Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four (32 page)

“It's like a sea of blood,” Mia remarked as she rubbed her cheek with her right hand.

“You saying the dead can bleed, too?”

Mia looked at D's hip out of the corner of her eye, and then stared at his face. Perhaps aware of the rosy glow suffusing her cheeks, she swiftly averted her gaze, saying, “You do a weird little voice, don't you? Are you teasing me?”

Making no reply, D planted one foot at the edge of the incline.

“No, I'm serious,” Mia continued. “And I'll thank you to answer me.”

Saying nothing, D stared downward.

Piqued at being ignored, Mia undertook a reckless course of action. With unexpected speed she came up behind D and told him, “You're rude!”

She'd aimed a kick at his ass. But it met nothing. Nothing but the empty space over the pit.

“Wha—?!”

As she reflexively put her strength into the leg that still supported her, the supposedly firm ground gave way.

The second she heard her own cry above her and felt the sensation of falling, her body suddenly stopped dead. On realizing that D's left hand had caught her by the collar, she madly reached around with her hands to latch onto him. Just as it dawned on her that she was floating through the air, and her feet came down on solid ground. No sooner had a feeling of relief flooded through her than the hand came away from her collar and Mia staggered.

As her eyes stared fixedly at D, they began to hold hints of a bottomless terror and rage—and a gleam of admiration.

“What do you think this depression's for?”

The voice that posed that question was tinged with trust—and even a bit of affection.

Once again there was no reply. But even though he didn't answer, no anger bubbled up in the girl.

“You said you were the daughter of a fortune-teller, didn't you?”

“Yeah,” she said, feeling silly for getting so excited that he'd turned the conversation to her.

“The dead left every graveyard in the region to throw themselves from here. There would've been thousands of them. Why do you think that was?”

There was a short pause.

The next thing Mia knew, she had one hand to her chest. Her heart was racing. She had to do something to slow it down.

Pressing a finger gently to one part of the heart—the left ventricle—she made her breathing as shallow as possible. Her heartbeat returned to normal immediately. But then, she was a strong-willed and courageous individual to begin with.

“Is it okay if it's pure conjecture?”

D nodded.

“I think they were a sacrifice.”

“That's it, all right.”

The hoarse response definitely sounded like it'd come from the vicinity of D's left hand.

Though she looked, naturally she didn't see anything.

“That's right.”

This time the reply came in a rusty, masculine tone—D's voice. So, was that other one just her ears playing tricks on her?

“Last time, corpses sufficed, but next time it'll probably be living people jumping in.”

“Thousands of them . . .” Mia muttered, her remark a question at the same time.

There was no reply, of course. You could say
that
was her answer.

“But . . . why in the world?”

“It's the will of the one down below this.”

“Down below?”

Mia couldn't help forgetting her present terror and peering down past the brink of the hole. But as she quickly recalled it again, she backed away, then stared at D.

“You know what it is?” she asked.

Not answering her, D stood there like an exquisite statue, but then he told her, “Go home.”

And then, without further ado, he dove headfirst from the rim of the hole into its interior.

“D?!” Mia called out in spite of herself, and she was paused at the very brink of the hole ready to go after him when something white got in her eyes.

Gas.

Covering her mouth, the fortune-teller's daughter made a great leap back.

It looked like the white pillars of smoke rising from the brink of the depression numbered in the hundreds. All those geysers of gas couldn't have suddenly erupted from the ground in unison. They'd been triggered mechanically. And the one who'd set them off was—

“D . . .”

Still unsure just what was in the gas, Mia took a deep breath and raced back to the rim of the hole. She turned her gaze downward.

He'd probably been crushed. Why was she so determined to find this young man? Because his actions were so extreme. Like what he'd done just now. She couldn't help thinking that whatever he really was, it was tremendously unsettling and of great importance—just as he'd appeared in the fortune-telling. And the last thing that occurred to Mia was something the girl tried vehemently to ignore so it wouldn't rise to the fore of her consciousness.
Because he's gorgeous. More than anyone has a right to be.

Mia couldn't see D anywhere, and she had to back away again. The gas had grown thicker and jetted out even harder. Luckily for her, it was only intended as a smoke screen.

She couldn't go after him. Should she wait, or should she go back to the village?

That decision wasn't Mia's to make. From behind her came the thunder of approaching hooves. There were also the echoes of what sounded like a motor.

