Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four (27 page)

“You would enter into me . . . and what would happen then?”

Although the lord's question bore a crushing weight of anxiety, that was only natural.

“Our power would be doubled . . . well, that's supposing that you and I were the same level.”

“Ah, in that case—”

“However,” the Guide interrupted him, “if your strength was far below my own, you would be killed in an instant. Or, as you Nobility say, ‘destroyed.' And I would be left alone to slay the one who betrayed me.”

Vlad fell silent.

I'm not surprised that's enough to make even you timid
, de Carriole thought without any malice. And just then, he heard a rumble and felt a shock as if there were tremors deep in the earth. He soon realized it was an illusion. Nevertheless, none of his physical senses could be convinced that it wasn't real.

It was Vlad. Lord Vlad had made up his mind. The rumbling in the earth had been the harbinger of his decision.

As he glared at the figure in the long ashen robe with glittering eyes, his intensity and his ghastly air were not those of a man who'd been screaming moments earlier about how his head was split open.

“So, I would be destroyed? Hmm. Have you ever considered that my power might surpass your own? Very well, then. Enter me. If my flesh isn't destroyed, the psyche that controls it would of course be that of the stronger of us, would it not?”

“That is correct.”

“Then enter me. I shall be most interested to see whether you claim my strength or I take control of yours.”

He wasn't bluffing. Nor was he desperate or self-destructive. Though bloodless, Vlad's face was filled with such an overwhelming confidence it seemed liable to turn anyone he looked at to stone.

What was going to happen?

De Carriole was staring so intently at the two unearthly creatures, it looked like he might faint dead away from the strain. What if the Guide won and Lord Vlad's psyche was defeated? Or what if Lord Vlad triumphed, erasing all of the Guide but his strength? Whichever happened, a god of destruction with power beyond imagining would undoubtedly spread a whirlwind of slaughter across the face of the planet. Even supposing the baron were to be joined with the Destroyer, and D were to be on his side, it was uncertain whether or not they could stand toe-to-toe with the most vicious, evil fiend the world had ever seen.

As de Carriole watched the figure in gray leaning over Vlad's bed, he let himself slip into a tranquil despair.

-

III

-

“Think he'll come?” the hoarse voice asked.

The Hunter was in front of a set of bars. Behind them, Taki could be seen sleeping soundly.

“He'll come,” D replied.

“I concur. But if he does come, he'll probably be three—no, five times as strong.”

“How do you know that?”

“Just once, a long time ago, I saw it happen. A Guide taking possession of a Noble, I mean,” the hoarse voice said wearily. “The Noble lost and the Guide won. As a result, three villages were utterly destroyed. Fatalities topped two thousand.”

“What happened to
it
?
”

“It was taken care of.”

“By
you?
”

“Could be,” the hoarse voice replied evasively just as Taki began to stir behind the bars.

It was the middle of the night. In a room deep underground.

As she climbed out of bed and turned toward the Hunter, her body had a far more sensuous and alluring aura than ever before.

Why was it that women who'd been bitten by the Nobility lost all sexual inhibitions—the conclusion reached in answer to this seemingly eternal debate was that the actual sucking of blood set a woman's libido free, amplifying the sensual possibilities of her flesh. But why from something as simple as blood drinking? There was still only one answer to that:
It was unclear
. However, nothing could begin to compare to the sensuousness and debauchery of a woman who'd fallen into that state once, and it was said that among the decadent artists and religious cults in the Capital, there were those who secretly called in Nobility to drink the blood of their wives or female believers so they might admire the women who plunged into the beauteous hell of that corruption.

“D,” Taki called out, pressing her face and ample bosom to the bars.

She extended a pale hand. The man she sought remained motionless, like a black mass of steel in human form.

“I'm so scared, D. Hold me!”

Though somewhat nasal, her sweet, lewd tone clung to D's body.

“That's funny,” the hoarse voice could be heard to say from the palm of D's left hand.

“What is? “

“The way she's acting. For someone who's only been bitten once, she's in way too deep. Why is that?”

“Why won't you come over here?” Taki panted, eyes narrowing and mouth half open. Her red tongue wriggled in a mouth that looked upholstered in soft silk. “I'm begging you, hold me. I'm so scared and so cold. Please.”

Sliding over her chest, Taki's left hand undid the buttons on her blouse one by one. The way she moved her hand and undid them was that of a she-beast skilled at arousing men. The alluring white swells peeked from the fabric as if they were about to burst right through it. Undoing the last button, Taki stared at D. Her expression, so filled with confidence and wanton lust, became a look of rage.

