The air was stained blue.
The ceiling of the Shelter opened, and a laser cannon reminiscent of a radar dish
appeared and spurted out a stream of fire. It skimmed the airborne body of the car
and reduced a patch of earth to molten lava.
If this weapon was radar-controlled, then there was certainly cause to be alarmed.
The second and third blasts of fire, usually vaunted for their unmatched precision,
flew in vain, as their target slipped in front or behind, to the left or right of
where they fell.
Leila’s skill behind the wheel surpassed these electronic devices.
As far back as she could remember, the clan’s father had always impressed upon her
how important it was for her to refine her skills at manipulating anything and everything
mechanical. Her father may have even known some basic genetic enhancement techniques.
Ironically, Leila’s talents only seemed to shine when it came to modes of transportation.
Whether it was a car, or even something with a life of its own like a cyborg horse,
under her skillful touch mechanical vehicles were given a new lease on life. “Give
her an engine and some wheels and she’ll whip up a car,” her father had said with
admiration. Her skill at operating vehicles surpassed that of all her brothers, with
only the oldest boy Borgoff even coming close.
And how Leila loved her battle car. It had been crafted from parts gathered in junkyards
during their travels. Some parts even came from the ruins of the Nobility, when the
opportunity to take them presented itself. She’d quite literally forgotten to eat
or sleep while she worked on it. Early one winter morning, the battle car was completed
by the feeble, watery light of dawn. Two years had passed since then. Loving that
car like a baby that’d kicked in her own belly, Leila learned to drive it with a miraculous
level of skill. The very epitome of that skill was being displayed out on this hill-hemmed
patch of ground. Avoiding every attack by the electronic devices, the vehicle changed
direction in midair, and, just as the laser’s fraction-of-a-second targeting delay
was ending, the penetrator discharged a silvery beam.
It was a form of liquid metal. Expelled at speeds in excess of Mach 1, the molecular
structure of the metal altered, changing to a five-yard-long spear that shot right
through the workings of the laser cannon. Sending electromagnetic waves out in all
directions like tentacles, the laser was silenced. As she brought the penetrator’s
muzzle to bear on one wall of the Shelter, a bloody smile rose on Leila’s lips.
Suddenly, her target blurred. Or more accurately, the car sank. As if the land surrounding
the Shelter had become a bog, the car sunk nose first into the ground.
Leila’s tense demeanor collapsed, deteriorating into devil-may-care laughter.
The rear nozzles pivoted with a screech, disgorging fire. Flames ran along the sides
of the vehicle, blowing away the rocky soil swallowing its muzzle. The tires spun
at full speed. Whipping up a trail of dust, the battle car took to the air tail first.
It spun to face the hill even before it touched back down, and the penetrator’s turret
swiveled to the back, hurling a blast of silver light against the Shelter wall.
The blast broke in two, and, in the same instant, was reduced to countless particles
of light that flew in all directions. Even Leila’s driving skills couldn’t get her
through this web of shrapnel.
However . . .
Landing back on solid ground, the battle car kept going straight for the storm of
metallic particles, its body at a wild tilt as it pulled a wheelie. The darkness-shredding
bullets sank into the belly of the car.
Giving the engine full throttle, Leila pushed her vehicle to the top of the hill in
one mad dash.
—
I
—
As Leila hit the brakes, a gorgeous figure in black greeted her.
“Very nicely done,” D said in his serene tone.
Weathering a sensation that was neither fever nor chills racing down her spine, Leila
replied with bald-faced hostility. “You still kicking around? If you don’t make tracks
and fast, I’m gonna have to run you down and kill you,” she warned.
Without acknowledging her threat, D said softly, “Someone should take a look at your
wound.”
“And you’d best . . . mind your own business!” Pain spread through the last words
Leila spat. Pressing a hand to her right breast, she toppled forward in the driver’s
seat. She’d taken a hit in the chest from a hunk of shrapnel that’d punched through
the battle car’s floorboards.
Walking over swiftly, D lifted Leila with ease and set her down in the shade of a
nearby tree. Throwing a quick glance at the sky and the Shelter, D listened in the
direction from which Leila had come.
