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Vol.1 Vampire Hunter D 4 страница

Even the shower of midday sunlight changed color here, and a nauseating miasma seemed to come from the morbid expanse of land surrounding the castle. The grass was green as far as the eye could see, and the trees were laden with succulent fruit, but not a single bird could be heard. Still, as one would expect around noon on a sunny day, there were no signs of life in the vampire's castle. Constructed to mimic the castles of the distant middle ages, the walls were dotted with countless loopholes. The dungeon and courtyards were surrounded by broad, stone stairways that linked them together, but there was no sign of android sentries on any of them. The castle was, to all appearances, deserted.

But D had already sensed the castle's bloodied nocturnal form, and the hundreds of electronic eyes and vicious weapons that lay in wait for their next victim.

The surveillance satellite in geo-stationary orbit 22,240 miles above the castle—as well as the uncounted security cameras disguised as fruit or spiders—sent the castle's mother-computer images so detailed that an observer could count the pores of the intruder's skin. The photon cannons secreted in the loopholes had their safety locks switched off, and they were drawing a bead on several hundred points all over the intruder's body.

As the Nobility was fated to live by night alone, electronic protection during the day was an absolute necessity. No matter how much mystic-might the vampires might wield by night, in the light of day they were feeble creatures, easily destroyed by a single thrust of a stake. It was for precisely this reason that the vampires had used all their knowledge of psychology and cerebral biology in their attempts to plant fear in the human mind throughout the six or seven millennia of their reign. The results of this tactic were clear: even after the vampire civilization had long since crumbled—it was rare to catch even a glimpse of one about—they could take residence in the midst of their human "foes" and, like a feudal lord, hold complete mastery over the region.

According to what Doris told D before he set out, the villagers in Ransylva had taken up sword and spear a number of times in the past, endeavoring to drive their lord off their lands. However, as soon as they set foot within the castle grounds, black clouds began swirling in the sky above, the earth was rent wide lightning raged, and not surprisingly, they were ultimately routed before they even reached the moat.

Not giving in so easily, a group of villagers made a direct appeal to the Capital and succeeded in getting the government's precious Anti-Gravity Air Corps to execute a bombing mission. Because the government was afraid of depleting its stores of energy or explosives, however, it wouldn't authorize more than a single bombing run. The defense shields around the castle prevented that single attack from accomplishing much before it was forced to return home. The following day, villagers were found butchered with positively unearthly brutality and, by the time the villagers had seen the vampires' vengeance play out, the flames of resistance were utterly snuffed.

Home to the feudal lord who would taste D's blade, the castle the Hunter approached was the sort of demonic citadel that kept the world in fear of the now largely legendary vampires. Perhaps that was what brought a haggard touch to D's visage. No, as a Vampire Hunter he should've been quite familiar with the fortifications of the vampires' castle. As proof, he rode his horse without the slightest trace of trepidation to where the drawbridge was raised. But against the lord and his iron-walled castle, crammed with most advanced electronics, what chance of victory did a lone youth with a sword have?

Blazing-white light could have burnt through his chest at any moment, but a tepid breeze merely stroked his ample black hair, and soon he arrived at the edge of a moat brimming with dark blue water. The moat must have been nearly twenty feet wide. His eyes raced across the walls as he pondered his next move, but when he put his hand to his pendant the drawbridge barring the castle gate amazingly began to descend with a heavy, grating noise. With earth-shaking force, the bridge was laid.

"It is a great pleasure to receive you," a metallic voice called out from nowhere in particular. It was computer-synthesized speech— the ultimate in personality simulation. "Please proceed into the castle proper. Directions shall be transmitted to the brain of milord's mount. Please pardon the fact no one was here to greet you."

D said nothing as he urged his horse on.

Once he'd crossed the bridge, he entered a large courtyard. Behind him came the sounds of the drawbridge being raised again, but he advanced down the cobblestone way toward the palace without a backward glance.

