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Vol.1 Vampire Hunter D 5 страница

Shocked though she was, Doris was indeed the daughter of a Hunter, and she leapt back almost six feet. As she jumped, eyes that sparkled vulgarly with the light of hatred, lust, and superiority followed her.

"Don't forget it's my daddy that runs the show in town. There's nothing to keep us from seeing to it you and your stupid little brother starve to death."

Doris was a bit shaken, and it showed on her face--she knew the truth of what he'd just said.

A committee generally governed village operations, but the ultimate authority in town was the mayor. Under the harsh conditions of the Frontier lands, time-consuming and half-hearted operating procedures like parliaments and majority rule would bring death down on the villagers in no time. Monsters, mutants bandits—the hungry eyes of outside forces were focused relentlessly on Ransylva. And naturally, village operations included the buying and selling of goods. It would be a piece of cake to come up with some reason to suspend a shop from doing business. When it came to the life or death of his business, Old Man Whatley had no choice but bow under duress. For Doris, a hard two-day ride to go shopping in Pedros, the nearest neighboring village, was out of the question under the present conditions. Anyway, it was clear Greco and his cronies would try to stop her.

"You have a lot of nerve, saying a despicable thing like that. I don't care if you are the mayor's son..." Doris' voice trembled with rage.

Ignoring that, Greco said, "But if you'd be my wife, all that'd be different. We've got it all set up so when my daddy retires, the folks with pull in this town will see to it I'm the next mayor. So, what do you say? Won't you reconsider? Instead of busting your ass on that rundown farm, you could have all the fancy duds you could ever wear and all you could eat of the classiest fixin's. Dan would love it, too. And we could run off that creepy punk because I'd protect you from the vampire. If we put the money out there, you'd be surprised how many Hunters'll show up-What do you say?"

In lieu of an answer, Doris drew closer. Well, look at that—no matter how tough she tries to act, she's still a woman after all, Greco thought for a split second before a mass of liquid spattered against the helmet's smoked visor. Doris had spat on him.

"You—you crazy bitch! I try and treat you nice, and you pull this shit!" Greco wasn't accustomed to using the suit, and his right hand clanked roughly as it mopped his faceplate clean. But then he grabbed at Doris with incredible speed. He had hold of her torso before she had a chance to leap away. He pulled her into him. Purchased mere hours earlier from a

wandering merchant, the combat suit was second-hand and of the lowest grade, but the construction—an ultra-tensile, steel armor built on a base of reinforced, organic, pseudo-skin over n electronic nervous system—increased the wearer's speed three-fold and gave him ten times his normal strength. Now that Greco had Doris, there was no way she could get away.

"What are you doing? Let go of me," she screamed, but she only succeeded in hurting her own hand when she slapped him.

Greco had no trouble whatsoever restraining both of Doris' hands with one of his own, and he hoisted her a foot off the ground. The helmet split down the middle with a metallic rasp. The face peering out at her was that of bald-faced, fiendish lust. A thread of drool stretched from the corner of his lips, which held a little smirk. Doris glared at him indignantly, but he said, "You're always putting on the airs. Well right here, right now, I'm gonna make you mine. Hey, dumbass, don't do anything funny and just stay the hell out of this!" With that last remark—roared at the middle-aged bartender who had left the counter to try and break things up—the bartender returned to his post. After all, he was up against the mayor's son. Eyes bloodshot with lust, Greco's filthy lips drew close to the immobilized young beauty. Doris turned her face away.

"Let me go! I'll call the sheriff!" That ain't gonna do much good," he laughed. "Hell, if it came right down to it, he likes his neck a little too much to stick it out. Hey, the bar is closed now! Someone stand guard so no one comes in."

"You got it." One of Greco's lackeys headed for the door, but then halted abruptly. Suddenly, there was a wall of black in front of him, blocking his path. "What the hell do you--"

His shout was truncated almost immediately, and a split second later, the lackey flew through tables and chairs, crashed into two of his cohorts, and smacked headfirst into the wall. Not that he was thrown at it. The black wall had merely given the man a light push backwards. But his strength must have been inhuman: both the lackey that had gone flying and also the two others he'd hit were all laid out cold on the floor, and some of the plaster had been knocked out of the wall.