“Why won't you hold me? Don't you desire me? You pathetic, dickless Hunter!”

Seizing the bars with both hands, she rattled them with all her might.

“Kill . . . Kill the bastard already!”

At some point, the door behind D had opened from the outside. Two figures bounded in, firing rivet guns at D. What the lumps of iron they propelled at a thousand feet per second pierced was the hem of his coat.

Ducking, D delivered a blow to each in the shins with his still-sheathed sword, and the two of them toppled backward and stopped moving. The sheer pain had made them black out.

Taki gnashed her teeth behind the bars.

“She's quite a piece of work. What did she do, seduce the guards outside with her voice alone? D, this isn't normal at all.”

D looked at Taki. His eyes were deep and dark.

Taki averted her gaze.

About to say something to her, D suddenly turned his head and looked up.

“He's here,” his left hand said.

Saying nothing, D turned his back to Taki and walked away. Securing the two guards well with wire restraints that were on hand for making arrests, he then slipped through the doorway.

Just as he was about to close the door, someone called out, “D!”

Taki's cry was not that of a seductive harlot. And her eyes brimmed with tears.

“Save me, D!”

D turned around and closed the door.

The strength fled Taki's lower half, leaving her hanging from the bars by just her hands. Her fingers then sadly slipped off them. The young woman's ass hit the stone floor and she wept. Who could've known that it was partly out of relief? Just before he closed the door, D had responded to the girl's lucid cries with a slight but powerful nod.

-

The moon seemed to glow a whole notch more intensely than usual. Above the trees and rocks of the courtyard, moonlight swirled like silvery clouds. D stood at the edge of a glimmering circular pond nearly in the center of the garden. That alone was enough to make both the moonlight and all the artistic sculptures shipped from the Capital pale by comparison. The wind that stirred the water's surface ever so slightly swerved around him, embarrassed to look upon the young man's face—at least that was the impression it gave.

Lagoon's massive form was approaching from his establishment.

“Does it look like he'll be coming, D?” he asked as he looked toward the gates.

“Stay inside,” the Hunter told him.

“Hey, don't be like that. I mean, this is
my
land.”

“That's why I say it.”

Blinking his eyes in surprise, Lagoon gazed intently at the emotionless Hunter and asked, “So, what do you think? Can you take him? If you like, I'll give you some of my younger guys to help out. Not a man among them loves his life too dearly.”

“When you lose your life, it doesn't matter whether you loved it or not,” said a strangely hoarse voice, and it caused Lagoon to involuntarily stare at the Hunter's left hand.

“Under no circumstances are you to get involved,” D ordered him sternly.

“Okay, I follow you,” Lagoon said, still looking back and forth between D's handsome features and his left hand as he made that reluctant nod. “The least I can do is stick around and watch you in action.”

“I said stay inside—”

“Hey, now!”

As Lagoon leapt back a good ten feet, his body gleamed with silver in the moonlight. He'd donned his armor.

“We can't have you fanning your sword at anyone who tries doing you a favor. Hell, I might be your daddy. Huh?!”

Just then, he actually did feel the breeze of a blade narrowly missing his face. On realizing that it'd gone right through his armor, Lagoon was terrified. Cold sweat gushed from every inch of him. To think that anyone could swing a sword like that without evincing the slightest hint of murderous intent or premeditation.

“You're a freaking monster . . .
The big guy
might've collected my seed . . . but there's no way in hell you're my kid!”

Putting his sword back in its scabbard with a crisp click, D headed for the entrance.

“Back then . . . I asked
him
a question, you see,” Lagoon continued. “I asked if he was collecting human seed to make human/Noble half-breeds. He didn't answer, but I kept dogging him about it. Asked him if it could really work. Asked if it'd ever gone well. And then he answered me.”

D stood there like a black sculpture.

“‘There has been but one success,'” Lagoon said in a probing tone. “Hey, D, look out at the pond. My reflection's clear as day, but yours is fuzzy. Is that a dhampir's lot? A cross between a human and Nobility—was that
you
he was talking about? “

Wary of the next attack, Lagoon was already poised to leap at any second. But it never came.

A bizarre sensation froze the moonlight.

“He's coming,” a hoarse voice informed them. “But there's something strange here. Though I sense his presence, I can't say just where he is . . .”

D made a quick move to the left, just in front of the gates.

The black shape of a horse with a hunched-over rider came barreling into the courtyard. In a sumptuous robe that stretched all the way to the ground and clutching a scepter in his right hand, the rider had the form of none other than Vlad Balazs. But what was on the inside?