The orderly rows of trees, the marble sculptures glittering in the sunlight, stairways and corridors leading to places that couldn't be guessed—all gave the feeling of scrupulous upkeep by machines. Though no one could say how many millennia ago they'd been planted or sculpted, they looked as fresh and new as if they'd been placed there only yesterday. But there were no signs that life went on here. The machines alone lived, and their mechanical eyes and fiery arrows were trained on D. When his horse halt before the palace gates, D quickly slipped out of the saddle. The thick doors dotted with countless hobnails were already open wide. "Enter, please." The same synthesized voice reverberated from the dark corridor. A hazy darkness bound the interior. Not that the windowpanes were dampening the sunlight—this effect was a result of the artificial lighting. In fact, the windows in the vampire's palace were no more than ornamentation, impervious to the slightest ray of light.

As he walked down the corridors guided by the voice, D noticed that each and every window was set in a niche in the wall. It would take two or three steps up the scaffolding to climb to the window from the hallway: one couldn't walk over to the window, but would rather pop up in front of it. The design had been copied from German castles in the middle ages.

The predominant element of vampire civilization was their love of medieval styles. Even in their superiorly advanced, tech-filled Capital, the designs of many of the buildings closely resembled those of medieval Europe. Perhaps something in their DNA cried out for a return to the golden age that lived on in their genetic memory, a time when superstition and legend and all manner of weird creatures prevailed. Maybe that explained why so many detestable monsters and spirits had been resurrected by their super-science.

The voice led D to a splendid door of massive proportions. At the bottom of the door there was an opening large enough for a cat to come and go as it pleased. This door opened without a sound as well, and D set foot into a world of even deeper darkness. His haggard air was gone in an instant. His nerves, his muscles, his circulation--every part of him told him the time he had known had suddenly changed. The instant he smelled the thick perfume wafting throughout the room—which appeared to be a hall—D knew the cause. Time-Bewitching Incense. I've heard rumors about this stuff. When he sighted the pair of silhouettes hazily sketched by wispy flames at the far end of the vast hall, his suspicion became conviction.

The silhouettes gave off a ghastly aura that made even D's peerless features stiffen with tension. Beside a slender form—which he knew at glance to be female--stood a figure of remarkable grandeur dressed in black. "We've been waiting for you. You are the first man to ever make it this far in one piece." From the corners of the vermilion lips that loosed this solemn voice poked a pair of white fangs. "As our guest, you deserve an introduction. I am the lord of this castle and administrator of the Tenth Frontier Sector, Count Magnus Lee."

T ime-Bewitching Incense could be called the ultimate chemical compound born of the vampires' physiological needs. For the most part, the information and rumors people passed along about the physiology of these fiends—the various stories told since time immemorial—were essentially true. Outlandish tales about transforming into bats, turning themselves into fog and billowing away, and so on—stories that there were vampires who could do such things and others who couldn't were taken as feet. Just as in human society ability varied according to an individual's disposition, so too among the vampires there were some demons who freely controlled the weather, while other tends had mastery over lower animals. Many aspects of the vampire's fantastic physiology, however, remained shrouded in mystery.

For example, the reason why they slept by day but awoke at night remained unclear. Even enveloped by darkness in a secret chamber that blocked out all possible light, a vampire's body grew rigid with that unseen dawn, their heart alone continuing to beat as they fell into death's breathless slumber.

Despite a concerted effort at explanation spanning thousands of years and investing the essence of every possible field of science—ecology, biology, cerebral physiology, psychology, and even super-psychology—the damned couldn't shed a bit of light on the true cause of their sleep. As if to say, those who dwelt in the darkness were denied even the rays of hope.

Born of the vampires' desperate research, Time-Bewitching Incense was one means of overcoming their limitations.