“They’re not coming,” the palm of his left hand could be heard to say. “Her people
are still a long way off. What are you planning on doing?”
“Can’t leave her like this.”
“You can play nursemaid to the mortally wounded later. Our target’s in that steel
box right now, completely immobilized. I say finish him off as soon as possible, and
deliver the girl. After all, even if she’s been bitten already, if we slay the Noble
she’ll be back to normal. That should please her no end.”
Shrouded as always in an eerie aura, D’s beautiful visage clouded for an instant.
“She’d be pleased? Because she was human again? Or because he was—”
“Don’t start harping on that again. Has this fine spring day knocked a few of your
screws loose? We’re so close, and if you just go do it now you could kill him without
working up a sweat. The sun’ll be setting soon, you know. I say let the competition
rot.” As if to corroborate the voice’s growing impatience, the sky began to don a
darker shade of blue. At this time of year, sunset came around five Night, which gave
D fewer than two hours to finish his work.
Despite that, D pulled open the front of Leila’s coverall without a word. Evident
even through her clothing, the pale fullness of her bosom was now laid bare. The flesh
above her left breast burst outwards in a number of spots. Already the bloodied wounds
had swollen black and blue. They were like so many eerie sarcomata growing from her
white skin.
D stood up, lifted the emergency kit from his saddlebags, and returned. When he opened
the lid of the kit, agitation surged into his eyes.
“Heh heh heh,” the voice cackled mockingly. “I was just trying to remember when you
bought that set. You’ve been hauling it around all this time and never used it once.
Well, the stuff inside became useless a long, long time ago. That’s the trouble with
people who can’t die
.”
“Too true,” D muttered in his usual monotone, doing a check of Leila’s battle car
and pulling out a first-aid kit. Just to be safe, he set it on the floorboards to
open it, then closed it again quickly.
“What is it?”
“There’s nothing in there. She’s pretty much out of everything.”
“So, didn’t restock it, eh? Never heard of such a cavalier Hunter.”
Wounds, you could say, were an occupational hazard for Hunters, and replacing medical
supplies was every bit as important as procuring weapons. On arriving in a town or
village, it was second nature for a Hunter to race to the arms merchant and pharmacy
first, then hit the general store or saloon later.
But Leila had no medical supplies. And yet she was the youngest sister of the Marcus
clan, whose five members ranked up there with a handful of veteran Hunters.
Once again D squatted by the girl’s side.
Her breathing was rather shallow. Though it seemed the fragments within her hadn’t
damaged any internal organs, there was some danger of toxins from the shrapnel causing
tetanus if the chunks of metal were left where they were. In fact, the entry and exit
wounds were already swelling a deep, dirty red.
“What are you gonna do? You know I only work on you. Can’t do a thing for humans.”
“I know. There’s no choice but to deal with humans the human way.”
From the combat belt at his waist, D drew a caltrop. He brought one of the points
to his left hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“If the girl dies, you and I are through.”
“Shit. Are you threatening me?” But before the voice had finished speaking, pale blue
flames enveloped the tip of the caltrop.
The sharp point heated quickly and turned crimson. D brought his left hand closer
to Leila’s brow. Her sizable eyes opened.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Cauterizing the wound. I’ll do it so it doesn’t hurt.”
“How kind of you,” she shot back sarcastically. “Don’t expect me to thank you.”
“Don’t talk.”
Leila jerked her face away from the approaching hand. “I don’t know what kind of hocus-pocus
you can pull, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you play around with my body while
I’m out. I’m gonna be awake to see this from start to finish. Try anything funny,
and believe me, you’ll pay.”
Undeterred, D set his left hand on her.
“Don’t—” Leila’s words became a scream. “Stop, I’m begging you. Do it while I’m still
awake. Please,” she pleaded.
Something glistening welled in her eyes as they gazed at D. It spoke of horrific memories.
Silently taking his hand away, D tore the sleeve of his coat and put a strip of cloth
from it between Leila’s lips. They had no anesthesia. The cloth was to keep her from
biting her tongue. This time she cooperated quietly. The little nod she made must’ve
been an expression of gratitude.
D lowered the hot metal to her skin. Shortly thereafter, a pungent scent and a series
of low moans began to permeate the darkening bower.
