The Rose Princess (21 page)

“Oh, really?”

“For being so kind as to give us a chance to die as true warriors. I shall fight the
Vampire Hunter till the very end.”

“’As you should.”

“Princess, it would seem we have lived too long here in these lands, in this castle.
The day has come at last. However, I hope you shall remain well forever.”

“Thank you. Well, off with you,” the princess said, bringing her hand up by her face
and cupping her fingers in a busy little wave good-bye.

The Black Knight seemed to smile at the childlike action.

And as the warrior walked off toward the gate, the princess watched his departure
until he finally disappeared.

“It really has been a long time, hasn’t it?” the princess murmured, as if she were
whispering the words to someone.

—

I

—

A
s D approached the steep slope, an intense air of hostility bored down on him from
above. Looking up from the back of his horse, he found the Black Knight floating in
above ground, seeming to carry the very moon on his back. The Hunter’s eyes could
also make out the wing-like flight pack the Black Knight wore on his back as clear
as daylight.

“This is the end, D,” the Black Knight said, the black roses that jutted from either
shoulder opening their petals.

Blue darkness was born. The five-million-volt blast of electricity released by the
twin discharge devices ionized the air as it assailed D and his mount. It took less
than a second for the cyborg horse’s electronic circuitry to go haywire–the steed
fell on its side, black smoke pouring from its ears, while around it the trees began
to burn just as they would’ve from a lightning strike.

The dazzling light had the Hunter in a merciless embrace. And in the midst of it,
D grew bluer and bluer—gleaming like a radiant sculpture.

Stopping the electrical discharge, the Black Knight gasped in surprise. The brilliance
that comprised this light sculpture quickly broke away from the main figure, and as
the darkness grew deeper and more lustrous, the young man in black stood there serenely.
On his chest, a blue pendant quietly reflected the darkness. The Black Knight realized
he’d accomplished nothing, save creating a moment of surpassing beauty.

“D, can you reach me up here?” the Black Knight shouted, his wings taking a new angle—one
that sent him diving straight down at D.

Greeted with a shower of sparks as their steel met, the Black Knight easily soared
back into the sky, using a sweep of his arm to stop the needles that flew at him.
As he gently descended in a spot halfway up the hill, he had no weapon in his hand.

D dashed. The slope was so steep that walking itself became impossible, yet he charged
up it at the same speed he’d run on perfectly level ground. Though the Hunter struck
out with his longsword right as he made his bound, the Black Knight had risen just
out of reach, and D’s weapon instead ended up parrying two wide bands of light that
flew at him from above.

“You’re good,” the Black Knight said, his voice coming from a massive branch on one
of the many trees that edged the slope. A quick look up confirmed that the tree itself
was over three hundred feet tall. “But my next blow shall be on the mark, D,” he declared.

One combatant above, the other below—in terms of dynamics, the former was clearly
at an advantage. D had to bring the Black Knight down to earth, yet he didn’t have
energy to waste on anything short of an attack that would slay his opponent.

The Black Knight left the branch. Wherever the Hunter tried to run, he could cut him
down. But no, the Black Knight was convinced D would meet him head-on.

Sure enough, D kicked off the ground. One man dropping, the other rising—and the Black
Knight had the edge in both strength and speed.

When D reached the peak of his leap, the Black Knight unleashed an attack. Deflecting
it, the Hunter backed away quickly.

Fall!

The Black Knight was just about to issue a cry of victory when his eyes bulged in
their sockets.

D remained in the air. To be precise, he was flying. His black coat had become wings
that helped him hang like a gorgeous mystic bird; or a massive black bat.

Barely dodging D’s sword as it came right at his face, the Black Knight was unable
to do the same when the blade swung around swiftly for another blow that sank into
his chest and came out through his back, draining the strength from his body.

“So, this is how it ends . . . as I expected,” the Black Knight said in a bracing
tone. “I’ll no longer bother to ask that you spare the princess. I’m sure she wouldn’t
want me to do so. But it’s so strange—there were a million things I wanted to ask
you, and now I can’t say anything.”