Wherever its scent hung, the time would become night. Or rather, appear to be night. In a manner of speaking, normal temporal effects were so altered by this chemical compound, the incense made time itself seem hypnotized. In the glistening sunlight of early afternoon, the night-blooming moonlight grass would open its gorgeous white flowers, people would doze off and remain asleep indefinitely, and the eyes of vampires would shine with a piercing light. Due to the extreme difficulty of finding and combining the components, the incense was very hard to come by, but rumors spread to every corner of the Frontier about Hunters who forced their way into a vampire resting place when the sun was high only to be brutally ambushed by Nobles who just happened to have some on hand.

There, in the false night, D faced the dark liege lord "Did you come here expecting to find us asleep, foolish one? As you managed to stop my daughter, I believed you to be a more stalwart opponent than the usual insects, and I allowed you this meeting. But, where you sauntered into the blackest hell without even suspecting the danger awaiting you, I may have erred gravely in my assessment."

"No," said a voice he'd heard before. The figure at the Count's side was Larmica. "This man doesn't exhibit the last trace of fear. He's a thoroughly exasperating and deliciously impudent fellow. Judging by the skill he demonstrated this past evening when dealing Garou a grievous wound, he could be nothing save a dhampir."

"Human or dhampir, he remains a traitor. A bastard spawned by one of our kind and a mere human. Tell me, bastard, are you a man or a vampire?"

To this scornful query, D gave a different answer. "I'm a Vampire Hunter. I came here because the walls opened up for me. Are you the fiend that attacked the girl from the farm? If so, I'll slay you here and now."

For a moment, the Count was left speechless by the gleaming eyes that bored through the darkness at him, but an instant later he seemed indignant. He laughed loudly. "Slay me? You forget your place. Do you not realize the sole reason I allowed you to come this far is because my daughter said it would be a shame to kill a man such as yourself, that we should persuade you to join us in the castle and make you one of our kind? I have no [idea which of your parents was of our kind, but judging by the speech and conduct of their son, it was obviously a buffoon without an inkling of their own low station. This is a waste of time. Dhampir, shame of our race, prepare to meet your maker." Having roared these words, the Count raised his right hand to strike, but was stopped by Larmica's voice.

"Please wait, Father. Allow me to speak to him." Fluttering the train of a deep blue dress quite unlike the one [she wore the previous night, Larmica stepped between the Count and D.

"You spring from the same noble blood as our family. Regardless of what Father said, no son of a humble-born vampire could ever possess such skill. When I caught the missile you hurled at me, I thought my blood would freeze." D said nothing.

"What say you? Will you not apologize to Father for your boastful speech and join us here in the castle? What reasons have you to dog us? Is being a Hunter a job worth wandering the untamed plains in such shabby apparel? And what of the human wretches you've protected—what manner of treatment have you received from humans who should be grateful to you? Have they accepted you as their fellow man?"

In the unknowably deep twilight of the hall, the voice of the beautiful young woman flowed without hesitation. Her haughty and domineering mien was unchanged from the night before, but one had to wonder if D noticed the faint shadows of entreaty and desire that clung to her.

Dhampir--a child of the union between a vampire and a human. There could be no existence more lonely or hateful than that. Normally, dhampirs were no different from humans, relatively free to work by the light of day. When angered, however, they lashed out with the unholy power of a vampire, killing and manning at will. Most detestable of all were the vampire urges they inherited from one of their parents.

Based on their innate and intimate knowledge of vampires' strengths and weaknesses, many chose to become Vampire Hunters in order to make a living in human society. The fact was, they demonstrated a level of ability head and shoulders above merely human Hunters, but outside of hunting, they were nearly completely ostracized by humanity and kept their distance. Occasionally, their vampire nature would awaken so powerfully they themselves couldn't suppress it, causing them to crave the blood of the very people that depended on them.