"You bastard! What the hell do you think you're doing?" As the thugs grew pale and reached for the weapons at their waists, the black wall looked at them and shrugged casually.

Easily over six-and-a-half-feet tall, he was a bald giant. Arms, knotted like the roots of a tree, protruded from his leather vest. He must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds if he weighed an ounce. Judging from the well-worn, massive machete hanging from his belt, the thugs realized their foe had more than just size on his side, and their expressions grew more prudent.

"Please forgive us. My friend here is wholly unfamiliar with the concept of restraint."

Wriggling in Greco's embrace, Doris forgot her struggles tot a moment and turned toward the newcomers only to have her eyes open wide with surprise. The voice had been beautiful, but the man himself positively sparkled.

His age must have been around twenty. He had gorgeous. black hair that spilled down to his shoulders, and deep brown eyes that seemed ready to swallow the world, leaving all who beheld them feeling gloriously drunk. The youth was an Asian Apollo. He, along with the giant and two other companions, seated himself at a table.

The only other people in the Black Lagoon aside from Greco and his gang, the newcomers began to amuse themselves with a game of cards. If the keen glint in their eyes was any indication, they had to be traveling Hunters of some confidence.

"What the hell are you fools supposed to be," Greco asked, still holding Doris.

"I am Rei-Ginsei, the Serene Silver Star. My friend here is Golem the Tortureless. We're Behemoth Hunters."

"The hell you are," Greco bellowed, as he looked the four of them over. "You're telling me you hunt those big ol' behemoths with so few people? A baby behemoth can't even be killed without ten or twenty guys." He laughed scornfully. "Granted, you've got that big bastard, but that still leaves you with a sissy boy, a pinhead, and a fucking hunchback. So please help me out here—how exactly does a bunch of rejects like you hunt anyway."

"We shall show you—here and now," Rei-Ginsei said with his sun-god smile. "But before we do, kindly release the young lady. If she were ugly, it might be another matter, but to treat a beautiful woman in such a manner is a grave breach of etiquette." "Then why don't you make me stop, you big, bad Hunters?" The vermilion lips that framed his pearly white teeth bowed with sorrow. "So that's how it's to be then? Very well..." "Okay, come on then!"

Greco was used to getting into fights, but the reason he forgot the power of his combat suit and threw Doris aside with all his might may have been because he had some inkling of how the coming battle was going to end.

Unable to prepare for her fall, Doris struck her head on the edge of a table. When she regained consciousness she was held in a pair of powerful arms, and matters had already been settled.

"Ow, that hurts," she said, rubbing her forehead.

Rei-Ginsei gave her a gentle smile and swept her up off the floor. "We dealt with those ruffians. I'm not completely clear on the situation here, but I think leaving before the sheriff is summoned might avoid complications."

"Um, yeah, you're right." Due to her throbbing headache her answer was muddled, but Doris noticed the sharp squeak of wood-on-wood behind her and turned around in time to be utterly astonished. Every last one of Greco's hoodlums was laid out on the floor. Despite the pain in her head, Doris was still sharp enough to notice something strange about them almost instantly.

The arms and legs of the two sprawled closest to her on the floor had been bent back against the elbow and knee joints and were twisted into horrific objects d'art. Most likely, the hoodlums had fallen victim to Golem's monstrous strength, but what caught Doris' eye were the remnants of a longsword and a machete lying near them. She wasn't sure about the machete, but the longsword was definitely a high-frequency saber with a built-in sonic frequency wave generator, able to cut through iron plate. Both weapons were shattered down to the hilt as if they'd tried to chop through a block of steel.

