White Devil Mountain (35 page)

The Towering Foe

chapter 6

I

L
ilia holed up with the doctor and the boy in an empty room on that same floor. Once the iron door was shut, there was no need to fear discovery.

“We’ll wait here for D,” the Huntress told them. “No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep a grip on yourself. You can’t start screaming.”

Though the two nodded, Vera was utterly terrified, while Lourié’s eyes had a definite gleam of resistance to authority. The boy couldn’t allow himself to just be swept along by fate. However, he said nothing, merely lying down at one end of the room. He was well aware that selfish actions on his part could expose his compatriots to danger.

An hour passed, and then that stretched into two. A number of times the footfalls of what were apparently guards or signs of some unknown life forms could be heard passing beyond the door, but they seemed to take no notice of the room’s inhabitants.

“Oh, now here’s something,” Lilia remarked with interest. “It sounds like some guards and monsters just ran into each other. They were wiped out in nothing flat. The guards, that is. The castle’s really out of control, eh? The way things are going, I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to stay here. Ordinarily, the guards wouldn’t leave a stone unturned looking for us, so the freaking monsters are buying us some time, I suppose.”

“But what’ll we do, supposing Mr. D doesn’t come back?” Lourié asked.

“We’ll have no choice but to do something on our own,” she replied handily, giving him a smile.

Lourié made a face that said he didn’t trust her in the least, pressing the matter as he said, “You said
we
, but you ran off on your own before, didn’t you?”

“I know, I know,” Lilia replied, and all she could do was grin wryly. “But you needn’t worry. As you can see, I’m smitten with the man in black.”

“What?”

As the boy’s mouth dropped open, she gave him a real smile, adding, “At any rate, let’s just wait.”

“How long are we going to stay here?” asked a completely unexpected voice that rose from a corner of the room.

Lilia made a face that seemed to say,
Here we go again
, as she replied, “As I was just saying, for the time being we wait until D gets back.”

“And if he doesn’t come back?”

“Don’t ask me the same thing the kid just did. We’ll have no choice but to do something on our own, right?”

“Before, you went off by your—”

“Oh, I’ve had it with you two!” Lilia exclaimed, throwing up her hands and making a pushing gesture with them. “How long are you going to hold that against me? Look at this!” she said, suddenly grabbing hold of her white scarf and tugging it down.

Unmistakable teeth marks remained over her carotid artery.

“Four . . .” Lourié murmured like a groan. Fear blanched the brave boy’s expression.

A finger adorned with red nail polish pointed to her pale throat. “The top two were Gilzen.” The finger dropped. “This right here is a hickey from the guy you have total and complete faith in. Ordinarily, I’d be a victim under the thrall of two Nobles.”

Lilia’s lips twisted. She’d smiled. Her teeth came into view.

“Noooo,” Vera cried, plastering herself back against the wall. Lourié diverted his gaze.

“They’re just like a Noble’s fangs. But don’t worry. I’m a special kind of victim, and I didn’t end up under their control. If I weren’t, I’d have long since fought D, or else attacked the two of you.”

Neither of them said a word.

“Though, come to think of it, I am a little
thirsty
.” Seeing how the two of them turned to ice, the Huntress grinned again, saying, “I’m joking! But if you don’t do as I say—”

Suddenly, Vera stood up. Partly it was because the doctor was so frightened she couldn’t stand it any longer, but Lilia had also let her guard down. Slipping past the hand that reached out for her, Vera dashed over to the iron door.

“Stupid doctor!” Lilia snarled, grabbing her by the shoulder and yanking her back. She delivered a slap to the woman that knocked her against the floor.

The Huntress turned toward the door. It was open about two inches. Lilia couldn’t move her limbs.

Have to shut it. Got to move forward. Straight ahead.

Ah, her hand moved. Her feet stepped forward, too. Her fingertips brushed the door.

The door began to move. Swinging
inward
. Beyond the gradually widening gap a green figure came into view. Lilia knew there was no use shutting it now.

“Back up—to the far end of the room,” she said to the two behind her, backing away a good distance herself as she drew her longsword.

In the meantime, the intruder entered the room. It was a man, and his hair, his cape, his clothes—hell, even his hands and face—were green. Just to keep everything nice and tidy, his eyeballs were the same hue.

“You’re not a guard, I take it?” Lilia said, and as she glared at the man she double-checked her grip on her longsword. “What’s your name? I’m Lilia. I’m a Huntress.”

“I’m Zoltan. I work as a duelist.”

“Well—I’m surprised to find you so far from the city, then.”

What Lilia meant was that it wasn’t the sort of job you could make enough to live on out in the boondocks. He wasn’t a warrior. In a manner of speaking, duelists were stand-ins. Their job was to fight in place of an employer when that person was forced to take part in a duel. Since they made no distinction in the age or sex of their employers, they might have to take part in a duel between students, and the results of said encounters often led to their being called murderers, though they could be charged with no crime. However, since the types of weapons were chosen by their employer, it might be knives, swords, firearms—or in an extreme example, they might even have to substitute in a battle between two monsters. A duelist couldn’t afford to have definite strengths and weaknesses. Since the demand for duelists was in proportion to the population, the overwhelming majority of them could be found in the Capital or in cities in the various districts. You’d never expect to find one out on the Frontier, in a Noble’s castle.

