Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part Three (2 page)

A stir went through the crowd like a wave, and it brought a silence that spread across the square.

Well aware of the spectators' gaze, the jailer waited a moment before pulling the lever. The sound of the falling blade mixed with that of friction from the rope. When the protruding section of the log was cleanly bisected and fell into the basket below, a cry of excitement went up from the crowd, which was clearly impressed.

Raising one hand to acknowledge the throng, the jailer went over to his partner—who'd been drilling him with an envious stare—and with his help bent Rosaria over before the lunettes. The entire process of setting her in place in the same manner as the log was carried out in an extremely professional manner.

Once more, silence returned to the square. Nothing had disrupted the event yet, and everyone hoped the same could be said for the rest of it.

Needless to say, lookouts had been posted around the village, their eyes agleam to keep from missing even the smallest thing. Not so much as an insect was to get through.

The jailer's hand grabbed hold of the lever. He gave it a rough pull. An atrocious whine dropped from heaven toward the earth.

This was the moment.

The guillotine floated up into the air, scaffold and all. Even the supports that were sunk in the ground pulled free with ease, and the soil they sent flying followed right along after them. A black hole had suddenly appeared in the sky fifteen feet above the guillotine. Before the villagers had even noticed it, the hole began sucking up everything in the area: the guillotine, its blade, Rosaria, and even the jailers on the platform. Still not knowing what was happening, Juke and Sergei also floated up into the air. Unwilling to relent, their jailers started after the men.

Mayor Camus alone saw what was really happening.

“A space eater?” she muttered.

Grand Duke Mehmet alone could control them. Was he interfering with the execution?

“Don't let them—” the mayor began to shout, but she gave up before she got to the word
escape
.

Not even the space eater in question knew where its hole would lead. The end of time or the bowels of the earth—wherever it went, anything sucked into it now would be lost forever.

When her thoughts had progressed to this point, she finally began to act like a leader, shouting, “Everybody, run away! You'll be sucked into the hole!”

Before her words could serve as a guide for those dashing around aimlessly, they were instead drawn up along with the villagers being sucked toward the void.

—

In the woods, about five hundred yards from the outer wall of the village, a figure in black sailed down from a particularly tall tree like a mystic bird. More than the way he landed without a sound, it was the way the hem of his coat spread like an ebony blossom just before he did so that made his identity clear at a glance. It was D. In the kingdom of intertwined shadow and light that was the woods, he was a dazzling figure in black—and the figure beside him in equally gorgeous hues watched him with a suspicious yet enraptured gaze. Her expression seemed to inquire,
What do you intend to do?

Asking nothing and being told nothing, Lady Ann had merely followed along diligently after D. Though D had said it would be better to have the girl around, he made no attempt to make use of her. And that actually hurt the darling little girl.

“Five seconds to go,” a hoarse voice from the vicinity of his left hand told him. D's left hand was held up against his chest with the palm facing out. “Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Now!”

A small lump shot from the palm of his hand. A little bug. Flying a good fifteen feet through the air, it landed on a bush and devoured itself.

It was at that moment that a hole opened like a lazy black swirl. The tiny gap grew larger, and a second later the most incredible thing flew out of it. What should make the earth shudder and smash the grass flat but a brand-new guillotine that stuck into the dirt at an angle! Following that, people quickly piled on the ground one on top of another, forming a small mound.

“Exactly forty people,” the left hand reported, sounding quite pleased. “Oh, there they are. Rosaria, Juke, and Sergei. Why, even Gordo's safe and sound. That was flawless timing. I hope you appreciate it.”

D ignored the hand. He squatted down beside Rosaria to take her pulse and check her pupils, and then he moved on to Juke.

After seeing to all four, D put the lot of them over his shoulders—they had to be between six and seven hundred pounds. Of course, this sort of thing must've been natural for a Noble, because Lady Ann didn't look at all surprised.

Not even glancing at the remaining villagers, D put the village behind them. After all, these were people who'd been on the edge of their seats waiting to watch a girl get decapitated.