As soon as a dhampir finished a job, the people who barely tolerated him while he went about his mission would chase him off with stones, their gaze full of malice and contempt. With both the cruelly aristocratic blood of the Nobility and brutally vulgar blood of the humans, dhampirs were tormented by the dual destines of darkness and light; one side called them traitors while the other labeled them devils. Truly, the dhampires--like the Flying Dutchman cursed to wander the seven seas for all eternity--led an abominable existence.

And yet, Larmica was saying all she could to get him to join them. Still she spoke.

"You can't possibly have a single pleasant reminiscence from your life a Hunter. Of late, the insects in the village have been rather boisterous. At some point they will no doubt send in an assassin like yourself. If Father and I were to have a stalwart individual like you acting as a sort of guard when they do, we would feel most secure. What say you? If you are so inclined, we may even make you truly one of us."

The Count was ready to explode with rage at the words his daughter—gazing with sleepy, painfully lustful eyes at motionless D—had said. But before he could, he heard a low voice.

"What do you plan to do with the girl?"

Larmica laughed charmingly. "Do not overreach your bounds. The woman shall soon belong to Father, soul and all." And then, staring fixedly at her father with a cutting and highly ironic gaze, she said, "I believe Father wishes to make her one of his concubines, but I cannot allow it. I shall drain her of her very last drop of blood, then leave her for the human worms to rip apart and put to the torch."

Her words suddenly stopped. The Count's eyes gave off blood light. The fearsome night-stalking father and daughter surmised through their supernaturally attuned senses that the trivial opponent before them—the youth who was trapped like the proverbial rat—was rapidly transforming. That he was becoming the same thing they were!

"Still you fail to comprehend this," Larmica scolded. "What can come of this obligation you have toward the human worms? Those menials spared no pains in exterminating each and every living creature on the face of the earth besides themselves, and managed to nearly wipe themselves out through their own carelessness. They only continued living through the charity of our kind, yet the first time our power waned, the insurgents were all too happy to fly the flags of revolt. They, not we, are the creatures mat should be expunged from this planet and from all of space."

At that moment, the Count thought he'd heard a certain phrase, and his brow knit. The muttered words had clearly come from the young man before him, but he promptly dredged the same phrase from the depths of distant, half-forgotten memories. Reason denied the possibility of such a thing.

Impossible, he thought. Those are the very words I heard from his highness. From the great one, the Sacred Ancestor of our species. That filthy whelp couldn't possibly know such things.

He heard D's voice. "Is that all you have to say?"

"Fool!"

The screams of both father and daughter resounded through the vast chamber. Negotiations had fallen through The Count's lips warped into a cold-blooded and confident I grin. He gave a crisp snap of the fingers on his right hand, but a rush of consternation came into his pale visage a few seconds later when he realized the countless electronic weapons mounted throughout the hall weren't operating.

The pendant on D's chest emitted a blue light.

"I don't know what you have up your sleeve, but the weapons of the Nobility don't work against me." Leaving only his words there, D kicked off the ground. Lightning fast, there would be no escaping him. Drawing his sword in midair, he pulled it to his right side. Just as he landed, his deadly thrust became a flash of silver that sank into the Count's chest.

There was the sound of flesh striking flesh.

"Eh?!"

For the first time, a look of surprise surfaced in D's handsome but normally expressionless countenance. His longsword was stopped dead, caught between the Count's palms about eight inches from the tip. Moreover, from their respective stances, D was in a far better position to exert more force upon the sword, but though he put all his might behind it, the blade wouldn't budge an inch, just as if it was wedged in a wall.

The Count bared his fangs and laughed. "What do you make of that, traitor? Unlike your vulgar swordplay, this is a skill worthy of a true Noble. When you get to hell, tell them how surprised you were!" As he said that, the figure in black made a blond move to the right. Perhaps it was some secret trick the Count employees in the timing, or the way he put his strength into move, but for whatever reason, D was unable to take his hand off the hilt. He was thrown along with the sword into the center of the hall.

However...

