White Devil Mountain (32 page)

“Gilzen!”

“Don’t address me with such insolence, lowly human,” the Greater Noble in the golden cape said, showing stark fangs while the right half of his body remained shielded by the door.

Vera grasped for something to say but didn’t fare well.

“On awakening after ten millennia, I find the minds of my vassals have changed greatly. My command to dispose of the hindrance hasn’t been put into action. It would be simple enough to delegate this to machines or someone else, but I thought it best to use this opportunity to put the fear of me into their bones, so here I am.”

More than the disturbing nature of his grinning visage, more than the overwhelming air of the supernatural that billowed from him, it was what intuition told her lay behind those words that made Vera shudder.

“Hindrance?” she said, thinking,
What in the world is Gilzen doing here?

“First, behold the fate of the traitors I encountered on my way here!”

Gilzen revealed the other half of his body. Something dangled from his right hand.

The breath caught in Vera’s throat. She could almost hear the blood draining from her own body.

“Look!”

Gilzen threw what he held. There were three objects, and they fell with a dull thud at Vera’s feet. They were the heads of the valiant soldiers who’d left a short time before, blank expressions still on their pale faces even as their mouths continued to open and close.

“Filthy turncoats!”

Gilzen swung his scepter. It grew like a long spear, shattering the three severed heads. The heads turned to dust and spread across the floor.

“But you . . . They were your own subordinates . . .” Vera said, shuddering with horror. Her voice quavered.

“My subordinates? They were worthless troublemakers from days long gone. Like the wounded in there.”

His blood-red eyes shot a glance at the neighboring room, and Vera felt her blood run cold.

“You . . . No . . . You wouldn’t . . .”

Gilzen stepped away from the doorway.

Vera got up from her chair. For a while she couldn’t move, and then she slowly took two steps. Sucking air into her lungs, she ran as she let it out again. Dashing past Gilzen, she slipped through the doorway.

There was nobody in the room.

Her foot stepped on something that wasn’t stone. She knew what it was then. For a hundred yards in all directions the floor was covered in gray dust.

It took her a while to bring her suspicions all the way to her lips.

“You . . . The people who were in here . . . All of them . . .”

“I shall soon raise new subordinates. This castle has ten thousand soldiers.”

“Everyone has just one life. That goes for humans and Nobles.”

“What an intriguing thing to say. However, there’s a difference. A human lasts at best a hundred years, while the lives of the Nobility are eternal!”

“That life is cursed!”

Gilzen suddenly tilted his head back and laughed. “Life, life, accursed life. Ha ha ha! Life can’t be cursed or anything else. In this world if you breathe, and eat, and survive, that is life! Although in our case that would be ‘drink blood’ instead of ‘eat.’ ”

“In that case, why are the Nobility facing extinction?” Vera said, her words cutting deeply.

For an instant, a tinge of pain spread in Gilzen’s expression. He thrust his scepter into the air.

“Before I was forced into that sleep, I knew this was coming. I knew it, and so did
he
. That is why we searched for a means of averting it. He sought it within the human race, and I in outer space. Which of us was correct will soon become clear. When I have slain D, that is.”

Vera convulsed as the red eyes slowly turned toward her.

Winds of Flame and Blood

chapter 5

I

C
an you sense which of us was correct?” Gilzen asked the doctor. “Me, or
him
? The boundless potential of the universe? Or a tomorrow propped up by those who crawl upon the ground like insects? Well, it matters not. There’s little point in asking you this. But why not let you slake my thirst?”

When Gilzen faced her head-on, the impact was intense. Vera got the feeling the whole world was going to pieces.

As Gilzen took a casual step forward, he reached out his left hand.

“Stop . . . Don’t come near me!”

Everything around Vera became an illusion. Skewered as she was by fear, only she and Gilzen were real.

“Stay back . . . You can’t! I just knew it . . . You Nobles . . . You really are the devil!”

“No, I am the messiah.”