Outside the village a cargo wagon and horses were waiting—they'd been purchased early that morning at a neighboring village. Putting the four people in the vehicle, D got into the driver's seat and took the reins. The team of four cyborg horses ran as if entranced by the bewitching beauty of their master.

“How did you manage to do that?” Lady Ann asked from between the driver's seat and where the other four lay, her head cocked to one side. She was referring to how he'd gotten the four of them to appear from the hole the space eater had chewed through space.

Strangely enough, she got an answer quite quickly. From D's left hand.

“Everything sucked into a hole created by a space eater ends up flying off into the depths of time and space. It takes precisely ten seconds for that to happen. It's exactly the same as the way a person or animal needs time to chew before they swallow their food. And if another space eater opens a hole in a different spot at the instant the first reaches the time limit, everything that was sucked up automatically gets blown out through the new one. However, it takes superhuman skill to do that. I take it you saw the last three or four villagers who came out. They were pretty much reduced to protoplasm. Well, the good news is he was only interested in these four anyway.”

As soon as the left hand's lengthy discourse ended, Lady Ann muttered pensively, “Controlling space eaters, of all things . . .”

The two bugs in question were ones Grand Duke Mehmet had launched at the newly risen D back in the ruins. D had bisected them instead of dodging them, and by funneling the power of his left hand into the bugs, he'd managed to bring them back to life. This was possible in part because the bugs had an inherently tenacious life force. Nothing up to this point was particularly strange, but space eaters were not easily trained—it was impossible to predict when one would begin to devour itself. On account of this, the number of incidents where people trying to catch the bugs had been sucked instead into their holes was innumerable. In addition, no one but the most accomplished insect wranglers would ever attempt to keep and breed them. The techniques of working with space eaters were a closely guarded secret that was spoken of only in the world of darkness. Yet D had done it easily enough.

“How could you . . .” Lady Ann began, her eyes and cheeks colored with admiration.

“His old man's special, you see. There's pretty much nothing any Noble can do that he can't. Gaaaah!”

The voice died out there, sounding like it'd been strangled, and after a short time had passed, D unballed his fist.

In the meantime, and even after that, Lady Ann's doll-like eyes swam with curiosity and anxiety as she pondered something. With a sort of sudden awakening, she then said, “You can do anything the Nobility can, and your father is special . . . Could it be you . . . Your highness is . . .”

As she murmured this, the wagon swerved off the road and started down into the valley on the right-hand side, its tires leaving ruts behind them. Keeping an eye on the steadiness of the cyborg horses that galloped down a steep and narrow path without any sign of danger, Lady Ann soon realized that it was the influence of D at the reins that allowed them to do so, and the girl's eyes flickered with a deeper gleam of admiration.

Between trees that arched their branches like the legs of gigantic insects, the toppled ruins of a stone fortress seemed to lie humbly under the protection of the boughs. With this as their backdrop, they came before long to a place where there was the roar of a torrent and the dance of white spray. It was a waterfall.

The cyborg horses crashed right into the curtain of water, which was easily three hundred feet high and thirty feet wide, sending water splashing wildly before they reached the massive cavern that lay behind the falls.

—

III

—

With an area of at least ten thousand square feet and a ceiling some sixty feet high, the immense cavern was something Sergei had heard about before. He said it was the remains of an extremely ancient civilization he'd read about in old documents—a civilization that antedated the Nobility. It was said to be hidden behind a large waterfall and that from long ago those living nearby had been afraid to approach it, so he maintained that it should remain exactly as it'd been for the last ten thousand years. Of course, D had discovered this place because of his ultrakeen senses, but the presence of the cavern was extremely difficult to detect from outside—even at close range. While General Gaskell's assassins might be a different story, this would most definitely keep them safe from any pursuers from the village.

The interior was just a vast space without a hint of any ancient civilization.

On seeing the strangely smooth surface of the ground and walls, the left hand remarked, “This was melted. Must've been blasted with an ultraheat ray of more than a hundred thousand degrees for over a minute. That'd be the Nobility's doing. They tried to completely wipe out every trace of any civilization older than their own.”

