giant head on. When the Hunter’s blade pierced the Nobleman’s heart, the gigantic figure became a wave of water that swallowed D.

Pain enveloped the Hunter. As descendants of the Nobility, dhampirs feared running water. It wreaked havoc with their metabolism and left them unable to breathe.

D rose through the water. But there was no surface to it.

“You are within me,” Kraken said, his voice ringing sharply through the Hunter’s head. “You cannot escape. I will not let you go! Experience the same agony my wife and daughter did before they perished. You shall be joining them. And know you this: my mastery of water springs from the teachings of the Sacred Ancestor! No one but those of his line could ever defeat it. D, prepare to meet your maker!”

At that point, crimson wisps enveloped D’s face. Before Kraken realized the Hunter had bitten through his own lip, D swung his blade.

Such a cold, cruel face he wore! Fangs peeking from between the lips that’d given him that taste of lifeblood. D, are you too a descendant of the Nobility?

Perhaps it took the sword of a damned man to slay the damned, because D’s blade sliced through the water, and he leapt out into the air through the cut. Though a number of watery spears jabbed after him, a flash of silver mowed through them all, reducing them to splashes of water that fell back onto Viscount Kraken’s split belly.

“Impossible,” the enormous figure drifting on the floor said in a dazed tone. “The only thing that could destroy me . . . is the Sacred Ancestor’s . . . Could it be . . .”

His voice gave out at the same time his body dissolved.

A wave bore down on D, but he skillfully landed on it and rode it out. His feet hit the floor. It was firm. With Kraken’s death, the water’s spell had also been broken.

Iriya lay in front of the door. D was just about to go to her when a dying voice called out his name.

Imbedded in a wall that had regained its solidity, Count Langlan called to mind a bizarre sculpture. His right hand pointed straight ahead.

The letters on the wall were still emblazoned on its surface.

“Please tell me . . . D . . . What does that mean . . .”

D went over to the count, whose face was already a rictus, and placed his left hand on the Nobleman’s brow. Several seconds passed—and then the count’s eyes opened wide with astonishment.

“I can read it, D . . . But this . . . Is this the truth? Only . . . that would mean . . . failure . . . Side effects were too great . . . D . . . You alone . . . were a success . . .”

And then the count’s neck snapped.

Stepping away from the body that was quickly turning to dust, D turned around.

“It was a failure,” he murmured, but who would hear his words?

Nobody save one. Iriya.

How long had it been since she’d risen to her feet? How long since she’d pulled a sword down off the wall? How long had she been staring at D that way? How long—had her eyes been tinged the color of blood—or had fangs poked from between her lips? And who was Alucard?