“Is the girl down below?” said a voice that seemed to blow from the icy caverns of the northern extremes.

The tone was that of Vlad. The strength of the Noble's will had gained control of the Guide.

“Don't interfere! Out of my way!” he said, then added with a lick of his lips, “On second thought, stay right there. I'll pay you back now for what you did to my arm and head. Lagoon, are you in league with this scoundrel?”

“D-don't be ridiculous.”

The same man who hadn't given an inch while talking with Vlad the other day at his mountain fortress had dropped his armor to stand there exposed in a show of obedience, so he likely sensed something was not the same as before.

“Well, it matters not. I'll see to you later.”

Exhaling sharply, the rider then lined his horse up directly across from D. The barrel and legs of the black steed were covered with titanium armor.

The scepter stretched toward D—and D's right hand reached for its shaft.

“Wait!” someone shouted, but it was unclear if it was Lagoon or the hoarse voice.

And it was at that very instant the earth rumbled.

“Did they come from below ground, too?”

Even as D realized what that cry meant, his body sank.

The black steed had gone into a charge. A flash of light ran straight under its iron-shod hooves.

Look! Vampire Hunter D's drawing cut was a technique that all who'd witnessed spoke of—and that same skill took the horse's forelegs off at the knee, sending them flying. As the horse thudded forward, a dazzling glint parried the moonlight as it danced out in into space.

A black cyclone flew from the ground.

Where the two men met, there was the cold ring of steel on steel, and then a splash went up from the nearby pond. The pair had dropped into the middle of it.

Lagoon ran over and prepared to throw himself into the water when he noticed something.

“Damn!” he exclaimed, dashing off in a determined fashion to the chamber where Taki slumbered.

The pond was sixty feet deep and set up so that bathing beauties could put on a show for patrons in a subterranean viewing room. But what kind of deadly battle was now being waged at the center of that normally pleasant stage? What Lagoon had seen on the moonlit surface of that pond was a deep red cloud of blood that called to mind a dark destiny.

-

I

-

On regaining consciousness, Sai Fung immediately realized he was in de Carriole's mansion. Beside him stood the baron in blue and Miska, and they had an incredible question for him. They wanted to know whether or not there was a manual to explain how to transfer the Destroyer within Miska over to the baron. When he replied quite honestly that he didn't know, the baron thought for a moment before ordering him, “Help out.”

With a ghastly, blood-chilling aura blustering at him from a face every bit as handsome as D's, Sai Fung was only too happy to agree.

Surprisingly enough, the baron was familiar with the use of each and every piece of machinery in de Carriole's laboratory. In no time at all, atomic candles burned in the reactor and a mysterious mix of chemicals and herbs began to boil in a large cauldron.

“Tachyon injector: energy charged to ninety percent—okay,” a machine called out, announcing the result of its checks.

“Mental wave conversion mode at highest setting—okay.”

“Psycho transference zone alpha: Unity ratio of 1/99,999,999—okay.”

Although he'd been told to help out, Sai Fung's role only went as far as moving unnecessary tables and equipment out of the way. For him, the work was a piece of cake. Simply standing in one spot, he effortlessly moved the massive centrifuge and maser-based stabilizer.

It didn't even take ten minutes to complete the preparations. Once the baron had finished adjusting a servomechanism, he went over to where Miska lay on a couch.

“I'm sorry, but it's almost time.”

With one arm missing and her neck half-severed, the beautiful woman with the paraffin-pale complexion still managed to nod. Although the bleeding had stopped and the wounds were closing, she remained in hellish agony. That was the fearsome might of the Guide.

“The thing within me still slumbers—will that be okay?”

“We'd better do it while it's still groggy,” the baron said, and then he grinned. “I heard from the children's own mouths how you came to be injured. You were superb.”

“No, merely foolish. And it was only on account of the Destroyer that's within me.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Pardon me?” the woman said, crinkling her elegant brow.

“The Nobility may still have possibilities. Something other than a simple run down the road to decline. Possibilities for the whole species. You and I, or you at the very least, might've served as an unexpectedly positive example. And I suppose the way you risked your life to save a human boy and girl is another expression of that. Perhaps it's just a tiny something sleeping somewhere in our genes that no one would ever know about if it were left alone. But there was
one
who took note of it and planned to use it to change the fate of his declining species. My lack of desire for human blood may be one phenomenon connected to something
that being
awoke in me. Your protecting the children might be, too.”

“But I . . .”

“It is conceivable that the Destroyer somehow triggered this. And given what that being represents, I can only say I find it highly ironic.”

