Vampire Hunter D: Dark Nocturne (6 page)

“You can't tell just from looking at this. The basis of my theory is this way.”

It took a good five minutes to circle around behind the massive stone ruins.

“But how could anything this big and solid fall apart? It looks like it should've lasted thousands of years.”

“Good question,” said the girl. “It didn't fall apart—it was knocked down.”

“What, by the villagers? I'd heard that while some of the Nobles' castles fell into ruin, it wasn't possible to destroy them.”

“There are some that could be destroyed and others that couldn't. This is one of the ones that couldn't be wrecked. But a Noble could do it.”

“You mean
on purpose
?”

“That's the only thing I can think of.”

The two of them stood in front of a stone pillar about thirty feet from the heart of the ruins.

“Why would they have done that?” Ry inquired, feeling slightly dizzy.

“I don't know. Maybe it broke some sort of taboo. Maybe they just didn't need it anymore. But based on how thorough the devastation is, it sure must've been one hell of a good reason!”

“To destroy a concert hall? Your theory's starting to sound pretty shaky.”

“Nuts to you. Let's see what you have to say after you've seen this,” Amne said, approaching the stone pillar with a sullen expression. Bending over, she touched her hand to a spot at the base, and the pillar spun around smoothly. A hole ten feet in diameter now lay where the stone column had towered.

“Don't just stand there with your mouth hanging open; pick your jaw back up,” Amne said triumphantly. “You see, I found this switch during my investigations. Wanna go down?”

“What's down there?”

“I have no idea. Actually, I've never descended before.”

“So you mean you simply found it, and that's all?”

“I'm a historical investigator, you know. Not an adventurer.”

“Oh, so you'd leave all the dirty work for the boys, then? Wonderful.”

“I've heard enough out of you. Get going already.”

“Well, I'm not an adventurer either,” Ry told her.

“You're a man, aren't you? Don't you want to see what's down there? If you discover booty left by the Nobility, it could be worth a fortune.”

Putting his hand to his face, Ry wiped away his sweat. The sunlight was too strong. It looked so cool down in the hole.

“I'll give it a shot,” he said.

“That's the spirit!”

From the brink of the hole, a set of whitish stone stairs descended into the ground. Once they were five steps down, the chilly air swept over Ry. At the same moment, the lights came up. A lamp in the wall had gone on.

“It still works. Can you believe this thing?”

“We're talking about the Nobility here,” Amne reminded him. “
The
Nobility.”

A short while later they reached the bottom. There was a corridor, and the ceiling was fairly high.

“I wonder which way we should go,” Amne said, looking around in all directions anxiously.

“This way,” Ry told her, pointing one way as he began walking. Even he wasn't sure why he'd chosen this particular route. Proceeding straight down the corridor, they came to a black steel door. As they stood before it, it split open right down the middle. The darkness beyond it was dispelled by the very same devices that'd done so on the stairs. Taking a step in, the pair then froze in their tracks.

In the ash gray space that seemed to have been scooped out of the very rock, countless humans lay like ghouls. Though their garments were filthy and tattered, they were those of ordinary villagers. The stark and waxy luster of their faces was not the fault of the lights.

“What . . . what the hell are they?” Ry said, trying to keep his knees from buckling.

“I don't know. Maybe they're people who were bitten by the Nobility.”

“No, they don't have a mark from the Nobles' kiss.” And having spoken, Ry turned around. Amne had just drawn a sharp breath. The girl had her fist to her mouth.

“Look. The clothes on those people over there—they're awfully old-fashioned. But these ones are just like my own. Could it be . . . Are these the victims from before the Nobility disappeared . . . and then the people who were bitten when they came back again twenty years ago . . . ?”

“I already told you, they haven't been bitten,” Ry snapped irritably, but then he froze. His face turned to Amne of its own accord. Amne was looking at him as well.

“These are the people called here by the song,” she said in a tone without cadence.

__

III

__

“Weren't they killed?”

