Vampire Hunter D (9 page)

Diagonally across from O’Reilly someone else raised his head. Doris felt as if all the blood had drained from her body. The first three thugs who’d been slammed into the wall were still unconscious, and they could be considered lucky for that. The remaining man’s face looked like it’d been stung by vicious killer bees—his skin was swollen with dark red pustules that dripped a steady stream of discharge onto the floor. Though Doris didn’t notice it at first, at that very moment a black insect crawling across the floor stopped at her feet, scurried a little closer, and then walked right past her as if someone was calling it back. It was a tiny spider. It went from the leather sandals of the hunchback to his leg, then climbed farther up his back to a massive hump, covered by a leather vest. Both the vest and the hump split right down the middle, and the spider disappeared into the fissure. The fissure closed promptly.

“Surprised? I fear it may be too much of a shock for a beautiful young woman like yourself ...”

Doris heard Rei-Ginsei’s voice as if from a distance, like the pealing of a bell, for her soul had been stolen when she saw the most frightening outcome of the whole unearthly battle: she saw Greco, the only one unharmed, still seated in his chair with his hands locked around the armrests and the expression of a dead man on his face. The squeak of wood-on-wood she had heard was the sound of his trembling body rattling the legs of the chair against the floor. Whatever he’d witnessed from the safety of his combat suit, it had thrown his eyes wide open, and they reflected nothing but paling terror.

“What’d you guys do?” Doris asked in a firm voice when she finally looked back at Rei-Ginsei and slipped from his arms.

“Not a thing.” Rei-Ginsei made a mortified expression. “We simply finished what they started—in our own inimitable style, of course.”

“Thank you,” Doris said gratefully. “I truly appreciate your help. If you’re going to be in town a while, I’d like to do something to thank you later.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about it. There is nothing in this world more profane than the ugly making the beautiful submit by force. They merely got a taste of heaven’s wrath.”

“You flatter me, but would you have done the same for another girl if she was being treated the same way?”

“Of course I’d come to her aid. Provided she was beautiful.”

Doris averted her eyes from the calmly smiling face of the gorgeous man. “Well, thank you again. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Yes, allow us to take care of this mess. We’re well accustomed to it.” As Rei-Ginsei nodded jovially, something black gushed into his gaze. “I’m quite sure we’ll meet again.”

.

A few minutes later, Doris had the wagon racing back toward the farm.

“Did something happen back there, Sis?”

Her distant expression didn’t change at the concerned query from Dan, who rode shotgun. The anxieties running amuck in her mind wouldn’t allow her a smile.

She could only expect that Greco would make things even harder for her now, and on top of that she had no guarantee D would be back tonight. She just knew she should’ve stopped D when he told her he was going into the lord’s castle during the day to take advantage of the dhampirs’ ability to operate in daylight. If he didn’t make it back, they would be left helpless and alone before the Count’s next onslaught. She had no proof the Count would come tonight, but she was pretty sure of it. Doris shook her head unconsciously. No, that would mean D was dead.

I know he’s coming back
, she thought.

Her right hand brushed the nape of her neck. Moments before he’d set out, D had put what he said was a charm on the fang marks there. The charm was disappointingly simple, consisting merely of a light press of the palm of his left hand to the wound; he hadn’t even explained what effect it was supposed to have, but it was all Doris had to rely on now.

Another face formed in her mind. That dashing young man in the saloon could also be considered her savior in a way, but Doris felt an ominous shadow fall across her heart. When he’d lifted her from the floor and she saw his handsome visage up close, she had in truth swooned. But her virgin instinct had caught the sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit that lingered around his gorgeous face.

No, most likely it wasn’t her instinct that caught it, but rather the work of something firmly etched in a deeper part of her: the visage of a young man more beautiful and more noble than Rei-Ginsei. Doris had a foreboding that the handsome new arrival would prove a greater danger to her than Greco had. That was another of her concerns.

Come back. I don’t care if you can’t beat the Count, just come back to me.

That these thoughts had nothing to do with her safety was something the seventeen-year-old had not yet noticed.

.