D was slowly descending. It simply wasn’t possible for him to remain airborne very
long.

“It’s been so long, D. What I’ve waited for . . . is finally . . . here . . . And
I’m sure the same is no doubt true . . . for her . . . as well . . .”

Touching back to earth once more, D gazed up at the sky. As the Black Knight hung
in the air, his head drooped lifelessly. Climbing the slope, D let a single needle
fly from his right hand to strike the flight pack. There was the sound of a switch
being thrown, and then the Black Knight began to rise. The antigravity device would
probably carry the warrior right off the planet.

“Two to go,” D muttered as he turned toward the manor that sprawled in the moonlight.
But as the gorgeous young man sent his formidable opponent off into the heavens, his
voice and his expression had maintained the same sternness that braced him for his
next deadly battle.

—

The castle gates were open. Inside, D was surrounded by startling hues and a succulent
aroma. The wind set the flowers swaying. And the roses seemed to sing,

—

Go back, I say, back,

Harm not the princess,

For you could never kill her . . .

—

There was no need to search for the Noblewoman. At the entrance to the crumbling hall,
D faced off against the lovely princess.

“How wonderful that you made it all this way,” the princess said, shrugging her shoulders
as if to throw off her amazement. The rose clenched between her vermilion lips was
white. Placing the flat of one hand to her throat, the princess asked, “So, now three
of them are—?” She then made a horizontal swipe across her neck.

“They met a glorious end,” the Hunter replied.

“I’m glad.”

“They were all worried about you,” said D.

“Oh, how sweet! Although that is only natural, given they were my retainers.”

“Where is Elena?”

“Dear me! This is a surprise!” the princess exclaimed. “Here I believed you to be
utterly made of ice, and now you mean to tell me you’re actually capable of feeling
concern for someone else?”

D stepped forward.

Shrieking, the princess glided back a good thirty feet. Her scream, however, had been
a tad pretentious.

“You could kill a person with will alone. Oh, this will never do,” said the princess.
To someone else, she called out, “Would you come out here for a moment?”

D turned in the same direction as the princess—toward the hall.

The one person he’d been looking for came out with an alluring sway. Her very image
seemed to ripple like a heat shimmer thanks to the winking lights that played across
her body. On Elena’s chest, hands and waist jewels pulsated. The moonlight trained
on her, the speed of her steps, and her delicate sway gave the gems a precious glimmer
that shifted into every conceivable shape. And the garment they adorned was undoubtedly
pure white silk.

“As you can see, she’s fine,” the princess remarked. “However, she can never return
to the life she once led. For she has learned what it feels like to be a Noble.”

“D . . . ,” Elena said when she opened her mouth. “You came for me?”

“I have your medicine,” D said, tapping his breast pocket with the stump at the end
of his left arm.

“A-ha! It would appear that as worthless as my retainers were, they still put forth
quite an effort. Shall I reattach it for you?” asked the princess.

“Keep your nose out of it!” said a hoarse voice.

Seeing the limb poking from D’s coat pocket, the princess’s eyes went wide.

“What a saucy little hand you are. Just as soon as I’ve slain your master, I’ll give
you a good thrashing,” the woman said impishly. But then a silvery flash scorched
through the air at her. A horizontal line ran straight across the waist of her white
dress—a thread of vermilion that swelled in a matter of seconds, becoming drops of
fresh blood that fell like rain.

“Now you’ve done it!” she exclaimed, and her cry was apparently the signal.

Bubbles formed on the surface of the blood that’d stained her dress and dripped to
the floor, and then vivid colors that seemed to exist solely to catch the eye floated
up into the air. Roses—four hues of roses. They formed a dazzling stream around D—and
then flowed faster and faster into a whirling vortex.

Another flash of light slashed through the stream.

The cloud of roses suddenly vanished from view, and as Elena saw D standing there,
she pressed her hand to her lips. In his neck, his shoulder, his chest, and his abdomen
there bloomed four roses in total—one in each of the four hues.

D reeled. A terrible dizziness assailed him. Heaven and earth switched places, and
even when he closed his eyes, the sensation remained.