Just behind one of the round tables squirmed Greco's right-hand man, O'Reilly. He was known for his skill with a revolver; once, Doris saw him knock a bee out of the air from fifty yards with his quick draw. When she'd seen him last, he was already going for his gun. When one of the four came at him, the barrel I of his weapon should have spit flame in less than three-tenths of a second. Yet here he was sprawled face-down on the floor with his hand still locked around the pistol grip. But what truly made Doris shudder was the location of the wound that felled him. The back of his head was split open. One of the four—well, perhaps not Golem but one of the other three—had got behind him and dealt the blow without giving him the three-tenths of a second he needed to work his quick draw.

Diagonally across from O'Reilly someone else raised his head. Doris felt as if all the blood had drained from her body. The first three thugs who'd been slammed into the wall were still unconscious, and they could be considered lucky for that. The remaining man's face looked like it'd been stung by vicious killer bees—his skin was swollen with dark red pustules that dripped a steady stream of discharge onto the floor. Though Doris didn't notice it at first, at that very moment a black insect crawling across the floor stopped at her feet, scurried a little closer, and then walked right past her as if someone was calling it back. It was a tiny spider. It went from the leather sandals of the hunchback to his leg, then climbed farther up his back to a massive hump, covered by a leather vest. Both the vest and the hump split right down the middle, and the spider disappeared into the fissure. The fissure closed promptly.

"Surprised? I fear it may be too much of a shock for a beautiful young woman like yourself..."

Doris heard Rei'Ginsei's voice as if from a distance, like the pealing of a bell, for her soul had been stolen when she saw the most frightening outcome of the whole unearthly battle: she saw Greco, the only one unharmed, still seated in his chair with his hands locked around the armrests and the expression of a dead man on his face. The squeak of wood-on-wood she had heard was the sound of his trembling body rattling the legs of the chair against the floor. Whatever he'd witnessed from the safety of his combat suit, it had thrown his eyes wide open, and they reflected nothing but paling terror.

"What'd you guys do?" Doris asked in a firm voice when she finally looked back at Rei'Ginsei and slipped from his arms.

"Not a thing." Rei-Ginsei made a mortified expression. "We simply finished what they started—in our own inimitable style, of course."

"Thank you," Doris said gratefully. "I truly appreciate your help. If you're going to be in town a while, I'd like to do something to thank you later."

"Don't trouble yourself about it. There is nothing in this world more profane than the ugly making the beautiful submit by force. They merely got a taste of heaven's wrath."

"You flatter me, but would you have done the same for another girl if she was being treated the same way?"

"Of course I'd come to her aid. Provided she was beautiful." Doris averted her eyes from the calmly smiling face of the gorgeous man. "Well, thank you again. Now if you'll excuse me."

"Yes, allow us to take care of this mess. We're well accustomed to it." As Rei-Ginsei nodded jovially, something black gushed into his gaze. "I'm quite sure we'll meet again."

A few minutes later, Doris had the wagon racing back toward the farm.

"Did something happen back there, Sis?"

Her distant expression didn't change at the concerned query from Dan, who rode shotgun. The anxieties running amuck in her mind wouldn't allow her a smile.

She could only expect that Greco would make things even harder for her now, and on top of that she had no guarantees D would be back tonight. She just knew she should've stopped D when he told her he was going into the lord's castle during the day to take advantage of the dhampirs' ability to operate in daylight. If he didn't make it back, they would be left helpless and alone before the Count's next onslaught. She had no proof the Count would come tonight, but she was pretty sure of it. Doris shook her head unconsciously. No, that would mean D was dead.

I know he's coming back, she thought.

Her right hand brushed the nape of her neck. Moments before he'd set out, D had put what he said was a charm on the fang marks there. The charm was disappointingly simple, consisting merely of a light press of the palm of his left hand to the wound; he hadn't even explained what effect it was supposed to have, but it was all Doris had to rely on now.

Another face formed in her mind. That dashing young man in the saloon could also be considered her savior in a way, but Doris felt an ominous shadow fall across her heart. When he'd lifted her from the floor and she saw his handsome visage up close, she had in truth swooned. But her virgin instinct had caught the sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit that lingered around his gorgeous face.

