White Devil Mountain (34 page)

“Shut up. Just stay out of this. My life is at stake!” Vera cried, even raising her hand as if to slap the boy.

“What are you going to do?” the dumbfounded Lilia whispered to D. She hadn’t yet exhibited any of the effects of being bitten by him. It was just as it’d been when Gilzen bit her. “If she keeps crying and screaming like that, she’s gonna dig her own grave. The kid’s in danger, too,” she added. “Of course, you know full well if we bring them along they’ll only get in our way.”

Lilia licked her lips. In a low, dark, passionate tone she continued, “How about we kill them?”

Looking her straight in the face, D said, “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t a question. It was merely an observation. However, Lilia’s expression changed.

“Who’d ever—not for
her
blood,” the Huntress spat with naked loathing, but she quickly got a look in her eyes that was beyond description as she stared at D. It was a feverish gaze. “Funny, isn’t it? When Gilzen bit me it was no big deal, but I look at you, and it makes me all warm south of the border. You know, D, you’re the one who did this to me. Sure you don’t want to
take responsibility
?”

Her words could’ve been interpreted in several very different ways, but of course there was no reply. This was no time for worrying about such things.

After a short pause, D told her, “You’re staying here, too.”

Lilia bugged her eyes, sputtering, “I’m—
why
?”

“Hide somewhere and wait for me to come back.”

“I think just doing away with them would be faster. After all, it’s not like bringing them back was part of the contract.” At that point Lilia noticed how D was looking at her. “Stop it!” she cried. “You’re giving me the creeps. Fine. I’ll look after these two. Now, hurry back. One more thing—are you sure you can find Gilzen without me?”

“We’ll manage somehow,” the hoarse voice replied with distaste.

Ignoring it, Lilia got closer to D, grabbed his hand, and gave it a small but intense shake. “You’d better come back.” It was unclear whether or not D noticed her words weren’t prompted by concern for his safety. “We’ll be hiding out somewhere on this floor,” she continued. “Give a shout if you make it back.”

“There are three types of enemy here. Be careful,” D said.

Gilzen and those loyal to him, the aliens, and now the monsters the Noble had created—that made three threats. Regardless of the fact that Lilia had received the kiss of the Nobility, those weren’t the kind of foes she could easily best.

Once the Hunter had stepped out into the corridor, his left hand asked, “Okay, where are we going?”

“The energy core,” D said without missing a beat.

“Oh! That’s a good plan. Threaten to destroy the whole castle and he’ll have no choice but to show himself. And we know where the reactor is. But on the way there, the place is liable to be crawling with monsters. Can’t say for sure none of them aren’t tough enough to slay you.”

Before its sarcastic remark was finished, the Hunter said, “Where is it?”

“Thataway.”

D started walking. No matter what form of terrors this insane world might have waiting for him out there, they would never stop this gorgeous young man from pressing forward.

The stony moving sidewalk was going down a steep incline. An hour had passed since the Hunter had entrusted the others to Lilia’s care.

“Sheesh,” the hoarse voice croaked, “you’ve done well to make it this far. You’ve really hacked your way through those hellish guardians. Today you’ve really got me thinking you’re a monster!”

The voice sounded rather reflective, but there was no response from D. A ghastly sight, he kept his silence.

His right shoulder had been split open by the lightning-quick assault of a spiked tail, leaving his upper body soaked in blood. His left cheek bore a shallow cut the flesh was rising to fill, but initially it’d been deep enough to expose his cheekbone. That wound had been dealt by one of the meatball-shaped carnivores that’d flown at him by the hundreds. His left hand had been taken off twice, and was now finally reattaching itself. Just to get this far he must’ve slain more than fifty monsters. Yet the young man was exquisite. Stained with darkness and blood, his pale skin glowing all the more, his stunning good looks were such they might even be described as hellishly beautiful, and it seemed like they would drive the world mad. And everyone who looked upon his face felt the same thing:
I don’t mind if he kills me.
It wasn’t a thought. That faculty quickly melted away, and wouldn’t return for a while. Every foe of his was enraptured. Being slain in such a state, they probably all died happy.

D stepped off onto the stone pathway. A stone doorway towered before him. It was massive in comparison to all the doors he’d seen up to this point, and an overwhelming force filled the stonework. It was terribly quiet.

“Security’s gonna be brutal,” the hoarse voice warned him.

D had already started forward. Whatever awaited him, it didn’t matter to this young man.

“You need a key to open the lock,” the hoarse voice said, sounding composed, considering the context. It must’ve been used to situations like this.

D pressed his left hand against the stone doorway. At the same time, the door behind him began to open.