“Every rose has its thorn. And in the case of my roses, that would be poison,” the
princess said with a refined laugh.

Clearly this poison was virulent enough to wreak havoc with the sense of balance of
even a dhampir like D. Finally, D was forced to rest his sword against the floor to
support himself. It looked as if the very weight of the moonlight on his back was
more than he could bear, driving him down on his knees.

“Before I deliver the coup, I suppose I should slake my thirst from you.”

The princess walked over to D without any sign of fear and touched the rose in the
nape of his neck. Though initially blue, the blossom suddenly turned crimson. It had
sucked up D’s blood. Pulling the rose from him in one smooth motion, the princess
then inserted it into her own carotid artery.

“Your blood is flowing into me . . . Oh . . . How sweet . . . How strong . . . I can
feel it . . . filling my whole body . . . ,” the lovely princess moaned, her body
writhing with delight and rapture.

What a terrible feast this was.

“Oh, how well I shall feed on your blood—once I’ve taken your head off.”

The princess raised her hand casually. A glistening thread from her cuff connected
the tips of her pale fingers.

“This is a razor-sharp thread spun from the veins of my roses. In fact, my knights’
armor was crafted from the very same substance. I had hoped to discuss travels in
distant lands with you for a while, but ultimately I shall stay here. Farewell, D.”

The thread swung down at the Hunter. But when it swerved off course and tore open
a fifteen-foot section of stone floor, bright blood came spilling from the mouth of
the princess.

Retching loudly, she cried, “My body’s burning up! This blood is—D, you’re—”

Surely the princess felt the tortures of hell, and her visage become that of a ghastly
reaper as her eyes glimpsed the deep red shape that’d fallen at D’s feet. The petals
of that withering rose curled as the brown of decay spread through them.

“Apparently, even my blood can be a weapon,” D remarked.

The moonlight shone down on the handsome man, burning his gorgeous silhouette onto
the floor. As D approached the princess with blade in hand, there wasn’t an iota of
compassion on his face.

But it was just then that there was a clang like dragging chains. The body of the
princess rose, and then sank into the floor an instant later. Some sort of mysterious
force had destroyed the stone flooring from below, causing her to fall.

“D?!” Elena said as she ran toward him.

“Stay there,” the Hunter bade her as he leapt into the hole that yawned in the ground
like a jagged, fang-rimmed maw.

Before D reached the bottom of the subterranean chamber, his coat fluttered out. Having
dropped more than a thousand feet straight down, the man landed on the floor without
making a sound.

D knew exactly what this place was. The lachrymose, eerie aura that buffeted him from
the instant he landed told him it was the White Knight’s chamber—home to the last
of the four knights.

D focused on one region in the darkness.

“We meet . . . again . . . And this time . . . it seems we’re to battle,” said the
White Knight. “Slayer . . . weeps for joy. You know . . . he keeps saying . . . he
wants to kill you.”

Oh, and how you could hear it—the delicate metallic rasp of iron on steel in the depths
of the darkness. It was the wriggling of Slayer clamoring for D’s blood.

As the white-armored form emerged from the darkness, he already had his longsword
in hand.

“Long . . . has it been . . . my princess,” he said, his groan of a voice creeping
across the ground.

He, too, had said it’d been a long time. Those long years during which the manor of
the Nobility had prospered, then decayed—the length of time they had supported their
enchanting princess.

“At last . . . At long last . . . I fight a true foe . . . For five hundred years
. . . I have been down here . . . waiting for this day . . .”

Was the princess actually there? Or was this merely the lament of a lonely soul?

Along with the song of his blade whining from its sheath, the White Knight cried maniacally,
“Die, damn you! Die! On the end of my Slayer!”

Once his tone had changed the figure in white charged forward, whipping the wind up
behind him. And D in turn dashed to meet him.

Black and white crossed.

Advancing a few steps further, D then turned. The blade of the longsword was buried
deep in his right side.

Had the White Knight actually let go of Slayer? Had D’s blade proved ineffective?

No, the White Knight dropped roughly to his knees.