For the past few minutes, the tepid, waist-deep water had been growing warmer, and the mist licking its way up the stony walls had become denser. He had been walking for thirty minutes now. The drop from the great hall must have been around seventy feet. A vast subterranean aqueduct brimming with water had awaited D. As the water only came up to his chest, it didn’t matter much that he’d fallen feet first—what had saved D from a brutal impact was his inhuman skill, and the indisputably superhuman anatomy all dhampirs possessed.

Vampire anatomy—primarily their bones, muscles, and nerves—allowed them to absorb impact and recover from damage hundreds of times better than humans could. While it naturally varied from individual to individual, dhampirs inherited at least fifty percent of those abilities. From a height of seventy feet, a dhampir could probably hit solid ground and survive. It would be nigh impossible to keep from breaking every bone in their body and rupturing some internal organs, but even then some of the faster dhampirs would be able to heal completely in about seventy-two hours.

At any rate, D hadn’t been hurt in the least, and he stood chest-deep in the black water surveying his surroundings. This was most likely a pre-existing subterranean cavern that had been buttressed through later construction. Places here and there on the black, rock walls to either side showed signs of being repaired with reinforced concrete. The water throughout was lukewarm, and a pale, white mist lent the air an oppressive humidity. The aqueduct itself was roughly fifteen feet wide. It seemed to be a natural formation, and an odor peculiar to mineral springs had reached D’s nostrils even as he was falling into the pit. All around him stretched a world of complete darkness. Only his dhampir eyesight allowed him to distinguish how wide the aqueduct was. He turned his gaze upward, but, not surprisingly, he was unable to discern the trapdoor seventy feet above. As the doors had long since been reset, it was only natural he couldn’t see them. And of course there was no means of egress to be seen on the rock walls that boasted mass beyond reckoning.

“What to do, what to do ...,” D muttered this rare comment in a deep voice, yet started walking purposefully in the direction from which the water all around him flowed, though the flow was soundless and so gentle as to be imperceptible. Hard and even, the bottom of the aqueduct seemed to be the work of some external force. That wasn’t to say that he had merely to walk long enough and far enough for an exit to present itself. He was unaware of
the three sisters
the Count had mentioned so ominously in the chamber far above.

Something was waiting for him.

D was cognizant of that much. And he knew that his thrust had dealt a wound to the Count. There was no way the vampire lord would let such a fearsome opponent just drop into the subterranean waterway and then sit idly by. D was positive some sort of attack was coming. And yet, as he walked along, there was no hesitation in the legs that carried him across the firm bottom of the aqueduct, and no hint of tension or fretfulness in the shining, handsome face that seemed to make the darkness retreat. And then he halted.

About twenty-five feet ahead, the aqueduct grew wider and a number of eerily shaped stones jutted from the water’s surface. There alone the mist was oddly thick—or rather, it hung so heavily it seemed to rise from the very waters, twisting the stones into far more outrageous and disturbing shapes and sealing off the waterway. The air bore a foul stench of decay. D’s eyes saw a film of oily scum covering the water and white things concealed in the recesses of the stones. Bleached bones. Deep in the mist there was a sharp splash, like a fish flicking its tail up out of the water.

There was something here. Its lair was beyond the eldritch stones.

Still, D showed no sign of turning back, and he continued walking calmly into the mist at the center of the stones. Once inside, the space between the stones looked like a sort of pool or a fishpond. The stones formed rows to either side that completely enclosed the waterway. The water sat stagnant there, blacker than ever, and the white mist eddied savagely. It seemed the source of the mineral springs wasn’t too far off. The more he advanced, the greater the number of eldritch stones, and, as the number of bones multiplied, the stench grew ever more overpowering. Most of the bones were from cattle and other livestock, but human remains were also evident. There was a skeleton that, judging from the quiver on his back, looked to be a huntsman, a woman’s skull resting in the tattered remnants of a long dress, and the diminutive bones of a child. Many of them hadn’t had time to be denuded; dark red meat and entrails hung from their bones, rife with maggots. In this vile, disturbing scene—a scene that would make the average person go mad or stop, paralyzed with fear—D noticed the spines and ribs of all the stark skeletons had been pulverized. This was not the result of being gnawed by tenacious fangs and jaws. They’d been crushed. Like something had squeezed them tight and twisted them ways they were never meant to go.

Once again, D halted.