The Stuff of Dreams (21 page)

“Looks like the Bullow Brothers are gonna wet themselves,” the old woman laughed as she eyed one of the lenses in her mirror. “What the hell are those critters, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” D said simply.

“What do you mean?! Didn’t you just say they’d be attacking us
soon
?”

“There was nothing about them in the notebook.”

The crone’s eyes went wide. “Then this is something new, is it?”

The question was barely off the old woman’s tongue when their surroundings were filled with light. Not only had the globes taken on suspicious colors, but they’d begun pulsing with life.

“God, these things are disgusting. I’m gonna make a break for it!” Granny shouted, forgetting all about the man she’d asked to guard them as she worked the reins for all she was worth. The cyborg horses in her team kicked up the ground in unison. The intense charge pushed the globes out of the way, leaving them spinning wildly in the vehicle’s wake. Racing on for a good four hundred feet, the crone stopped her wagon. As her eyes came to rest on D by their side, she was all smiles.

“Stuck right with us, didn’t you?” Granny said to him. “Forget what you said, I just knew you’d be worried about the two of us. Good thing for us. That’s just what I like to see in a strong man.”

The old woman was about to lavish even more praise on the Hunter, but suddenly stopped. D had taken one hand and slowly pointed to their rear. “Take a shot at them,” he said in a low voice. Perhaps he’d only kept up with her to see what effect that would have.

Though her face made no secret of her apprehension, Granny must’ve shared his interest, because she raised her blunderbuss. “Oh my,” she said, “Those two boys are coming, too. Hold on a minute.”

“Now,” the Hunter told her.

“What?” said the old woman, her eyes widening. But she soon found out why D had instructed her to shoot—the globes they’d knocked out of the way were now rising without a sound to disappear in the high heavens. They were moving so quickly that hitting them would be no easy task, even with scattershot. The globes that surrounded the galloping Bullow Brothers also broke off immediately and headed for the sky.

“You are one scary character,” Granny muttered, not exaggerating her opinion of him in the slightest. As she said that, she brought the blunderbuss to her shoulder and leaned out from the driver’s seat. She didn’t have time to take careful aim. A burst of flames and a ridiculously loud roar issued from the preposterously large muzzle of the weapon, rocking the world. Globes shattered above the two brothers, sending out spray. There wasn’t even enough time to get off a second shot.

D and the old woman waited silently for the pair of riders to approach out of the cloud of dust.

Clay was the first to speak, shouting, “What the hell were those things? We’re not even three miles out of town yet!”

Head still drooping, Bingo swayed back and forth on his horse. He was fast asleep, but the fact that he’d raced this far without being thrown made it clear it was no ordinary slumber. Bingo Bullow, after all, was a man who conversed in his sleep.

As Clay gazed up at the unsettling leaden sky, Granny Viper caught his eye. The old woman was bent over in the midst of concealing her blunderbuss.

“Hey! You lousy hag!” Clay shouted at her. As he kept watch over D out of the corner of his eye, he added, “That was a damn fool thing to do. Just look what you did to my hat!” Pulling his cap off, he put one of his fingers into it. His fingertip poked out of a spot near the top where a piece of her shot had gone right through it. If he’d been wearing the cap all the way down on his head, it probably would’ve hit him right in the forehead.

And what did Granny do when met by a look of hatred that would’ve left a child in tears? She grinned from ear to ear. And the smile she wore seemed so amiable, not even the sweetest, kindest woman in the world could’ve hoped to match it.

“What a piece of luck, eh?” the crone said with sincerity. She then told the astonished Clay, “I wasn’t the one who decided to take the shot, though. Our handsome friend here made the call. And I was sure he was likely to cut me down if I didn’t do like he said.”

That was true enough.

“Is that right?” Clay asked D. In stark contrast to the tone he’d used up ’til now, his words were soft. He seemed ready to have it out with the Hunter.

And D’s reply—was no reply at all. “Looks like you didn’t get any of their contents on you,” the Hunter said, filling his field of view with the two brothers.

Clay gave a knowing nod. “So, that’s how it goes, is it? That’s your game, then? Well, that’s too damn bad. If it was that easy to get the stuff on us, we’d be ashamed to call ourselves the Bullow Brothers.”

“Well, the next time they show up, you might not be able to avoid it. Besides, I doubt it would’ve been life-threatening, even if you had got some on you.”

“And how the hell do you know that?” Clay cried out.

“A hunch,” D replied.

“Don’t give me any of that shit!”

“Give it a rest,” Bingo muttered, his tone as flat and gray as the sky over them. “The Hunter D had a hunch about it. We would’ve been fine even if we got wet.”

“Spare me. I don’t need to hear it from you too, bro.”

In a soothing voice, Granny said to the frenzied Clay, “Settle down, there. No harm came to you, so everything’s okay, isn’t it? We’ll have no fighting amongst ourselves in this party.”

Silence descended. Not a quiet interval for introspection, but rather one brought on by sheer astonishment.

“Who the hell ever said we’re in your party?!” Clay shouted, more blood rising to his face.

“Why,
you
did, Clay, the second you left town. We’ve got the same destination, and we’ve been traveling less than five hundred yards apart. What’s more, it seems our Mr. D has a head full of info on half the nasty critters waiting for us out in the desert.”

Holding his tongue for a minute, Clay then turned to his older brother and asked, “You think that’s true, bro?” His tone was like that of a gullible spectator putting a question to a bogus clairvoyant.

“I don’t know,” Bingo replied, his head swaying from side to side. “But under the circumstances, traveling together could make things a lot easier later on. And you know what they say—it’s the company you keep that really makes the trip.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel
Demon City Shinjuku
in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has authored numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there were seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.

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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including
Gatchaman
(released in the U.S. as
G-Force
and
Battle
of the Planets
). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel
Sandman: The Dream Hunters
with Neil Gaiman and
Elektra
and
Wolverine: The Redeemer
with best-selling author Greg Rucka.