“I don't know . . . I simply can't fathom Nobles sympathizing with human beings . . .”

But after saying this, she held her tongue. Because she was talking about something she herself had done.

The baron guided Miska over to an operating table hooked to countless cables.

“Lie down. This should all be over soon.”

“I wonder if you're right about that,” Sai Fung called out from behind an enormous distillation rig. “Trying to transfer this Destroyer without even an instruction manual isn't the sort of thing a sane person would do. I don't care how good you are with machines; this deal's gotta require a certain amount of know-how. If you screw it up, what'll you do then? There's no telling what'll become of the world if the Destroyer runs amok in some half-assed form. You think you'd be up to stopping it?”

“Step back,” the baron commanded sharply. “I'm finished with you. You may go.”

“Yessir. No way in hell am I gonna hang around here and get mixed up in any of this. You'll have to excuse me for making an early exit, O wise baron.”

As he headed for the door, he suddenly turned and said, “What you said just now—you really think that could happen?” He was wearing a very strange expression—a sober face.

“I certainly hope so. Now go.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Sai Fung walked out muttering, “Humans and Nobility . . . that's just stupid . . . Sympathizing . . . Hey, you've gotta be pulling my leg . . .”

The baron stood before the control panel and threw the switch to start the nuclear power. The whir of a motor rose from nowhere in particular, and pale blue current connected one cylindrical electromagnet to another.

On the operating table, Miska closed her eyes—then, after a moment, opened them again to gaze at the baron.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Now, I might never be a match for Vlad Balazs. I can't. Suddenly, I simply can't bring myself to do it.”

Choked with distress, the baron's expression was enough to make Miska forget her own pain.

The Noblewoman sat up, saying, “Why all of a sudden? Do you fear the Destroyer running amok?”

“More than that—I'm afraid for you.”

“Me?” Miska asked in shock, but something quickly occurred to her. “You mean of me returning to normal?”

The baron nodded. A shade of suffering flickered in his handsome features.

“You are one of the great possibilities of linking the Nobility and the human race. And being possessed by the Destroyer plays a large part in that. I don't want to remove it.”

“Then you will never accomplish your aim. Or avenge your mother.”

“I will still strike at Vlad Balazs. However—”

As the baron gnawed at his lip, Miska focused a gaze on him that was beyond description, but suddenly she let out a low laugh.

“What is it?”

“I was—my dear baron, I have no desire to become an exquisite link joining the Nobility to the human race.”

“But you—”

“I saved those two merely on impulse—or to be more accurate, from the same kind of sentiment as someone who won't abandon their pet dog to be killed by someone else. But they aren't even my pets. While I cannot say that I don't care for them more than the average human, still, they are naught but a burden to me. I will thank you to return me to my old self as swiftly as possible,” she said in a gelid tone.

The baron stared at Miska, but then he shook his head and said, “You make a poor liar.”

“Ridiculous.”

“No. Your eyes are too soft. Now that you know what it's like to save a human life, you can't return to your cold ways. And it's best that you don't. Kindly wait at Lagoon's place. You may not get to go to the Promised Land, but you might become someone of great promise yourself. I will dispose of the Guide without fail.”

“But . . .” Miska began, but she broke off there.

It was just as the baron said. The instinctive scorn and hatred of human beings no longer existed in her psyche. The boy and girl were doing everything they could, trying their best to survive—and she loved those two kids.

“Let me help you down,” the baron said, stepping away from the control panel and walking over to Miska before offering her one hand.

It was just then that the operating table gave off a glow. An unseen force suddenly laid Miska flat on the table. A spasm rocked her body, and she arched her back like a bow.

Turning in amazement, the baron couldn't believe who he saw standing before the control panel, and he shouted, “de Carriole?!”

“It would seem this old fool has given you too much credit, my good baron. What a foolish, pathetic mind I fostered in you. What a Noble needs is a psyche of ice and steel to make the lowly humans kneel, and to feel no remorse about drinking their lifeblood down to the very last drop. If not, then why did your mother have such regrets? Baron—kindly leave this to me. I, Jean de Carriole, will take that power from Lady Miska and transfer it to you, milord.”

“De Carriole, you mustn't!”

The baron advanced two steps. A band of light flew from the interior of his cape, splitting open de Carriole's left shoulder.

Though the aged scholar spilled bright blood everywhere, his madness didn't waver in the slightest.

“Master of the dark skies, immortal Sacred Ancestor! In your name, I now offer Baron Byron Balazs the most powerful Destroyer.”