As Vera retreated, her back hit a stone wall. There was nowhere else to run now.

Gilzen’s hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Oh, what’s
this
?” the duke exclaimed with surprise, pulling his hand back.

The doctor’s body was a blur, and the Greater Noble’s fingertips had felt a blistering pain. When Lilia had been about to give Vera the kiss of the Nobility back in Jeanne’s quarters, the doctor had undergone this mental and physical transformation—and now it was happening again.

Gazing with satisfaction at the doctor as she lost her human form, Gilzen said, “Fascinating. I can only recall witnessing this once before, and after the transformation the psyche also changed in extremely odd ways. How will she be changed, I wonder?”

It must’ve interested Gilzen greatly, but he didn’t get a chance to see for himself. Perhaps noticing something, the Greater Noble of the darkness spun around in a fashion that left the air swirling in his wake and proceeded to the door of the room where he’d just perpetrated that cruel slaughter.

Two figures stood there, one on either side of the corridor: an armored alien warrior and Crey.

“So, you’ve come after all, have you? You know where to find me. Because you have my blood mixed with yours.”

Gleaming with an unnatural light, Gilzen’s eyes reflected the pair.

“Aliens don’t react the same way humans do,” the Nobleman continued. “However, they are still my servants. Shall we see who is the master and who the slave?”

“Me first,” Crey said, stepping forward. The weapon in his right hand might’ve been an alien knife. Pointing to the alien, he said, “My master’s power has changed me. Now I can fight you on equal terms. Face me—and my Deadman’s Blade.”

“Foolish insect!”

And with that tired epithet Gilzen’s scepter stretched. Its beam caught Crey in the chest, which absorbed it the way sandy soil sucks up water.

“Hmph!” Gilzen snorted. “So, you’ve been coated to absorb beam weapons? That’s certainly something their technology could accomplish.”

The scepter in his fist grew even longer. Swinging around neatly, it sped down at Crey’s head. It only appeared to be swift—yet the blow was also powerful enough to shatter a boulder. As the scepter slashed down at Crey, the outlaw’s body darted out of the way like a fish swimming through the rapids.

The scepter came back with a whine. Gilzen was in no hurry. His opponent had backed off.

The Nobleman’s neck was split halfway through. Fresh blood gushed from it like a fountain. Making no effort to close the wound, Gilzen tilted his head back. His own blood poured down on him like rain. Mouth open wide, he let it soak him. And look at the rapture on his face! The way he smacked his lips. He was drinking. His own blood was a fountain, and he was drinking it dry.

Both Crey and the alien were rooted in place by this most unsettling scene, but only for a moment, and then Crey’s right hand flashed out. Gilzen’s neck was cut halfway through on the opposite side.

“Ha ha ha!” the Greater Noble laughed, but how he produced the sound was a mystery. Grabbing his own hair, he jerked his head up, pulling it clean off with only a few bits of muscle and vein still trailing from it.

“This ‘Deadman’s Blade’ of yours is impressive,” the head dripping lifeblood told Crey. “Is its edge thanks to the aliens? At any rate, if it doesn’t slay me, it’s all rather pointless—as long as you’re bound by the musty old legends that all you have to do is cut off a Noble’s head.”

Gilzen returned his head to his shoulders. A streak of black lightning slammed into his face, blowing brains out the back of his skull. Pulling back the long spear that had been driven through the Noble’s head, the alien never took his eyes off Gilzen. The misshapen mass of flesh and bone began to swell. Flesh formed flesh, veins knitted together, and red blood pumped through them.

Clicking his tongue in disappointment, Crey shut his eyes. He was focusing his concentration for another go with the Deadman’s Blade—with the alien technology on his side, he might’ve stopped Gilzen’s regeneration.

However, he wasn’t able to do that. Behind him, he heard a voice say, “Let go of me, you idiot!”