No, most likely it wasn’t her instinct that caught it, but rather the work of something firmly etched in a deeper part of her: the visage of a young man more beautiful and more noble than Rei-Ginsei. Doris had a foreboding that the handsome new arrival would prove a greater danger to her than Greco had. That was another of her concerns.

Come back. I don't care if you can’t beat the Count, just come back to me.

That these thoughts had nothing to do with her safety was something the seventeen-year-old had not yet noticed.

For the past few minutes, the tepid, waist-deep water had been growing warmer, and the mist licking its way up the stony walls had become denser. He had been walking for thirty minutes now. The drop from the great hall must have been around seventy feet. A vast subterranean aqueduct brimming with water had awaited D. As the water only came up to his chest, it didn't matter much that he'd fallen feet first—what had saved D from a brutal impact was his inhuman skill, and the indisputably superhuman anatomy all dhampirs possessed.

Vampire anatomy—primarily their bones, muscles, and nerves—allowed them to absorb impact and recover from damage hundreds of times better than humans could. While it naturally varied from individual to individual, dhampirs inherited at least fifty percent of those abilities. From a height of seventy feet, a dhampir could probably hit solid ground and survive. It would be nigh impossible to keep from breaking every bone in their body and rupturing some internal organs, but even then some of the faster dhampirs would be able to heal completely in about seventy-two hours.

At any rate, D hadn't been hurt in the least, and he stood chest-deep in the black water surveying his surroundings. This was most likely a pre-existing subterranean cavern that had been buttressed through later construction. Places here and there on the black, rock walls to either side showed signs of being repaired with reinforced concrete. The water throughout was lukewarm, and a pale, white mist lent the air an oppressive humidity. The aqueduct itself was roughly fifteen feet wide. It seemed to be a natural formation, and an odor peculiar to mineral springs had reached D's nostrils even as he was falling into the pit. All around him stretched a world of complete darkness. Only his dhampir eyesight allowed him to distinguish how wide the aqueduct was. He turned his gaze upward, but, not surprisingly, he was unable to discern the trapdoor seventy feet above. As the doors had long since been reset, it was only natural he couldn't see them. And of course there was no means of egress to be seen on the rock walls that boasted mass beyond reckoning.

"What to do, what to do...," D muttered this rare comment in a deep voice, yet started walking purposefully in the direction from which the water all around him flowed, though the flow was soundless and so gentle as to be imperceptible. Hard and even, the bottom of the aqueduct seemed to be the work of some external force. That wasn't to say that he had merely to walk long enough and far enough for an exit to present itself. He was unaware of the three sisters the Count had mentioned so ominously in the chamber far above.

Something was waiting for him.

D was cognizant of that much. And he knew that his thrust had dealt a wound to the Count. There was no way the vampire lord would let such a fearsome opponent just drop into the subterranean waterway and then sit idly by. D was positive some sort of attack was coming. And yet, as he walked along, there was no hesitation in the legs that carried him across the firm bottom of the aqueduct, and no hint of tension or fretfulness in the shining, handsome face that seemed to make the darkness retreat. And then he halted.

About twenty-five feet ahead, the aqueduct grew wider and a number of eerily shaped stones jutted from the water's surface. There alone the mist was oddly thick—or rather, it [hung so heavily it seemed to rise from the very waters, twisting the stones into far more outrageous and disturbing shapes and sealing off the waterway. The air bore a foul stench of decay. D's eyes saw a film of oily scum covering the water and white things concealed in the recesses of the stones, bleached bones. Deep in the mist there was a sharp splash, like a fish flicking its tail up out of the water.

There was something here. Its lair was beyond the eldritch stones.