He prepared to slam his right hand down on a switch on the display. but it stopped in midair. The old man turned in shock. There was no one behind him stopping him.

“Give it up, boss.”

Sai Fung stood in the doorway.

“You—you wretch! Are you trying to interfere, you miserable traitor?!”

Madly thrashing his arms and legs all the while, de Carriole was pulled away from the device.

“Why don't you act your age and wither away already? You've still got too much interest in romance.”

“Why do you interfere?” the old man asked.

“Let me tell you a little story. My mother got bitten by a Noble, too. But even though she hadn't gone over to the Nobility herself yet, she wound up having a stake shoved through her heart by the same villagers who'd been her friends. Now, I don't know who was right and who was wrong, but if the Nobility and humans could get along, there'd probably be a whole lot fewer kids that'd have to go through something like I did. I was only nine at the time.”

The building shook unexpectedly. Ripples passed through the floor and walls as if they'd been turned to liquid, and a second later, the area around the door rose in a point like the head of a squid and rocks and earth were thrown aside as a colossal caterpillar-like device wriggled into the room.

Sai Fung immediately shoved de Carriole away as a few thousand tons of rock rained down on him, but they all halted three feet above him. However, having all his attention focused on that load proved to be the undoing of the grinning Sai Fung.

The great scythes whooshed out of the caterpillar before any of those thousand limbs could react—no, actually it felt like a number of those unseen arms and legs were severed as Sai Fung's torso was bisected horizontally.

“That's a just reward for interfering with me—that's what you get for being a traitor,” a voice called down from atop the green caterpillar.

Though he'd been cut in half, Sai Fung's superhuman tenacity allowed him to open his eyes and turn, at which point the man gasped out loud.

The misshapen figure standing on the mountain folk tank was de Carriole. The other one—the de Carriole Sai Fung had hampered—had been buried beneath rocks and dirt by the caterpillar. Undoubtedly his death had been instantaneous. In which case—who was this?

“My lord knows better than anyone the results of my research. Kindly come out here.”

As de Carriole spoke, Vlad arose from somewhere in the caterpillar. There could be no mistaking that the young woman he cradled in his arms was Taki.

Then whom had D defeated?

Without even glancing at Sai Fung or the remains of the other de Carriole, Vlad glared at his son on the floor.

“Why do you think I've come? Fear not, it isn't to dispose of you. As punishment for betraying me, I have come to send you into even deeper despair. Look at the girl who was hidden in Lagoon's basement, yet I took possession of her oh so easily. Tomorrow night, I shall make her my bride. What's more—oh, is that the young Noblewoman who came seeking Shangri-la? The Guide has told me all about that.”

The grin that skimmed across his lips was that of a good-natured old man—something rarely seen from him.

“Don't!” the baron exclaimed as a white flash shot from his cape.

Deflecting it in flight, the scepter pierced Miska's chest as she lay on the operating table, running through the table and into the floor below.

“Miska?”

As the baron was about to dash over, his body was knocked away by a blast of light from the side of the scepter. Flames engulfed his cape, but he quickly returned to his feet. His hair was singed, his flesh melted and dripping.

“Oh, as defiant as ever, I see. Very well, Byron. I won't run, and I won't hide. If you still intend to get me, come to the Field of Bones at midnight tomorrow evening—that nostalgic spot where I walked with you nestled in my arms. Come alone if you wish, or bring assistance if you will. However, keep in mind that if you are even a second late, I shall sink my fangs into this young lady's throat. Give up, Byron! Forget about me and everything else and leave the village. You have but to go to some distant backwoods Nobility and introduce yourself and you'll not want for human blood for the rest of your days. However, the name you should give them is
mine
.”

Once again a streak of light flew from the baron's chest, but Lord Vlad had already disappeared into the caterpillar, and de Carriole had also vanished.

When the massive vehicle caused the ground to rumble and began to return to the depths of the earth, the baron raced over to Miska. Her frail form was pinned to the operating table like an insect. Just like the baron's mother.

“Baron . . .” Miska said, opening her eyes.

Byron must've wanted to plug his ears. Because he now had to listen to the final words of another woman he loved dying in exactly the same manner as the last.

“Please . . . go,” Miska rasped in a thread-thin voice. “Leave the village . . . as your father said . . . You must not . . . be destroyed. If Nobles and humans . . . can reach some understanding . . . that will be your task in the future . . . I wish . . . I could've helped, too . . .”

Miska's body suddenly grew heavy.

“My dear baron . . . just before I was stabbed . . . I restrained the Destroyer. No more blood should be spilled . . . I beg of you . . . Just leave the village.”