When Crey turned in astonishment, his eyes were greeted by two figures. One looked exactly like his “master,” and it held Lourié—who was thrashing his limbs in an attempt to gain his freedom! Deep beneath the castle the boy had seen the alien mother ship, and after being pursued by an alien who’d returned to it with Crey he’d been captured by another alien—but why had he been brought here, of all places? The reason went without saying. This alien had been bitten by Gilzen, and unlike its compatriots, this one had become his servant.

As Crey stood still, rooted with amazement, the black scepter pierced his abdomen. Shuddering with an agonized death rattle, the outlaw’s body was hoisted into the air.

“Oooh,” Crey groaned, the sound causing spasms in the gloom, while Gilzen’s laughter hammered the stone walls.

Using just the strength of one arm, Gilzen dashed the assassin’s body against the stone floor. He fell right at the alien’s feet, but during all this time it had been paralyzed, offering Crey no help at all. Needless to say that was due to tension and shock at the fact that Lourié had been captured by one of its own kind. This was what happened when someone was forced to fight another that knew all their secrets.

“He’s beyond saving now. Child, is there something you wish to say?”

“Yes, you bet your life there is—let me go!”

“Very well, you may have it your way. As for the other one,” the Nobleman said, turning an intense look on the enemy alien, “I shall dispose of it now. Wait just a moment.”

Without delay the alien foe backed away, and a heartbeat later it had vanished in the distance.

Lourié ran over to Crey. When he dropped to his knees by the outlaw’s side, tears flew everywhere.

“Mister! Don’t die on me. You can’t!”

Crey grinned. In a clear voice he said, “My ticker’s trashed. It’ll stop soon. Once it does, that’s all she wrote.”

“No, let’s go find Miss Vera. She’ll do something for you! You can’t talk like that.”

“Okay, okay,” Crey replied, smiling again. He probably looked on Lourié like a clever little nephew. “We’ll do that. But you know, something might come up anyway. I’m gonna give you something. If you survive and see D again . . . tell him this.”

Crey put his right hand into his jacket, rummaged around, and then pulled out two small rectangular placards.

“One’s got the name of my lady written on it . . . Never mind the other one. Have him bury ’em at the top of the mountain.”

“At the top?”

“Yeah . . . Seems her home was up here a long time ago . . . Before I met her she’d gone bad in the chest, and she was dead within a year. Before she did, she told me something. Said she was a hooker in a country village now, but she’d been a plain old huntsman’s daughter before. And that was when she’d been happiest.”

“And?” Lourié said, eyes overflowing with tears once more.

“Tell her father . . . to plant these if he can, okay? I thought I could manage it, but that’s a laugh. To someone else, I know it must seem like a stupid thing to ask . . . Just have him do it if he can. It looks like I’ve had it after all.”

“Mister—no, you’ve got to hang on!” the boy cried out, clinging to the waist of the alien who’d captured him. At some point Gilzen had vanished. “Help him! My friend’s dying! You could save him. Please, just do some outer-space stuff for him or something!”

The boy’s words floated upward. Having hoisted Lourié into the air, the alien that served Gilzen’s will put the boy under one arm and walked off down the corridor.

“Damn it, let go! Let go of me!” the boy continued to cry, his voice a mixture of anger and grief.

“Stop!” Crey groaned. “Leave . . . the kid here. Damn you, Gilzen . . . What are you gonna
use
him for?”

It wasn’t on account of those words that the alien halted. Mysterious flapping white membranes were flowing toward it from up ahead. Throwing Lourié aside, the alien grabbed the beam gun from its hip and pulled the trigger. The flash from it struck the approaching object. It pierced the membrane, setting the entire thing aflame.

II

Though the alien’s aim had been true, one membrane that escaped its blast skimmed the creature’s left arm. What had been like a strip of cloth suddenly became a blade. It tore through the alien’s armor like it was snipping a piece of string, and fresh blood gushed out—green, in this case. The alien backed away. It’d realized what the exquisite flying things really were. As the fear swelled inside it, the alien turned itself around and dashed off in the opposite direction.