“Wow, it actually opened?” the left hand cried out, and D lowered it, watching the receding door and the slowly widening rectangle. “This is a trap! Gilzen set it up because he guessed we’d come here. Hey, you still planning on going
in
?”

That could be called a dumb question.

Not waiting until it was sufficiently wide to pass through, D twisted his body to squeeze through the doorway.

“Oh, my!”

That remark escaped the Hunter’s left hand on seeing the armed soldiers in the space just beyond the door. Equipped with long spears, longbows, rifles, flamethrowers, and even laser guns, the soldiers numbered over a hundred. These were the troops who guarded the energy core.

“Just as I thought,” the hoarse voice said, a sigh mixing with its words. Yet why did its tone also carry confidence and bold laughter?

The soldiers arrayed there already had eyes glowing red with madness, and a colorless and invisible but nonetheless incredibly powerful air of the supernatural rose from them. At the fore stood a row of ten soldiers armed with laser guns.

“Take aim!” ordered the apparent leader, standing at the right end of the row. Without a second to lose, he continued, “Fire!”

It didn’t seem likely even D could survive being shot through the heart by a ten-thousand-degree heat ray. However—no deadly beams were fired.

As the shaken soldiers broke their line, a black gale rushed at them. Silvery gleams flashed out and blood spurted horribly while the blue light was witness to the chaos of life and death. Those who discarded their laser guns and tried to run away had their backs slashed open, while those who tried to shield themselves with the guns were cut in two, along with their weapons. The Vampire Hunter D—baring your teeth at him was a knock at death’s door.

“Don’t get near him. Encircle him and hit him with the arrows!” shouted the leader, whose face was then split down the middle.

The bowmen receded like an outgoing tide. Before they could stop, the black gale blew at them, dropping them in a storm of blood. D’s blade didn’t deal shallow wounds. It was as if the Grim Reaper had whispered to him that making them suffer would be a sin, and the soldiers who fought in their retreat joined the bloody festivities through their instantaneous deaths.

Long spears thrust at the Hunter from all four sides. Hoping to deal the final blow to the impaled Hunter, the group with longswords made a ring and waited for their chance. Before they realized it was merely an afterimage the spears had pierced, the spearmen were on the receiving end of the murderous intent from the beauty in black sailing down from above.

By the time a hundred soldiers had been reduced to half that number, their fear was so high many of them tried to flee. Some were pierced through the heart by rough wooden needles, and some reached the exit at the far end of the room. Thudding into an invisible barrier, they fell on the spot with hands up to their faces, and still more needles assailed them. The existence of that barrier filled the soldiers with despair and rebellion. They counterattacked with looks of insanity on their faces, but they were quickly cut down and reduced to dust.

Not even breathing hard, D had just lowered his sword when a heavy laugh rained down on him from above. D looked up.

Gilzen stood atop the canopy that covered a walkway that ran to the far end of the room.

“The expression ‘no blood or tears’ describes you quite well, doesn’t it? In order to talk with me, you cut down a hundred men without getting winded? Well, that’s fine. Fighting is their job. They must realize that losing means dying. So—on to the next part.”

“The next part?” the hoarse voice said, furrowing its brow.

D felt the space on all sides of him suddenly grow tighter.

“Shrinking down your force field?” the hoarse voice asked, and for some reason there was laughter in its tone.

“It’s a gravity field, to be precise,” Gilzen said. “And I shall squeeze you down until you’re small enough to fit through a hole in the Dirac Sea. I wonder how a false immortal will react when he has infinite negative mass in an infinitely small volume.”

It was said that unless a vampire had a stake driven through their heart or their head cut off, they would continue to live. Numerous examples attested to this. Even now scholars in the Capital pondered the destruction of vampires.
Are there any other ways to do it?
they wondered. Drowning, burning, bullets, being run over, asphyxiation, sudden impact, blood loss, etc., etc.—they scoured the written records, oral traditions, and firsthand accounts from Frontier villages, laboriously cataloging the roughly thirty thousand examples that they divided into the aforementioned classes in
Deaths of the Nobility
, in which the author Derek Cerceau had this to say: “The sole manner of death for which we have no records at all is death by pressure. Nobles take great pride in their unchanging elegance and youth, but if one were to be locked in a square chamber and pressure were applied from all sides until flesh and bone were fused together, would the Noble still be able to return to normal? I am extremely curious and excited about the prospect of witnessing such an experiment.”

Now, walls of electrons pressed against every inch of D, resulting in an unpleasant sound of creaking bones in a place so sealed off no one would hear it.