“Are you a servant of Gilzen?”

“Who’s that?” he asked, his green eyes hazily reflecting Lilia. “Two days ago, I was in a bar in the Capital. I don’t recall ordering a particularly strong drink, yet all of a sudden I got drowsy, and the next thing I knew I was sleeping in a bed here. What is this place? Do you know the way out? No, never mind. For some reason, ever since I woke up I’ve been wanting to cut into someone so bad I can hardly stand it. Throw down with me.”

For this man, it’d seemed like two days—but had he in fact been abducted and kept asleep by the aliens’ powers for ten thousand years?

“Sure thing!”

Lilia’s limbs flew into action. Her opponent hadn’t drawn the sword from his hip, but anyone who would’ve considered what she did unsportsmanlike didn’t know Hunters. Duelists had rules, but the same couldn’t be said of Hunters who were merely in it for the money. It wasn’t people fighting for honor they faced, but bloodthirsty Nobles or monsters.

Her blade made a diagonal slash right for the base of Zoltan’s neck, but it was stopped without a sound. Zoltan gripped it in his left fist. The Huntress tried to pull it back, but it wouldn’t budge.

What the hell?
she thought. Leaping back some ten feet, she believed she’d narrowly avoided the slashing blade that would’ve scythed through her torso, but the solar plexus region of her armor was rent and fresh blood seeped from her.

“You’re not bad,” Lilia said with a daring grin, her hands no longer holding a sword.

“Die!” Zoltan cried, making a crude thrust.

With a low groan of pain, Lilia slumped forward. The blade of the sword pierced the right side of her chest, with its tip protruding from her back. Lilia’s body pushed forward. Practically pulling herself along the sword, she got right up in front of Zoltan before her right hand slashed through his neck. The twelve-inch blade in the palm of her hand had obviously been secreted in the upper-arm piece of her armor.

The duelist’s head flopped backward.

“Miss . . . Lilia . . .”

Turning her face ever so slightly to the absent-mindedly murmuring Lourié, the Huntress gave him a wink. Having received the kiss of the Nobility, the woman had inherited the indestructible nature of a Noble.

When Lilia tried to extract the blade that was stuck through her, Zoltan moved. His right hand thrust the longsword back and forth as if to carve a hole in her, and Lilia convulsed. From behind the decapitated Zoltan the duelist’s head was slowly lifted. The duelist, too, had been a test subject for Gilzen’s exploration of the possibilities posed by aliens and Nobles. What seemed to be hundreds of green tendon-like organs were reconnecting the head to the torso.

“I’m not bleeding a hell of a lot, and what does come out is green,” Zoltan said, touching his fingers to the wound and staring down at his fingertips. “Seems that while I was asleep, I was transformed into some sort of plant. What the hell is going on?”

“Maybe they meant to say, ‘Be a pickle for me’?” Lilia said, her right arm coming down. The blade that pierced her was shattered, and she dropped to her knees on the spot. A bloodstained sword bit into her shoulder. Lilia’s scream of pain was enough to drown out Vera’s cries.

Changing his stance, Zoltan raised his longsword for another blow. From the angle of the blade and the way he stood, he’d be aiming for her neck. But at that instant his grinning green eyes caught a figure colliding with his right flank. The dull impact didn’t cause the duelist much pain, and it would be safe to say that may have saved Lourié’s life. Shifting his sword to his left hand, Zoltan used his right to knock the boy away. Returning the weapon to his right hand, he swung it down—but his abdomen split horizontally.

The Huntress got up in front of the reeling Zoltan. When Lourié was sent flying ten feet, the battle had become a defensive action. However, instead of launching a second attack, Lilia brought her right wrist up to her mouth.

Zoltan needed only a few seconds to recover, and when he raised his sword high, burning with renewed malice, his face became stained with red.

“My blood,” Lilia whispered, lowering the wrist she’d just bitten open. Her lips glistened with her own blood, which she’d just sprayed at Zoltan, and stark fangs peeked alluringly from between them.

The situation had worked an impossible change on the duelist. The murderous intent had vanished from his eyes, and he’d begun licking at the blood that dripped down his face.

“After sleeping for two days—or ten thousand years—you must be really thirsty, eh, veggie swordsman?” Lilia sneered, her breathing still ragged. “As soon as you saw my blood, the look in your eyes changed. Drink it slowly. Until it returns you to normal.”

It was Lilia’s blade that was swung home. It split the green duelist in two from head to crotch. His body thudded to the floor, but soon the thread-like vegetable fibers that’d begun to grow from either side of the slice were connecting to each other.

“His heart should’ve been cut in half, too! There’s nothing I can do,” Lilia told the boy and Vera. “We’ll run for it! Hurry up and get on your feet.”

“Where do you plan on going?” Vera asked, her voice rising nearly to a scream.