The Count quite unexpectedly found his breath taken away. There were no crushing bones to be heard; the youth somersaulted in midair like a cat about to land feetfirst on the floor with hem of his coat billowing out around him. Or rather, he was ready to land there. With no floor beneath his feet, D kept right on going, falling into the pitch-black maw that opened suddenly beneath him.

As he heard the creaking of trapdoors to either side of the massive thirty by thirty-foot pit swinging back up into place, the Count turned his gaze to the darkness behind him. Larmica appeared from it. "It's a primitive trap, but it was fortunate for us we had it put there, was it not, Father? When all your vaunted atomic armaments were useless, a pitfall of cogs and springs rid us of that nuisance."

At her charming laughter, the Count made a sullen face. He had reluctantly allowed this trap to be installed due to Larmica's entreaties. There's no way she could have foreseen this day's events, the Count thought, but this girl, daughter of mine though she may be, seems on occasion to be a creature beyond imaging.

Shaking off his grimace, he said, "At the same instant I hurled him, you pulled the cord on the trapdoor--who but my daughter would be capable of as much? But is this for the best?"

"Is what for the best?"

"Last night, when you returned from the farm and spoke of the stripling we just disposed of, the tone of your voice, the manner of your complaints--even I, your own father, cannot recall ever hearing you so indignant, yet your indignation held a feverish sentiment that was equally new. Could it be you're smitten with the scoundrel?"

Unanticipated though her father's words were, Larmica donned a smile that positively defied description- Not only that, she licked her lips as well.

"Do you believe I could let a man I loved drop down there? Father, as its architect you know far better than anyone what a living hell that subterranean region is. Dhampir or not, no one could come out of that benighted pit alive. But..."

"But what?"

Here Larmica once again made a ghastly smile that even caused Count Lee, her own father, to flinch.

"If he can escape from there with naught but a sword and the power of his own limbs, I shall devote myself to him body and soul. By the eternal life and ten thousand bloody years of the history of the Nobility, I swear I love him—I love the Vampire Hunter D." Now it was the Count's turn to smile bitterly. "It is hell for those you despise and a worse hell for those you desire. Though I [don't believe there is anything in this world that can face the three sisters and live to tell the tale." "Of course not, Father."

"However," the Count continued, "should he survive and you meet him again, what will you do should he spurn your affections?"

Larmica responded in a heartbeat. Flames of joy rose from her body. Her eyes glittered wildly but were moist with hot tears, her crimson lips parted slightly, and her slick tongue licked along her lips as if it possessed a will of its own. "In that case, I will deal the deathblow to him without fail. I shall rip out his heart and lop off his head. And then he shall truly be mine. And I shall be his. I will taste the sweet blood as it seeps from his wounds, and after I have kissed his pale and withered lips, I shall tear open my own breast and let the hot blood of the Nobility course down his gaping throat."

When Larmica had taken her leave, following her incredible gruesome yet fervent declaration of love, the Count's expression was a mixture of anger and apprehension, and he turned his gaze to the pit. He pressed one hand against the left side of his chest through his cape. The fabric was soaking wet with blood. Though he seemed to have masterfully caught D's blade, more than an inch at the tip had sunken into his immortal flesh. Some trick with the sword may have been involved, for, unlike any wound he'd heretofore taken in battle, the gash still hadn't closed, and the warm blood that was the fount of his life was flowing out.

Now there is a man to be feared. He might even have...

The Count erased from his mind all thoughts of what might happen should he face the youth again in battle the death. Considering the things that awaited the whelp in the subterranean world, D didn't have one chance in a million of returning to the surface.

Turning his back to the hall, the Count was about to walk back to his dark demesne when the words the youth had whispered flitted through his brain. Words the Count had heard from that august personage. A phrase that could render the faces of every Noble, extinct of still living on, melancholy every time it was called. How could that stripling know those words?

Transient guests are we.

