Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four (28 page)

The baron made no effort to look at the beautiful woman as she rotted away. Seizing the scepter, he pulled it out with one jerk. And then he slowly headed toward the control panel, saying, “You have made a mistake, Father.”

He had changed the way that he referred to Vlad. But could anyone in this world ever give the word “father” such a ghastly and mournful ring?

“Tomorrow I shall slay you. Father, you shall see with your own two eyes the power of Nobility and humans.”

And then he calmly walked back to a device he had apparently renounced—the control panel for transferring the Destroyer.

-

II

-

The sun rose, the sun set.

Tonight the lights burned once more at Lagoon's sleepless pleasure quarter, and D awoke just as its halls were being festooned with the coquettish laughter of women and the murmur of bumpkins in their best clothes. At the end of their underwater battle, he'd dispatched Vlad. In return he'd been seriously injured as well, and his wounded form lay in a woodshed in one corner of the courtyard. Although Lagoon had been rather insistent about finding someplace more comfortable and having a doctor examine him, D had already fallen asleep.

The Hunter was aware that the massive subterranean tank-like creature had broken into the underground isolation chamber and that Taki had been abducted. No matter how badly wounded, this young man would bravely go off to rescue her. The reason he hadn't was because of something odd Vlad had said underwater in his death throes:
I may be destroyed, but tomorrow at midnight I shall wait at the Field of Bones. With the girl who's underground. If you're even a second late, I shall make her my bride.

As he'd finished speaking, D's blade had taken off his head. However, astounding was the only way to describe the sight of D heading back to the surface after seeing to it that Vlad had disintegrated underwater. Vlad's scepter had cut halfway through the Hunter's neck.

Turning his back to the astonished Lagoon, D had gone into the woodshed and closed the door.

Lagoon had peeked in through a gap in the frame. And what he witnessed was a sight weirder than anything even he'd ever seen.

Lying on the floor, D held his shredded neck closed with his right hand and pressed his left hand to the wound. Blood still gushed from it. But none of it was spilled. Every last drop of it was being sucked up by the palm of his left hand—the giant realized that was the source of the slurping sounds the left hand was making.

Lagoon was fully aware that D was a dhampir. But could anything in the world be more loathsome than a creature that drunk its own blood?

And that wasn't the only thing that astonished him. When the left hand came away, the Hunter's neck was partially healed. And then the left hand—clearly of its own volition, not D's—dropped to the ground, clawing up dirt with all of its fingers and spitting the blood it'd just drank out on the loosened soil. At that point the palm was turned toward him, and the eyes, nose, and mouth that'd distinctly formed on its surface made Lagoon rigid as a corpse beyond the door. It was a miracle he didn't suffer a heart attack.

The left hand's bizarre ritual continued, with the hand being thrust into the muddy blood that the pile of dirt had become, and the soil instantly being wolfed down by its tiny mouth. When it'd stuffed the last mouthful into its cheeks, Lagoon saw a pale blue flame blazing in the depths of its mouth. It was clearly the burning of an overwhelmingly mystic and powerful force. The wound on the neck of soundly slumbering D vanished in less than a second.

And now, as D stepped out of the woodshed with the coming of evening, Lagoon alone was there to greet him.

“At any rate, what do you say we
have a drink?
” the giant said, and even he thought his voice sounded funny. After all, he'd seen what D—or his left hand—had consumed.

“Why didn't you run me through?” D asked.

“Huh?!”

“There was murderous intent in your eyes as you looked at me. Orders from Vlad? Were you to be compensated with the power of the Nobility?”

“You've got me!” Lagoon said, slapping his forehead. “That's what I'd planned on doing until I saw you fight, and then I gave it up. With a guy like you after me, I'd have to live in fear for the rest of my days. Plus, I never was very fond of Vlad.”

While it was unclear whether D believed him or not, he changed the topic, asking, “Where's the Field of Bones?”

“Oh, that's the plain that lies to the west of Vlad's castle. Bang a left just in front of the castle and you'll be there in a snap. But who's gonna be waiting there? You slew Vlad, right?”