Mia turned around.

The figures she could see down at the far end of the highway halted before Mia less than ten seconds later. It was the same group of village peacekeepers who'd discovered the depression. And they'd brought a rare item with them.

The source of the motor sounds was an armored car. With iron plates riveted to a car chassis, the strangely rough-looking vehicle was apparently an antiquated model, with the edges of some plates starting to pull free, and both the sturdy turret and the forty-millimeter cannon that jutted a foot and a half from it were flecked with rust. The scorches and countless bullet marks that covered its armor plates were undoubtedly shining proof it had been fighting off aggressors in the form of bandits and supernatural creatures for decades. And it looked as if it was still more than capable of serving as the little village's guardian angel.

Mia's eyes were drawn to the wagon that rode alongside it. She could read the words
High Explosives
branded onto the sides of the wooden boxes piled high on it. Some kinds of munitions were often obtained from military installations and battlefields where the Nobility had fought their own kind, and it wasn't particularly unusual for towns and villages to have them on hand. Weapons that were especially easy to use, such as rifles and various kinds of grenades, could make an impressive show of force when the situation called for it. To the north of the village were wild plains and the ruins of what had once apparently been a testing ground for the Nobility, and normally no one dared set foot there.

The sheriff got down off his horse. As he moved toward Mia, he called over to the group forming around the wagon, “Get yourselves some explosives and line up along the drop-off. We'll be pitching them in soon.”

“Wait just a minute,” Mia called out as she dashed over to the sheriff instead of waiting for him to come to her. “What do you think you're doing? If you throw a bunch of bombs into this weird hole, there's no way of knowing what kind of reaction you'll get. Plus, someone just fell in there.”

“Someone? And just who might that be?”

“A man named D. He's a Hunter.”

Actually, Mia didn't know for a fact that D was a Vampire Hunter. But his good looks, the way he carried himself, and the way he called to mind ice and steel made her say it on impulse.

“Why'd he fall in the hole? No, before we get to that—who are you anyway?” the sheriff asked, knitting his thick eyebrows suspiciously.

“Mia, isn't it? You're the daughter of a fortune-teller who lives up north. I had her tell my fortune before,” called out a young man who'd been staring at the girl all along from the driver's seat of the wagon. He wore a heavy wool shirt and had a red scarf wound about his neck. And as befitted someone so dapper, his countenance was a good deal more attractive than the rest of the men.

“This fortune-teller up north—would that be Noa Simon? I've heard the name before. Seems quite a few people are in her debt,” the sheriff remarked; and, seeing a smile break on the lawman's face, Mia was somewhat relieved. “This Hunter you mentioned, is he some friend of yours? What in blazes brings him here?”

And having said this, the sheriff then held his tongue.

In fact, everyone froze right where they were. Though white smoke poured over the brink of the great subsidence, covering everything up to three feet from the ground, they could make out a human shape on the other side of it. The hem of a coat swayed around the knees of the powerfully built form. Mia alone could tell whose silhouette it was by the longsword on its back.

“D?”

How many of them heard her say that?

As Mia reflexively started to step forward, someone behind her grabbed her right arm.

“Don't go,” said the young man who'd been in the driver's seat.

“But—”

“When did he fall? “

“Not five minutes ago.”

“You think after falling in there it'd be that easy to get back up again?”

“Maybe if he got hung up on something halfway down.”

“Think that's what happened?”

“No.”

“Stand back.”

Pushing Mia out of the way, the young man put his hand to his waist. He had a gunpowder pistol in a special holster. After drawing it, he called out to the shadowy figure in the fog, “Hey, I'm from the village!”

At the same time, the color of the silhouette darkened—and a heartbeat later, it slipped out of the fog to stand face to face with the young man.

A rumble went through the crowd. Murmured exclamations of rapture. For the villagers had seen the face of the shadowy figure.

“D . . .”

That name was known to Mia alone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan, in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel,
Demon City Shinjuku
, in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has written numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan's leading horror masters, working in the tradition of occidental horror writers like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there are seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live-action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi's novels.

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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist, and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions' greatest cartoons, including
Gatchaman
(released in the U.S. as
G-Force
and
Battle of the Planets
). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s, Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel
Sandman: The Dream Hunters
with Neil Gaiman, and Marvel Comics on
Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer
with best-selling author Greg Rucka.