Still, D showed no sign of turning back, and he continued walking calmly into the mist at the center of the stones. Once inside, the space between the stones looked like a sort of pool or a fishpond. The stones formed rows to either side that completely enclosed the waterway. The water sat stagnant there, blacker than ever, and the white mist eddied savagely. It seemed the source of the mineral springs wasn't too far off. The more he advanced, the greater the number of eldritch stones, and, as the number of bones multiplied, the stench grew ever more overpowering. Most of the bones were from cattle and other livestock, but human remains were also evident. There was a skeleton that, judging from the quiver on his back, looked to be a huntsman, a woman's skull resting in the tattered remnants of a long dress, and the diminutive bones of a child. Many of them hadn't had time to be denuded; dark red meat and entrails hung from their bones, rife with maggots. In this vile, disturbing scene—a scene that would make the average person go mad or stop, paralyzed with fear—D noticed the spines and ribs of all the stark skeletons had been pulverized. This was not the result of being gnawed by tenacious fangs and jaws. They'd been crushed. Like something had squeezed them tight and twisted them ways they were never meant to go.

Once again, D halted.

There was another splash, this time much closer. The whine of a blade leaving its sheath rose from D's back. At the same time, ripples formed on the surface a few yards ahead of him, and a white mass bobbed to the surface. And just after that, another one bobbed to the right. Then one to the left. Unearthly white in the darkness—they were the heads of carnal, alluring women.

Perhaps D had lost his nerve, because he stood stock-still instead of holding his sword at the ready. The women gazed at him intently. Their facial features were distinct, but all were equally beautiful, and the red lips of the three women twisted into broad grins. Far behind them there was another sharp splash. Perhaps these three swam this way to escape whatever was chasing them? If that was the case, the way they kept all but their heads submerged after meeting D was quite out of the ordinary. And the grins they wore were so evil, so enticing. He looked at them and they at him for a few seconds. With the sound of a torrent of drops, the three women rose in unison. Their heads came up to the height of D's. And then above his—far above.

Who in the human world could imagine such an amazing sight? Three disembodied but beautiful heads smiling down charmingly at him from a height of ten feet. These women had to be the three sisters the Count had mentioned.

At that point, D said softly, "I've heard rumors about you. So you're the Midwich Medusas I take it?"

"Oh, you know of us, do you?" The head in the middle, which would be the eldest sister, wiped the smile from her face. Her voice was like the pealing of a bell, but it also dripped with venom. However, it wasn't the fact that the dashing young man before them seemed to recognized them for what they truly were that gave her voice a ring of surprise, but rather because there wasn't a whit of fear in his words, so far as she could detect.

The Midwich Medusas. These three women—or these three creatures—were supernatural beasts of unrivaled evil that fed on the lust of young men and women. They had devoured hundreds of villagers in a part of the Frontier known as Midwich. Years earlier, they'd supposedly been destroyed by the prayers of an eminently virtuous monk passing through the region, but, unknown to all, they had escaped. After a chance encounter with Count Lee, they agreed to take up residence far below his castle on the condition they received three cows per day. Unlike the faux monsters the Nobility engineered, nothing could be more difficult to destroy than a true demon like this one. The Medusas had survived tens of thousands of years and had even outlived their own legend. Like the hydra of ancient myth, the three heads of the Medusas, which appeared to be separate, were in fact joined a few yards down in a massive pillar of a torso clad with scales of silvery gray that remained sunken in the water. The splashing sounds to their rear came from the end of the torso—a tail that thrashed in delight at finding prey.

But D could only see the women's heads. The reason he knew what they really were was because he'd recognized the heads of three beautiful women as the objects of one of the many bizarre rumors out on the Frontier. But the real question was why did they melt into the darkness below the neck?

"He's a fine specimen, sisters." The whispers from the head on the right sounded deeply impressed, and she licked her lips. Her red flame of a tongue was slim, and the tip was forked. "At long last, we have a man worthy of our pleasuring. And not just a pretty face, either—look at how muscular he is."

"Sisters, you can't have him first," the third head—the one on the left—declared. "Just five days ago, the two of you fed on the huntsman who wandered in here while I was asleep. This time I shall be first. First to take him to the heights of rapture, and first to taste his blood when he hits that peak." "The nerve of you! We are your elders," the head on the right—and apparently the second-in-command—bellowed.