—
Dusk seemed to coalesce around him. He opened his eyes.
Nothing could replace this feeling, that the spell that imprisoned him to the very
last cell was drawing away like the tide. This was his favorite time.
His eyes hastened to his side. Not far from him, a girl sat quietly on the edge of
the bed. She gave the impression of not having moved a muscle since she’d sat down.
Her pretty white blossom of a face turned to him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, still lying flat on a bed littered with silk cushions. He’d
glimpsed the trail of a teardrop on the girl’s cheek.
“There’s someone outside.”
“Oh. Here already?” In the recesses of his tense voice lay unshakable self-confidence.
Now matter how skilled the Vampire Hunter, nothing could match a Noble rising in darkness.
Stepping down lightly onto the steel floor, he glanced at the door and his eyes fairly
shot out. Was that a threadlike silver line falling across the floor? Realizing that
it was moonlight sneaking in through a crack carved above the door, he turned back
to the girl.
“During the day, someone opened it with a sword,” she said. “Hunters hired by Father,
no doubt . . . ”
Discerning a certain something on the blue dress that covered her down to the knees,
he knit his brow. It was an elegant silver dirk. He’d been wearing it at his waist.
What had she intended to use it for? For a brief while he focused on the weapon, then
he made his way over to the video monitors on the wall to check on the situation outside.
—
By the time D had burned then carved away each wound, and had sterilized the damaged
skin with a freshly heated caltrop, Leila finally passed out.
“For the most part her worries are over,” the voice said. “But bacteria have already
set up shop in her body. She’ll be getting hit by some pretty intense chills soon.
If she can get past that, she’ll be able to rest easy. You’ve gone this far, might
as well do the next step. Keep treating her through the home stretch.”
With no sign of listening to the somewhat disgusted voice, D kept looking back and
forth between the Shelter and the sky of ever-deepening blue. When the caltrop stuck
in the ground had cooled he returned it to his belt and stood up, saying, “He should
be coming out any minute now.”
“You’re so cold,” the voice said with resentment. “You mean to tell me when he does,
you’ll just stop treating her? Don’t run off like some back-alley quack.” But then
the voice stopped unexpectedly.
D took a step forward. Like stagnated blue light, the door to the Shelter retracted
without a sound. Looking back, he saw Leila. The eyes that swiftly turned forward
again held a lurid light. There he stood, the greatest Vampire Hunter of all. The
hem of his coat fluttering in the night breeze, D came down the hill.
It wasn’t long before the six obsidian horses appeared one after another—followed,
of course, by the black lacquered carriage. Machinery within the Shelter had successfully
completed the necessary repairs to it during the day.
A young man clad in black peered silently down at D from the coachman’s perch. “Out
of our way,” he said. His voice was strangely soft. “Scum though you are for the way
you place a price on people’s lives, I still have no wish to engage in a pointless
and lethal exchange.”
An odd hue of emotion flowed into D’s eyes, then swiftly vanished. “I’ll take the
girl,” D said perfunctorily, his demeanor free from violence or exuberance.
The man’s eyes were gradually being dyed red. “I took her because I want her,” he
said. “You should try to do the same. If you’re up to battling a Noble at night, that
is.”
The darkness solidified. Though both the color and light remained the same there,
the space between the two of them seemed to have suddenly frozen.
The crack of whipped flesh broke the stillness. Without even a whinny, two-dozen hooves
began beating the earth. Whether their intent was to trample the insignificant Hunter
or to make him get out of the way, those six madly charging horses unexpectedly came
to a dead stop a few yards shy of D.
There was a startled cry of “Mayerling!”
The instant D realized the voice flew from a woman inside the carriage, his body soared
into the air like a mystic bird. Still distracted by her plaintive cry, there was
a split-second delay before D brought his silvery flash down at the youth’s head.
Sparks spilled into the darkness like scattered jewels, trailing a beautiful metallic
ching
behind them. The youth—Mayerling—had stopped D’s deadly stroke with the back of his
left hand. That part of his hand was bound in steel armor.
Twisting his body out of the way of the three flashes of light roaring through the
air toward his chest, D came silently back down to earth on the opposite side of the
vehicle.