“Oh . . . At last . . . the time . . . has come . . . The rest . . . I leave to you
. . . Slayer . . . ,” the knight croaked, seeming to wring the very words from his
throat before he fell face-down on the ground.

Due to his madness, the murderous swordsman had been locked away in this subterranean
world, but his time had also come.

D took hold of Slayer and tried to pull the longsword out of his torso, but the weapon
wouldn’t budge an inch.

“What’s this?!” a voice muttered in the Hunter’s coat pocket.

D’s upper body swayed—the blade of the sword had just pressed deeper into his flesh.
This sword had a mind of its own, and the enchanted blade squirmed as it attempted
to fulfill its tireless craving for slaughter.

“A hell of pigsticker this is . . . ,”said the hoarse voice from his coat pocket.
“I can’t reattach myself yet, but I’ll try to manage something. Okay, D?”

There was no reply. At that moment, D had caught sight of the unearthly princess standing
in the depths of the darkness. As he started to walk toward her, the ground beneath
his feet twisted.

Once more, roses filled his surroundings. Moonlight poured down on the courtyard.
No doubt it was the very same light that had shone when every window in the manor
had been illuminated and women in white dresses and men in black attire had danced
here with light steps.

D gazed at the princess before him.

“I won’t run any more,” the princess said, sounding like a completely different person
as she looked out over the wild profusion of blooms. “But I won’t allow you to leave,
either. If I did, it simply wouldn’t be fair to the four of them.”

D didn’t say anything, almost as if he were watching the lovely princess undergo a
transformation. “Were you looking for a chance to die?” he asked after a short time.

“Fate had caught up with the Nobility. Even I understood as much, as did my four knights.
But, you see, their pride wouldn’t allow them to watch the world fall into human hands.
Knowing there was no place left in the world for the Nobility, realizing that their
control extended only to the most worthless and remote outposts, they wanted me to
live as a Noble and rule over the humans like some great empress of the darkness.
What an empty existence it is to live forever, knowing all the while that your life
is meaningless—as I’m sure you must understand. You, an honored descendant of our
Sacred Ancestor!”

D staggered. Slayer’s blade had just buried itself deeper in his flesh.

“I chose to live here with them. And so I became the princess who did nothing but
love her roses, trusting my retainers to do everything necessary to support my Noble
lifestyle. That was the only way I could give my four knights a purpose and the will
to live. But you see, D, there’s more to living than simply having life.”

The four knights said they were defending the princess. However, wasn’t it more a
case of the sage woman protecting them?

“And then you came. I’m certain one look at you was all the four knights needed to
realize they’d found an opportunity to die. I ordered them to fight. Paradoxically,
you were the whole point of their lives. Whether or not they knew what was in my heart
of hearts no longer matters. I will run no more. D, come and get me.”

“If you wanted the four knights to fight me, then why did you use the wraith knights,
too?” asked the Hunter.

“Do you think anyone would seriously believe they could’ve slain you? Still, I dispatched
them on a mere whim, wishing to see if I could make you and the villagers sweat a
bit.”

There the lovely princess broke off. The next time her voice was heard, she was in
midair, sailing right for the Hunter.

“It’s been so long, D!”

Their silhouettes overlapped, and the blade of a sword sprouted from her pale back.
Her lithe arms trembled as she wrapped them around D.

“I wanted . . . to travel . . . with you . . .”

Looking over the whispering woman’s shoulder, D gazed at Elena as she approached.

“Elena—take Slayer!” the princess cried, but her words became a moan.

When the village maid came over, she’d reached for the enchanted sword in D’s side
and easily pulled it free, but then she’d suddenly driven the blade right through
the princess’s back. The way the razor-sharp Slayer slid into the Noblewoman was a
fearful sight to behold. Not only did the blade impale the princess, it also went
all the way through D to jut from his back.

When Elena removed Slayer from D, the Hunter had tried to pull away from the Noblewoman.
But his body was immobilized, kept still as a stone by the frail arms the princess
had locked around him.

D gazed at Elena.

