The Rose Princess (24 page)

Bathed from head to toe in their golden light and seeming to almost suck up the glow,
a figure in black suddenly stood there on muddy earth not yet dry from the previous
night’s rain. He wore a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and a long coat, and he had an
elegant longsword across his back—that was all the young man could see of him from
behind. A short distance from him, a cyborg horse was toppled by the side of the road.

Ry didn’t move. There was something about the figure in black that was even more dangerous
than the trio he’d encountered the previous night. Suddenly, it occurred to him that
the rider who’d saved him in the forest might be this very same man.

A spring breeze stroked the end of his nose, and as if that harmless sign was a declaration
of war, the figure in black made a leap. Looking like darkness coalesced, the figure
sent flecks of light flying everywhere.

The roof of the warehouse off to his right was ten feet high, and at the top of it
there was a silvery flash. There were two simultaneous thuds, and a brief cry of pain
rang out. Ry then saw something red fly off at an angle and strike the ground.

“We’ll meet again!” a voice he’d heard before shouted in apparent pain from somewhere
in the heavens.

Ry ran out into the middle of the road—the spell over him had broken. As he looked
up, the figure in black landed right in front of him without a sound. The young traveler
was once more thrown into a hopeless daze. Could a human face possibly be this beautiful?
He had to wonder if he weren’t perhaps still in the forest, and all of this was a
dream.

“It looks like you made it out okay,” said the man.

Although that was hardly what someone fresh from a deadly conflict would be expected
to say, Ry seemed free from such concerns as he nodded. “Thanks for what you did last
night,” he said with bowed head. “That character just now—was he one of them . . .
?”

“Apparently they hold a grudge. You’d do well to watch yourself.”

“I will,” the young man said, adding, “Um, I’m Ry.”

“Call me D,” said the youth in black, brilliant bits of gold dancing all around him.

—

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended
the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel
Demon City Shinjuku
in 1982. Over the past two decades,
Kikuchi
has authored numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s
leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental
horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft,
and Stephen King. As of 2004, there are seventeen novels in
his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many
live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based
on Kikuchi’s novels.

—

—

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well
known as a manga and anime artist and is the famed designer for
the Final
Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing
characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest
cartoons,
including
Gatchaman
(released in the
U.S. as
G-Force
and
Battle
of the Planets
). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty
and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly
twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since
the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics
publishers,
including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman
novel
Sandman: The Dream Hunters
with Neil Gaiman and
Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer
with best-selling author Greg Rucka for Marvel Comics.