For a while D rode around inspecting the cave on a cyborg horse he'd unhitched from the wagon, and then he returned to the vehicle and laid the four humans out on level ground. When he put his left hand against their foreheads, Juke and Sergei woke up immediately.

D turned his gaze to Lady Ann.

“Yes?” she said eagerly. “Can I do anything for you?”

Though the look he gave her was cold as ice, to the girl it seemed for all the world like a loving glance from the man of her dreams.

“Get him up,” D said, tossing his chin in Gordo's direction.

“Of course, I'll be happy to,” she replied.

“She can set him right?” Sergei asked with a dull expression of astonishment.

“Why'd you let it go until now?” Juke asked, blinking.

“If I'd told her to fix him before, do you think she'd have done it?” D said to them. “If I'd tried to force her, she may have taken her own life.”

“Precisely!” Lady Ann cried out. Her voice quivered with excitement. “A Noble would rather plunge into the fires of hell than live with the disgrace of having benefited their foe. Had I been forced to save the very opponent I'd defeated, I would've chosen destruction right then and there. Ah, D, you understand me all too well!”

As the girl folded her pale and dainty hands in front of her chest with satisfaction, Juke and Sergei stared at her, dumbfounded, and then shifted their gaze to D.

“Be quick about it,” D told her with his usual gruffness, and then he put his left hand to Rosaria's brow.

“It's bad, as I suspected. This is a curse,” the hoarse voice said. “The only thing you can do is finish off the one who did this to her. In other words—Gaskell.”

Although Ann had listened to the left hand in silence, she inquired somewhat angrily, “Just who is this woman, anyway?”

“There's no way you would know her,” D replied.

Ann shook her head from side to side, saying, “No, this woman came while you were asleep back in the ruins. She told you about today's execution.”

“A doppelgänger?” his left hand muttered.

Such creatures weren't particularly rare on the Frontier. However, most of them were projections that committed malicious acts against the wishes of the person they mimicked—in many cases they were that person's negative side. If this applied to Rosaria, then would bringing her along on this trip be tantamount to setting out with a belly full of poison?

Perhaps Lady Ann had reached the same conclusion, because for the first time in an age, a hint of cruelty well suited to the girl flitted across her lips.

“This is a dangerous woman. I shall dispose of her,” the girl said.

Her right hand had already been raised to strike, and scythelike nails stretched from her fingertips. They whistled through the air toward the windpipe of the sleeping woman, only to halt in midair with a sound like a hard slap. The black-gloved hand that held her wrist belonged to D.

“Kindly unhand me,” the girl said, gnashing her teeth and writhing with frustration, an intense look on her face. It was the face of a woman out of her mind with love. It was nauseatingly ugly and beautiful beyond measure at the same time.

“How ridiculous!” she fumed.

As soon as the Hunter's left hand touched the scruff of her neck, Lady Ann collapsed on the spot.

“I won't allow this . . .” the fearsome little darling muttered as if goading herself on, her shoulders heaving with each breath. “Any woman who tries to come near you . . . I can't allow to live . . .”

How did the beautiful Hunter feel listening to the girl's groans of brutal honesty? Not even glancing at her, he said, “Wake up Gordo.”

He then turned to Juke and Sergei and said, “What do you want to do?”

“What do you mean?”

The two looked at each other.

“You don't have any cargo to deliver to the other villages now. And if we part company, Gaskell won't be after you any longer.”

“Good plan. Let's do that,” Juke said with a grin, but then he got serious again. “Are you still under contract with us?”

“Of course.”

“Then help us out here. We're gonna go get our wagon and merchandise back.”

“Hey, hold on a minute!” Sergei cried out in a tone that could only be described as tragic. “We're going back to that village? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard!”

“We're transporters. We get looted and nearly killed, and you think we can call it a day? Those other villages are waiting on pins and needles for that cargo to arrive.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Say your daughter is dying. Medical supplies from the Capital could save her. But a bunch of useless transporters come along, heads hung low, crying about how all their goods got stolen and begging forgiveness. You think you're just gonna clap 'em on the back and tell 'em, ‘Oh, that's okay'?”

The man had a piercing gaze trained on Sergei, who scratched his head uncomfortably.