Amne shook her head at Ry's question. “They lived. But I wonder who could've hidden them down here.”

“I don't know about two hundred years ago, but how about the families of the victims from twenty years back?”

“Who knows? That time, there weren't very many of them at all. Look—one, two, three of them all told. And on top of everything, they're with the people from two hundred years ago, of all things. You know, we should go back to town and ask around about it.”

Just then, Ry caught a certain scent.

“Hey, you're not hurt anywhere, are you?”

Amne furrowed her brow. But it took less than a second for her expression of consternation to become one of horror. Bending over so quickly it was like she'd been snapped in half, she stared down at her right ankle. “It's bleeding. I scraped it on the stone stairs on the way down, but . . .”

Ry's gaze was riveted on the people around the room, and how they'd started to stir. How their eyes had opened . . .and how they now got to their feet not with the jerky motions of a marionette, but slowly and smoothly.

“. . . it doesn't really hurt. I just banged it up a little bit.”

“Don't look straight ahead,” Ry told her.

The people in the chamber were already standing. Staring at them.

The pair began to back away. Amne turned her face to the floor; she just wanted to whip around and run like hell. But the others would probably break into a sprint as well.

They went through the doorway. Though she prayed they wouldn't follow her, the people stepped out into the corridor completely unperturbed. Amne let out a scream. As Ry tried to catch her collapsing body, he lost his balance.

“Snap out of it!” he shouted as he grabbed her and staggered to his feet. The pale countenances were right in front of him. Amne's body twitched in his arms. The people of the night advanced effortlessly toward the pair.

__

When the two of them reached the surface again, they collapsed exhausted on the grass. The world brimmed with sunlight and the scents of life.

“I guess we made it . . .” Amne muttered, the words sounding more like a question directed at herself.

“Yeah,” Ry said through ragged breath.

“But how? I passed out when they surrounded us, so I couldn't tell. Are you really that tough?”

“I don't know. But I do know that they all started to sing.”

“A song? Down there, at a time like that? That's like something out of a comedy,” the girl said, though her face was still pale.

“But it's the truth,” Ry told her, closing his eyes.

It all came back so quickly. Strangely enough, the scene didn't fill him with revulsion. Who could've imagined the song of the crystal-clear night would flow from the lips of filthy people clad in rags? As he'd shoved his way through them, Ry had felt a pang of regret in his chest. The song was that sad and forlorn. For the last twenty or two hundred years, probably nothing save that song had passed their lips down in that hole in the ground.

“Those called by the song didn't crave blood after their return, but merely wandered the village by night singing that song—the legends must be true!”

“Impossible,” said the girl. “I've never heard of such victims.”

The two of them looked at each other.

From behind them, a rough voice declared with naked delight, “Sounds like you two saw some pretty interesting shit. Tell us all about it.”

A handsome young man and another man in a uniform stood ankle-deep in the sea of grass. Ry realized in an instant that these two were the ones that'd been following him.

“You said something about singing, didn't you?” Price said as he came closer. “Who did? Those things underground? I suppose we'll have to dispose of them.”

Although his tone was decidedly cruel, Price's remarks were perfectly justified. The law of the Frontier was that every last person who'd received the kiss of the Nobility was to be isolated and eradicated. As a matter of fact, Amne nodded a bit at his remark.

Ry couldn't understand why he then stood up and shouted, “No! You mustn't kill them!”

Bijima's eyes bulged in their sockets.

Price wore no expression at all—his eyes simply shome with a new gleam. A dangerous glint.

“You heard the song, too, didn't you?” said the beautiful warrior.

At Ry's side, Amne gasped in surprise.

“A lot of people must've heard it just as we did. And yet, only the two of us came to this village at the same time, almost as if we'd been invited. Why do you think that is?”

“I don't know anything about your situation,” Ry said as he shielded Amne. He could feel the tension radiating from every inch of Price so keenly it hurt. “I wanted to hear the song my father sang one more time. So I came here. That's all there is to it.”