“One of them.”

“Huh?!”

“There are two of him.”

Lagoon only grew more and more confused.

“What was de Carriole researching?”

After thinking for a while, the giant smacked his fist into his hand.

“Now that you mention it, he did order a weird text from the Capital. Some book about doppelgangers, I believe. Hey, you don't mean to tell me there are two freaking Vlads, do you?”

D said nothing as he straddled the horse tethered there. Then, in a terribly blunt manner, he said, “Thanks for everything.”

“I didn't do much. But—Godspeed to you. Even I couldn't live the way you do.”

As the Hunter began to ride away, the giant called out from behind him, “I suppose there's no sense saying this, but if you ever get tired, stop by anytime. You're always welcome. I'll even set you up with a good woman.”

D raised one hand. His left.

On seeing the grinning face that formed on palm of that hand, Lagoon almost fell over.

-

From the windows of a lab in the lord's manor de Carriole gazed out at the twilight tinting the western sky. His decrepit form—heavily-wrinkled face and stooped-over silhouette—was bathed in the red glow, looking like it might melt away entirely. In reality, he was already an empty shell. The second Cordelia was impaled before his very eyes, the fires of enthusiasm that'd burned in that elderly body of his had been snuffed. Now, he intended to die. The cane he held in his right hand had a knife built into its handle. One thrust of it into his aged, feebly beating heart, and he could bid farewell to his pointless life.

When he turned that blade toward himself without any great determination, a voice called out his name behind him.

De Carriole turned, and his eyes bulged in their sockets.

Standing about ten feet away was a woman in white with water dripping from every inch of her. Although he couldn't see her face for some reason, he knew at first glance who she was.

“Madam—is that you, Lady Cordelia?”

“Indeed, it is,” the woman nodded in reply.

In the same voice with which he'd addressed D early in the afternoon the previous day, the old man said, “If that's the case, then it actually worked. Ah, and I never knew it for this last decade . . .”

“And with good reason. I didn't appear until a year after you believed you'd failed.”

A doppelganger—de Carriole had been so obsessed with the idea of creating one because Vlad's wife was hopelessly condemned to a life drifting underwater. He wanted to make another Cordelia and give her a different life. The fervor born of his longing only grew more obsessive with each passing day, until the genius succeeded in animal tests and his brain turned to making a copy of the valiant Cordelia. And that ended in failure.

De Carriole wasn't discouraged, though. After all, he'd succeeded with Vlad and himself. Of course, in Vlad's case, it'd manifested as merely a voice at first, becoming a complete physical entity only after news had reached them that the baron would return home, and it was at about that time de Carriole conducted similar experiments on himself. Naturally, every time he'd made a new breakthrough he'd asked the woman in the water if he might attempt the experiment again, but he'd always met with the same calm refusal.

However, it seemed impossible that the failed experiment he'd conducted for the one he loved most had actually succeeded.

“Cordelia,” the old man said, forgetting the ironclad rules of master and servant and addressing her solely by her first name. “Why didn't you tell me? If you had, I might've escaped much of this pain. The pain of making you live underwater.”

Perhaps that was the very reason why Cordelia hadn't told him.

“You mustn't die, de Carriole,” the woman from the water said. Neither cold nor kind, her voice was like the water itself. “There's one thing you must still do. A creator must take responsibility for his creations up to the bitter end. Destroy the doppelganger of
him
.”

De Carriole shook. He had guessed what the woman would want. Still, hearing someone actually say it now, he couldn't help but shudder.

Dispose of Lord Vlad's doppelganger
—

“For the longest time, I was unable to leave that underworld. But it became possible after my other self met that gorgeous young man. I went outside with him. If I so desire, I can make it so no one at all can detect my presence. De Carriole, your experiments have proven more successful than you ever imagined. I rode with him on a horse out in the sunlight. And on returning to the manor, I saw and heard everything that you and my husband undertook.”

De Carriole was speechless.

“I have nothing to say regarding that. Except this—de Carriole, you must destroy the copies you created of my husband and myself.”

The old man swallowed hard. His Adam's apple was a horrible sight, bobbing up and down.

“But that's . . . Milady . . . I cannot do that. Nay, I mustn't. To start, even I don't know if the Vlad that remains is the doppelganger or not. Milady, it might well be that you alone would disappear . . . and that would only serve to subject this old fool to the pain of having his soul torn asunder once more.”

“Do it, de Carriole.”

The old man turned his back on the dripping wet woman. It was soon afterward that a pale hand touched his shoulder gently. Perhaps the woman who'd drifted underwater had the devilish nature of the Nobility after all. As that hand slowly groped his neck and stroked his chest, the color returned to the old man's cheeks, and his breathing became as ragged as a beast's.

“You destroyed me once. With your hands and your scalpel. Do away with me again—that shall be your recompense. And when you do, you shall die as well. At least let us set out on the journey into death together.”

De Carriole's eyes filled with a confused vigor. It had a horribly dark hue to it.

-

III

-

Regarding the Field of Bones, there were those who said it was so named because that was where the bodies of the villagers who'd fought the Nobility had been left to rot, while another theory had it that the remains of creatures used in the Nobility's bizarre experiments had been discarded there. Whatever the case, the soil in that region was as red as if it'd been soaked with blood, and perhaps the grass that grew there had sucked that up, as it was unusually high and deeply verdant.

The wind had picked up with the coming of night. Though many flying animals had abandoned the field, being unable to fight those winds, a number of lizard-like creatures deftly rooted at the red earth and began snatching up grubs and insects. Suddenly, they sensed something.

Abandoning their prey, the creatures scampered off en masse while behind them, an object that resembled a titanic green caterpillar appeared, halting almost in the dead-center of the field. Of all the cruelty—Taki was completely naked and spread-eagle, bound hand and foot to the front of the vehicle. Opening the hatch, Vlad stuck his head out. Standing on the mountain folk vehicle with scepter in hand, garbed in an opulent robe, and with his hair billowing in the wind, he was the very picture of a demon king about to sacrifice a young beauty in some accursed ritual.

After gazing off in all directions, he said, “Only one more minute—I never thought both of them would fail to show up.”

From the way he phrased it, it seemed he'd expected both D and the baron to come and had intended to fight both at the same time from the very start. His self-confidence was chilling.

Going to the front of the caterpillar, Vlad then leered down at Taki and said, “As promised, I refrained from slaking my thirst last night. And as I also swore, if they are even a second late—”

The way his grin left his lengthy incisors exposed, it made him look like a demon. After making an easy leap down to the ground, something must've happened, because his lips warped once more into a smile and he approached Taki.

Guessing who it was, Taki opened her eyes.

“Stop it . . . Stay away from me!”

The gaze Lord Vlad played across her full breasts and the face she tried so desperately to avert could only be described as that of a lustful fiend.

“There's no problem so long as I don't feed on you,” he chortled.

He pressed a pair of thick purple lips to her right breast.

Taki was anguished by the pain of flesh being punctured, and two streaks of blood coursed out between the lips and the supple skin.

“I haven't drunk from you. Haven't drunk a drop.”

When his mouth came away from her, two dark, swollen fang marks remained. And then he pressed his disgusting lips to the impressive swell of her left breast.

“Aaaah!” Taki cried as she tried to pull away.

Common opinion was that the thing about the kiss of the Nobility that sent the victim into rapture was the magical power of the actual act of drinking blood. Bites delivered without that feeding were nothing but the agonizing act of a wild beast tearing into flesh.

The writhing girl's entire body was covered with blood, with teeth marks ruthlessly carved into her smooth belly, her armpits, and her thighs.

Intoxicated, perhaps, by the scent of blood, Vlad had a look of sheer ecstasy on his face. Although this act was meant to check his desire, the way he subjected a completely immobilized girl to the torture of being pierced by his fangs without bothering to hypnotize her only seemed to illustrate the cruelty of the Nobility.