The Demons’ Weakness

Chapter 4

S is, you sure we don't need more fertilizer than this?" Dan's apprehensive tone as he took the last plastic case and set it down in the bed of their wagon stabbed into Doris' breast. This was right about the time D was passing through the gates of the vampires' castle.

The pair had gone into Ransylva to do their shopping for the month. However, the results were something pitiful. Old Man Whatley, proprietor of a local store, had always been kind enough to bring things out from the storeroom that he didn't have displayed, but today he coldly refused as he'd never done before. As Doris named off necessities, he replied with apparent regret that they were either sold out or on back order. And yet, behind the counter and in the corner Doris saw he had stacks of them. When asked, however, he fumbled to say that the merchandise was already spoken for.

Doris caught on quickly enough. There was only one person low enough to cause her such grief.

Still, she didn't have time to waste arguing with Whatley, so she choked back her rage, swung by the home of an acquaintance, and somehow managed to get what she needed for the time being. At present, every minute from sunrise to sunset was as precious as a jewel to Doris. At night, her ghastly life-or-death battle with the demon awaited. No matter what happened, she had to get home before nightfall—that was the message D had drilled into her before he set out. Well, she knew that, but... Once she'd loaded the last package of dried beef into the wagon bed, Doris gnawed her lip. The uncharacteristically forlorn expression Dan wore back there in the wagon became a smile the second his face turned toward her. The boy was doing all he could to keep her from worrying on his account. Because she understood that, Doris' heart was filled with a concern, a sorrow, and an anger that would not be checked. One of her hands reached over and unconsciously tightened around the handle of the whip she had tucked in her belt. There was only one place to direct her rage.

"Darn it, I forgot to swing by Doc Ferringo's place," she said with feigned agitation. "You wait here. It wouldn't do to have our goods get swiped, so don't you leave the wagon."

"Sis..."

Her brother's word seemed to cling to her, as if he sensed something, but Doris replied, "Hey, a big boy like you should be ashamed to make a face like that. D would laugh if he could see how down in the mouth you look. Stop your worrying. As long as I'm around, everything'll be fine. Ain't that the way it's always been?" Speaking gently but firmly, and giving him no chance to disagree, she quickly set off down the street, thinking, At this hour, I figure those scumbags'll be in the Black Lagoon or Pandora's Hotel. I'll teach them a thing or two!

Her supposition proved correct. The second she opened the batwing doors of the saloon, Greco and his gang smirked and stood up from their table in the back. Quickly counting their number at seven, Doris narrowed her eyes suddenly when she saw what Greco was wearing.

His whole body was sparkling. From the top of his head to the tips of his feet Greco was covered by metallic clothing—actually' a kind of weapon called a combat suit. Doris had never seen one before, but her amazement soon faded, and with a scornful expression that said, looks like that frivolous fool has jumped a new fashion bandwagon, she laid into him. "You were all hot under the collar about what happened this morning, so you went and leaned on Old Man Whatley so he wouldn't sell us nothing, didn't you? And you call yourself a man? You're the lowest of the low!" "What the hell are you yammering about?" Greco smiled mockingly. "I don't have to take that off no one who's about to be some vampire's fun toy. You should thank your lucky stars we didn't let that little tidbit out. You'd better get it into your head that it's gonna be the same thing next month and the month after. Looks like you probably managed to scrape something together today, but how long will that pitiful amount keep your orchards going and your cows fed? Maybe two weeks, if you're lucky. Of course, that's supposing you're still walking around and throwing a shadow that long. Well, you'll be okay because pretty soon you won't have to eat anything to survive, but what'd you have planned for your poor little brother?"

Before his snide comments had ended, the whip streaked from Doris' hand. It wrapped around the helmet portion of his combat suit and she channeled her power into toppling him. But her recklessness was born of her ignorance. Greco—or rather, his combat suit—didn't budge an inch. He pulled the end of the whip with his right hand, and with one little tug, the whip flew into his hands.

"How many times did you think I was gonna fall for that, bitch?"

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