“And I can't say I blame you for wanting to do so. However, I get the feeling that merely by undertaking the same endeavor as myself, you've become an obstacle.”

Ry didn't know how to respond.

“Step aside. We're going to execute the requests of our employer. And the Nobility and their entire ilk must be destroyed.”

“Stop! You can't do that!”

The change in Price's expression was truly a sight to see. Shades of something that wasn't quite perplexity alternated with a look akin to understanding, but before settling on either emotion, the warrior asked, “Why would you protect them? It doesn't seem to be out of some sort of youthful humanitarianism.”

And then his voice dipped lower, as if he'd suddenly thought of something, and he said, “Are you
certain
nothing happened last night?”

Ry didn't answer. He couldn't.

“Not that it matters much. We've got to hurry up and take care of that group down below.”

Opening a flap on his uniform, Bijima pulled out a square lump. There was a slim silver tube stuck in it. A fuse—and the block was plastic explosive. Judging by the pinkish color, it was an incendiary charge. While the fifty-thousand-degree blast might not kill true Nobles, it would be far more than their servants could withstand. Bijima's thick fingers gave the fuse a twist, and then the man brought back his right arm for an underhand throw.

“Stop it!

The boy was about to rush forward when a flash of white zipped right in front of his nose. As he recoiled, the bomb flew in a parabolic arc over his head. But another line intersected it in midair. Destroying the fuse alone, a stake of rough wood came down and stuck in the bushes.

“D?” both Ry and Amne shouted, while Price muttered the same name with infinite hatred. The blade he'd swung at Ry should've taken off the boy's head. But at the warrior's feet was the long thin stake that'd thrown his footwork into disarray.

In a spot fifteen feet from either of the warriors stood the Vampire Hunter in inky black, backed by a colossal carving of a demonic head with eyes bulging and fangs bared.

“What are you doing out here?” Price asked as he took a step back with his right leg to avoid the stake that'd foiled him. When he and his compatriot had left the mayor's house, they'd come straight here. And they'd been given instructions from D that they'd be free to do what they liked until night. The ruins were something they'd learned about at a bar soon after they'd arrived in the village.

“I followed the boy,” D replied succinctly.

“I see. Let's call it a day, then,” Price said, returning his longsword to its sheath. “But I will have to report back to the mayor the fact that you spared a horde of Noble reserves.”

“There's no need to do that,” D replied, his voice borne on the wind—a wind with an edge like a knife.

As Price stared at him in amazement, he continued, “You were going to cut him down, weren't you?” He was referring, of course, to Ry.

A second later, Price decided what he had to do. There was no use trying to deny anything with this man.

“Keep out of this,” he bade Bijima as he stepped to the fore, but as simple as that sounded, trying to take on D empty-handed was an act of complete insanity.

A chill raced down Ry's spine. The other man looked so utterly defenseless, it was actually unsettling.

D dashed forward, the wind swirling in his wake. A silvery glint raced from his scabbard. And right before the Hunter's eyes, a vermilion flash flared into existence. Still stuck in the same pose as when he'd brought his blade down the first time, D made no second attack.

But he hadn't slain his opponent. Price leapt back about six feet. In his face, a pair of red lights blazed. His eyes.

“How do you like my evil eyes?” Price asked as he blinked.

Anyone who saw the demonic red light that radiated from his pupils would be blinded instantaneously, and there was nothing they could do to restore their sight. It would also send enough pain searing through their brain to drive a person insane. The eyes had the very same effect on even the most vicious of beasts or demonic creatures. The fact that the young man in black still held his sword—or worse, that he was also still on his feet—could've only seemed like a miracle or a nightmare to Price.

“Now's our chance. Let's kill him! And then we'll do the same to the freaks down below!” Bijima urged, but a powerful hand stayed him.

“Fall back,” said the handsome but paled warrior.

“What?!”

“Look,” the blond warrior said, his trembling hand indicating his own front.

Bijima took a sharp breath despite himself.

Price's chest had been slashed in a straight line from the base of his throat to his abdomen.