"Stop your sibling quarrels," the middle head scolded them, turning to the head on the left. "You may be the first to drink of his blood. However, the three of us shall pleasure him together."

"Yes."

"I'm amenable to that."

Without another word the three heads nodded in agreement. Little flame tongues flicking in and out and the women fondled every inch of D with smitten eyes.

"But be on guard," the oldest sister said quite plainly. "This man does not fear us."

"Rubbish! Could anyone know what we are and not tremble? When we grew angry at our meager repasts and bared our fangs, did not the Count himself beat a hasty retreat, never to return to our realm again?" asked the second sister.

"Even supposing that he is not afraid, what could he do? Manling, can you move?"

D remained silent. In truth, he couldn't move. From the first moment he laid eyes on the women's heads, his whole body had been gripped by countless hands.

"Do you comprehend, manling," the second sister went on. "That's our hair at work."

Exactly. The reason why the necks and torso of the Midwich Medusas melded with the darkness was because everything below their jaws was hidden by black hair that fell in a cascade of tens of thousands of strands, shrouding the rest completely. However, this was no ordinary hair. Once on the water's surface, the strands spread out like tentacles, drifted about, and when they felt the movement of something in the lair, in accordance with the will of the three sisters, they would lure the prey into the center. Then, when the appropriate time came, they could wrap around the victim's limbs in a split second and rob the victim of his freedom with the strength of piano wire.

And that wasn't all. The truth was, it wasn't water that was in the three sisters' stone-bordered den. The eldritch stones diverted the aqueduct and sent the water flowing around either side, while their lair was actually filled with a secretion from the hair itself. The liquid flowed subtly to complement the gently swaying movements of the hair, swirling it around, and even D—with a sense of touch far more sensitive than that of humans—hadn't been alerted to the presence of the strands. Unbeknownst to D, the hair had crept up from his waist and wrapped itself around his wrists and upper arms, as well as his shoulders and neck, completely restraining his limbs.

Even more disturbing, the rest of those countless hands—nay, tentacles—had started slipping in through the cuffs and seams of his clothes, creeping across him, rubbing against his naked flesh, teasing him, plotting to make D a slave of inflamed desire. No matter how resolute their will, a person's reason would dissolve after a few seconds of these delicate movements, reducing them to lust-driven mindlessness—this was the Midwich Medusas obscene torture, and no one could resist it.

"Well, have you come to crave us?" the oldest sister asked. "Ordinarily, we would take your life at this point. Like so." With her words as their signal, the three heads twisted through the air to part their locks. The black cataract changed its course, and three lengthy necks striped with black and blue, as well as the massive torso that supported them, came into view. The torso was so thick, two grown men would have trouble reaching around it. The long necks swooped down at D, wrapping around and around the powerfully built man held captive by the bonds of their black hair. For its part, the hair continued its tiny wriggling movements below D's clothes.

"We can break your bones whenever it suits us," the oldest sister said, her red eyes ablaze as she stared at D's face. The fire in her eyes was an inferno of lust. "But you're such a gorgeous man. Such a well-proportioned man." Her tongue licked D's cheek.

"Verily. Lo these past three centuries we've not seen one so beautiful." The moist lips of the second sister toyed with D's earlobe from behind. Her hot, rank breath blew into his ear. "But we won't kill you. The three of us will see to it you taste more than your share of unearthly rapture, and then drain you to the marrow." The youngest sister fairly moaned the words.

The source of the Midwich Medusas' life was not only the energy they derived from the consumption of living organisms. With bizarre abilities only demons possessed, they reduced strapping men and lovely women in the bloom of youth to wanton creatures aching with desire, then imbibed the aura of pure rapture the victims' radiated at their peak—this was the secret of the three sisters' immortality, and this was how they had lived on since before the vampires, since the ancient times when humans ruled.

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