The Stuff of Dreams (4 page)

“In that case, I want you to resign as head of the Vigilance Committee right this minute,” the man in the topcoat said. The silver star on his chest reflected Clements’s anger-twisted features.

“C’mon, Krutz, I was just—”

“Take your men and clear out of here. You should thank him for throwing your boys so neatly. Today you get off without paying any damages.”

Hesitating a bit, the giant started to walk out with his head hung low. The other two men followed closely behind him, with their four injured cohorts leaning on their shoulders for support. They banged out through the doors without a parting remark.

“Welcome back, Sheriff,” Nan said, joy and trust suffusing her countenance as she greeted him. “You take care of that case already?”

“No. Truth is, I was just on my way home now. Have a little work in the fields that needs doing, you know.” The sheriff’s stern visage smiled wryly, and then he nodded to D. “Just glad I was able to keep this acquaintance of yours out of trouble.” To the Hunter, he added, “Though there could’ve been a hundred of them up against you and they still wouldn’t have had a chance.”

The first time D had seen this man, he probably hadn’t realized the other man’s position, as Krutz hadn’t been wearing his badge then. His face—placid, yet imbued with strength and iron will—belonged to the man the Hunter had passed in the hall back at the hospital.

With a polite tip of the head to D, he said, “I heard about the situation from Bates. Though I need you to stick around for a while, I’d like you to keep out of trouble if you can. I’ll put the word out, but every village has a couple of characters who like to beat up folks on the sly.” And then, his magnificent facade broke a little as he added, “Of course, any cuss stupid enough to go after you won’t live long enough to regret it.”

Nan was watching D as if waiting for some favorable reply, but the Hunter was as emotionless as ever when he stated, “I have no business here in town. I’ll thank you to be fast about confirming my identity.”

“Already done,” Sheriff Krutz said, as he watched D with a calm gaze. “You can’t very well live on the Frontier without knowing the name of Vampire Hunter D. I’ve met folks you helped before. What do you suppose they had to say about you?”

The black shadow slipped between the sheriff and the girl without a sound. “I’ll be in the hotel.” That was all they heard him say through the batwing doors that swayed closed behind him.

“Wait,” the sheriff said, his gnarled fingers catching hold of Nan’s shoulder as she was about to go after the Hunter.

“But I have to talk to him. It’s about my dreams.”

“You think talking’s gonna solve all this?”

Nan suddenly let her shoulders drop. Her obsessive gaze stayed trained on what lay beyond the door. The sunlight swayed languidly. It was afternoon light.

“You keep away from him, understand me?” Nan heard the sheriff say, though he sounded miles away. “That’s one dangerous man. Getting close to him won’t bring you nothing but misery . . . Particularly if you’re a woman.”

“You said you’d met people he’d helped, didn’t you?” Nan said absentmindedly. “What did they have to say about him?”

The sheriff shook his head. It was ominously slow as it moved from side to side. “Not a thing. They’d all just keep quiet and stare out the door or down the road. That must’ve been the way he’d gone when he left. And it’ll be the same when he leaves our village, too.”

“When he leaves here . . . ” Nan’s eyes were dyed the same color as the sunlight.

The sheriff pondered the next thing she said for quite a while after that, but in the end he still didn’t understand what she meant.

“Before he could leave, he had to come,” Nan said. “Had to come here, to this village.”

.

I

.

Leaving his cyborg horse at the hotel stable for inspection and repairs, the first thing D did when he got back to his room was draw the curtains. As a thin darkness claimed the room, the languor slowly wicked away from his body. Only those of Noble blood ever experienced such things. However, even a dhampir who’d inherited the better part of their Noble parent’s strength and their human parent’s tolerance for sunlight would be short of breath after half a day spent walking under a cloudy sky, and would need several hours in pitch darkness to relieve them of the fatigue that would accumulate in their flesh. After spending three hours out in the blazing sun, they’d need to sleep nearly half a day to recover. D, on the other hand, was no ordinary dhampir.

Descending as they did from the vampiric Nobility, all dhampirs took only what nutrients they needed to live rather than subsisting on solid food as humans did. Dropping a pair
of dried blood plasma capsules into his palm from a case he kept in his saddlebags, D quickly swallowed them.

If some uninformed child had been there by his side, the Hunter’s actions would’ve thrown the youngster into convulsions. Dried blood plasma was extremely hard to come by unless one went to questionable doctors who skirted the law or bought it on the black market. Purchasing of a jar of a thousand capsules would allow a dhampir to go a year without food. Given D’s constitution, those two capsules would sustain him for at least
a week, and possibly as long as two.

Settling into the room, D removed his longsword. Just as he was about to take his coat off, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.” Low as it was, the Hunter’s voice traveled well. It had a chilling ring that would’ve brought the person in even if they’d knocked on the wrong door by mistake.

The door opened at once, and the hotel manager appeared with his gleaming bald pate. Staring down at the wooden platter he had in his left hand and the thick wad of bills resting on it, the man quickly turned his steady gaze in D’s direction. “I finally managed to get your change,” he said. “You know, it’s been a good long time since anyone in town’s seen a ten thousand dala bill. Had to go down to the saloon and borrow the difference.”

Even after D had taken his change, the manager showed no sign of leaving.

“Sure does come as a shock, though,” the bald man continued. “A dream is one thing, but I never thought I’d see a man with such good looks in the real world. What I wouldn’t give to have even one hair like that on my head.”

“Why are you letting me stay here?” D asked dispassionately, his left hand resting on the longsword.

Seeming a bit startled, the manager replied, “Why? Because you want to stay, I suppose. I’m running a business here. Oh, you mean because you’re a dhampir? Put your mind at ease, friend. The owner of this establishment isn’t as narrow-minded as all that.”

Underlying their conversation was the fact that a dhampir who wasn’t traveling with their employer wouldn’t ordinarily be permitted to stay at a hotel unaccompanied. The reason really went without saying. In order to let a dhampir sleep under the same roof as ordinary people, a hotel needed a reasonable guarantee of reparations in the event that the dhampir started killing people in a blood craze. This was why the people who hired the half-breeds were usually among the wealthiest individuals on the Frontier. While dhampirs disposed of the Nobility, only the very rich could afford to pay out the ensuing damages. In light of that, the actions of the hotel manager were so unusual that it was difficult to reduce them to human tolerance or generosity—even in a village where humans and Nobility had coexisted.

“And it seems you also put that Clements in his place, am I right?” the manager said, a smile beaming from his face. “That jerk acts all high and mighty just because he has some land. We’ve got ourselves a fine sheriff here, so he can’t get too far out of line, but I’ve still had about all I can take of that bastard. Why, old Jatko said he’d never seen such a fine display of skill in all his years. He was a good ways past excited—almost in a trance.” