Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four (29 page)

Taki fainted from the fear and pain.

Feeling the time, Vlad muttered into the wind, “Only three more seconds . . . Two . . . One . . . And now—”

His chest made a strange sound. A wooden spear flying at lightning speed had penetrated it. The spear was over six feet long.

Driven back two or three steps by the impact, he said, “So, someone came?!”

His bloodshot eyes turned toward the waves of grass before him. Every time they undulated in the wind, it scattered the moonlight, so it looked as beautiful as the dance of the fireflies.

Seeming to push his way through the grass was a figure in black who gripped a sword in his right hand.

“D.”

Taking hold of the spear, Vlad pulled it back out.

“So good of you to come. And what of Byron?”

“I'm here,” a voice called out from behind him.

Not bothering to turn around, Vlad said, “What are you waiting for? Have at me!”

D's wooden spear had clearly pierced him through the heart, yet he didn't show a hint of pain.

“D, stand back,” the baron called out to the Hunter.

Gazing at the young Nobleman's distant face, D gave a nod.

Perhaps taking it as some kind of signal, Vlad pivoted. He saw the face of his son. And he groaned.

Although there'd been no change to his gorgeous features, which could be described as the glory of youth personified, Byron's cheeks seemed to have lost some of their meat and his skin some of its color, so he looked like a wraith from the underworld. But more startling than anything was the intensity of his eyes, which glittered with pain and the hue of blood as he stared at Vlad.

Had the baron decided that the only way to slay the devil was to become a demon himself?

“What happened, Byron? Did you take on the Destroyer?” Vlad asked. It was only natural.

“No, it's just me.”

And saying that, he let a streak of light fly from the chest of his cape—and in response, the scepter flew from Vlad's right hand.

Were life and death separated by an eternity or a split second?

Vlad's body opened to a vertical flash of light.

At the same time the baron was pierced by the scepter and blown backward. For an instant the young Nobleman's body appeared to swell up—but a second later a boom resounded within him like a great drum being struck. Still, the baron managed to maintain his pose, narrowly avoiding collapse.

“You bastard—you took in the Destroyer after all,” Vlad groaned as the band of light kept flying right through him. It had pushed straight through the middle of his massive frame.

“What's this?!” he cried, pressing his hands to either side of his head.

The lord was using every ounce of his strength to try and hold the two halves of his body from splitting apart.

“Do you see this, Byron? This is your father.”

As he laughed aloud a band of light split his chest. Vlad's body was literally split in a cross.

“Arrrgh!” he cried.

His scream of agony was like a howl from the heavens and the earth.

The night wind buffeted his face.

“It won't close! The wound won't close! What are you doing, Guide?!”

Staggering, he collapsed in the grass. The baron lay about fifteen feet to his rear. The light the young Nobleman had just hit him with had taken the last strength he could muster.

Crawling over to him, Vlad grabbed hold of the scepter protruding from the baron's chest and used it to pull himself up onto his feet.

“You or I—which of us will follow after Cordelia?” the lord said, giving a powerful twist to the scepter he still grasped.

There was nothing the baron could do but bend backward in pain and writhe.

Pulling out the scepter, Vlad raised it high over his head for the coup de grace. One more thrust—to the heart. Even possessed by the Destroyer, the young Nobleman couldn't survive a second blow.

His body shook. Another scepter had pierced his heart from behind. The same scepter that'd destroyed Lady Miska.

“You—you bastard . . .”

He tried to turn, but there was no need. In the raging wind, the imposing figure in the black coat circled around in front of him.

“Looks like there was no need for me,” D said in a low voice, taking Vlad's head off with a single stroke of his blade.

Even after the head landed on the red soil far away, the body didn't fall. Still impaled on the scepter, it slowly began to walk. Toward the head it had lost.

“I won't be destroyed . . . I won't be . . . ,” came a distant voice. The head lying on the red soil had spoken. “Guide . . . take me away . . . to the promised land . . .”

“Oh,” the wind groaned. In the vicinity of D's left hand.

Look at how the space ahead of the decapitated torso shimmered like a mirage, forming an image—was that a land mass coming into view far beyond the black-and-white tips of the waves? The crystal palaces off in the distance had an eternal glow. And the waves parted as the path rose from them.

D said nothing as he walked over to the baron and propped him up. Picking up what Vlad had dropped, he put it in the Nobleman's bloodless right hand.

“You can use this, can't you?” he asked.

The baron opened his eyes a crack, nodded, and said, “This isn't the Destroyer's power.”

He hadn't borrowed the strength of that shuddersome entity—there had been fears it might unleash limitless destruction. His powerful desire to slay his father had been checked by clear thinking. However, his hatred remained. At this rate, he couldn't beat his father. When despair and hatred overlapped and his seething emotions reached their peak, another power had awakened in him. And that was—

“In that case, you're the same as me,” D said.

When the baron planted both feet firmly on the ground and raised the scepter high with his right hand, D let go of him.

As he watched the howling scepter smash Vlad's severed head into a million pieces, the baron tumbled to the ground face-first.

The massive form of Vlad fell as well. His hand trembling feebly all the while, he reached out for the glittering Shangri-la. However, before he could touch that dreamlike space his fingertips dropped with a sudden lack of power. The Noble's hands slapped the red ground ineffectually before he moved no more.

The confrontation between father and son had come to a conclusion.

On seeing that it was indeed finished, D was about to walk back to the baron when he suddenly turned his attention to a sound on the breeze.

“It was a woman's voice,” his left hand said. “Sounded kinda like the baron's mother.”

Later it was discovered that the aged scholar de Carriole had died after severing his carotid artery in his laboratory in Vlad's manor. By his side was a smashed machine the purpose of which no one knew, and in addition to that, it was said there were signs that water had been splashed across the floor. Seeing that the puddle in question was in the shape of a person, the farmers who'd discovered it shuddered in fear. They never did learn that in keeping with a request from the woman he'd secretly loved, the aged scholar had destroyed his own device for creating doppelgangers. In the end, he'd probably died without ever knowing that the Lord Vlad that remained was the real one. What de Carriole's thoughts were as he watched the woman who'd once been relegated to an unnatural fate under his scalpel turned to water once again by his destructive act remained a mystery. They had set out on their voyage to the hereafter together. However, no one knew whether or not they'd held hands as they did so.

-

It was at dawn two days later that D bid farewell to the baron. In the courtyard of Lagoon's establishment, Hugh, May, and the owner had come out to see him off.

The baron had already recovered his strength. His recuperation came with the same remarkable speed as D's own.

“Just like you,” the left hand said with deep admiration. “So, was there
another success
?
”

“Will you stay here?” D asked the baron.

“No, I'll be setting off on a trip soon. There's no place for the Nobility now,” the baron said with a smile.

“You're not a Noble anymore. You should stay,” Lagoon said as he gazed at the young Nobleman with a look that said he regretted this parting from the bottom of his heart.

The garden was filled by the light of winter. A day brimming with life was just beginning.

And in the past two days, the baron had discovered that whatever “a certain great personage” had given him, it'd done more than just give him the power to slay Lord Vlad; it also allowed him to walk in the light of the sun. He hadn't borrowed the power of the Destroyer. The strength of his will had kept him from inviting limitless destruction. And that's what Lagoon had meant.

“We'll be staying here instead,” Hugh stated proudly as May gently rubbed his head. The two of them were going to be doing acrobatics shows at Lagoon's establishment.

“Just a word of warning . . .”

At that from D, Lagoon stuck both hands out in front of himself.

“I know. In no way, shape, or form am I gonna let anything weird happen to those two. I'm sure if I did, you'd blow in here like a gale and chop my head right off.”

“Miss Taki's not here. But she said she'd be out in a minute,” May said as she turned back toward the door to the establishment.

“I'll go have a look,” Hugh said, and he started walking that way, but the baron put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, then turned.

The wintry light threw blue shadows on the ground.

The Nobleman disappeared through the doorway and several minutes passed.

Taki's room was the third from the door.

“I'll go,” Lagoon said, but just as he was about to do so, a figure in an ink-black coat passed him.

Slipping through the doorway, D halted in front of Taki's room. He'd caught a certain odor.

Quietly he pushed open the door. The light spearing in through the window focused on the white bed. Taki's upper body had fallen back against it. Apparently she'd changed into a gray sweater to see D off, and the garment was speckled with red dots.

Walking over, he looked down at her. Taki had already expired.

“The girl—she was a victim before she ever joined us,” a shadowy voice echoed behind him.

Apparently the baron was standing behind the door.

“The one who called himself Lord Yohan used his hypnotism to repress her memories of being a victim, but it would seem the shock the other day brought them back. When I got near her, she suddenly threw herself at me.”

To lull D and the baron into a false sense of security, the “victim” had most likely had a keyword implanted in her mind that would awaken her true nature, but in all this time it hadn't been used.

D turned around.

The baron had one hand pressed to the nape of his neck, and the chest of his shirt was speckled with drops of blood.

“Were you bitten?”

“Yes.”

His face was pale, his lips colorless, and from them poked a pair of bloody red fangs—Taki's throat had been torn open.

“And that awoke it in you, too?”

D's ears caught a distant voice.
You were my only success.

Taki's voice came back to him.
Save me, D.

D heard the blue voice.

“D—destroy me.”

“No one has hired me.”

“I'll be the client.”

“I see.”

For an instant, two streaks of light adorned the transparent morn. The light from the baron skimmed by D as the Hunter bent back far, imbedding itself in the floor, while D's blade pinned the Nobleman's chest to the wall.

The baron's cape tinged D's eyes with blue.

When he got up again, D laid Taki's body out on the bed, and then left the room. He didn't watch as the baron's end came. For D knew that he'd intentionally missed with his light attack.

“What did you come here to do, baron?”

There was no one there to hear that muttered query.

A figure of immeasurable darkness and beauty walked down the corridor.

Through the doorway, the sound of May and Hugh's laughter was growing closer as the children rushed to find their friends.

-

END

 

Here we have the second half of
Pale Fallen Angel
. When I think about how the story was published in four volumes in Japan, I'm somewhat stunned, but quite some time has passed since the printing of the first half, so time-wise it probably took about as long as the Japanese edition. And that's about all I have to say about that.

D's stage is the Frontier. If someone were to ask me exactly where that is, I'd be at a loss, but you can think of it as the entire Eurasian continent if you like. That's why the descriptions of some places call to mind the forest regions of Europe, and then suddenly you have a location where the snow is piled thirty feet deep like you'd only find in Siberia.

But the image I have in my head of the Frontier comes from a scene in director F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic
Nosferatu the Vampire
—the part where the realtor protagonist traverses the desolate plains of Transylvania. In the half century since 1958's
Horror of Dracula
, I've seen Transylvania in scads of movies, but not one of them presented a tableau as stark, wild, and cold as that single scene. One reason for that might be because it was a black-and-white movie. The key difference between this variety of film that so admirably makes symbols of “darkness” and “light” and the color film that replicates the hues of our daily existence is that the former creates a strange land that is sharp and isolated.

When I traveled to Transylvania twice in the past, it didn't give me the same sense of an otherworldly reality as Murnau's film of eighty years earlier. For me, D travels constantly through a world of black-and-white film. Whether his exquisite features are glowing a pale blue in the moonlight, the skin of a beautiful woman is taking a rosy flush in the light of day, D's blade is sending out bright blood, or a Noble's manor is crafted of gold, D is still a resident of a world of darkness and light. A world where everything last creature that draws breath in the white world melts in a heartbeat into a world of darkness. Those who dwell there are shadows. D's tale is told in beautiful silhouettes.

Pale Fallen Angel
was penned as a tale of just such a world as well. I can only hope that you agree with me on that point, dear readers.

-

Hideyuki Kikuchi

November 13, 2008

while watching
Nosferatu the Vampire