“I’m sorry,” the simple biker girl apologized in a low voice. Her eyes were invested
with a dangerous determination. “The princess showed me the way—how the Nobility live,
how they think. I want this manor and its traps and its treasures all for myself.
And for the rest of their lives, I wanna terrorize all of those bastards in the village
that treated me like shit. I wanna be a Noble.”

“Do you really mean that?” asked D. Bloody foam spilled from the corners of his mouth.

“Yes. See for yourself.”

Taking her hand off the enchanted blade, Elena undid the front of her top. Her breast
had no rose emblem on it.

“Right after we got here, the princess took it away. Now I’m the very same Elena you
met when you first got here. But you’re in my way, D,” Elena said, almost seeming
to shout the words as she took a few steps away.

Slowly, both Slayer and the princess’s body fell over. Behind them stood D. At some
point his left hand had been reattached, but Elena couldn’t see how the blood-smeared
face that’d surfaced in its palm was exhaling pale blue flames.

“You said you wanted to be a Noble, didn’t you?”

As D approached, Elena backed away from him.

“That was just . . . Spare me, D!”

I fought with you, after all. You saved me. Really, I don’t know what got into me
just now.

Elena saw the flash of light from D’s right hand sink into her own chest. For some
reason, she didn’t want to look at his face.

Sheathing his sword, D looked around the courtyard.

“So, she wanted to be a Noble?” a hoarse voice said.

Without so much as glancing at the two corpses, D began to walk toward the front gate
in a horribly weary way. A tiny object fell at his feet. A withered rosebud.

Now deprived of their mistress, the flowers drooped their heads as if to respectfully
mark her passing, their colors fading before they fell to the ground. After D walked
away, countless dead blossoms rained down on the body of Elena and the ash that was
all that remained of the princess, burying them both.

A few days later, Mama Kipsch’s grandson returned unexpectedly with some news about
the young man who’d suddenly vanished one night after destroying the lady of the manor,
as well as an explanation of how he’d come to be hired in the first place.

After making an attempt on the princess’s life for killing his unrequited love, her
grandson had escaped via his homemade glider until his pursuer sent him plummeting
into a mountain stream. As luck would have it, he was rescued by a Vampire Hunter
who happened to be passing by.

“Is that a fact? So, that’s how he came to know all about our village and the knights
and everything else,” Mama Kipsch said, nodding thoughtfully as she looked out the
window at the manor.

Her grandson was more knowledgeable about the castle’s residents and the ruins on
the outskirts of the village than anyone else. D hadn’t told her that her grandson
survived out of concern for the repercussions that might have, given the vengeance
the boy’s actions had brought down on the village. After the villagers were through
punishing his grandmother, they probably would’ve tried to discover his whereabouts,
too. There was still a chance they’d want to exact revenge even now. He’d probably
do well to leave the village before the night was out.

“Whatever became of the young fella?” Mama Kipsch inquired.

“After he told me he’d finished the job, he immediately took off. I’ve never seen
anything half as lonesome-looking as the sight of him riding away.”

“No, I don’t suppose you ever would, either.”

“But he was smiling at the very end.”

“Smiling?”

Nodding, her grandson pointed proudly to the base of his thick neck.

“All sign of it’s gone now, but when I was little, I got one of those roses planted
in me, remember? And for two or three months after that, I was in a daze until you
concocted one of your secret recipes for me, Grams. Well, I can tell you now after
all these years that back then, I wanted to suck everyone’s blood so bad I could hardly
stand it. As it happens, I told him about that as we were parting company. And then
he suddenly got all serious-looking—wait, he always looked serious. At any rate, he
asked me, ‘Did you want to be a Noble?’ I told him that was ridiculous, and I’d be
damned if I was gonna drink the blood of my family and friends. And I said that even
though I was just a kid at the time, I was ready to die first. And then—he actually
smiled.”

“You don’t say?” Mama Kipsch remarked, closing her eyes. She knew exactly what sort
of smile that must’ve been.

Her grandson continued contentedly, “I can take pride in that for the rest of my life.
I was the one that put that smile on his face. I put a smile on the face of a man
a thousand times tougher and ten thousand times better-looking than me!”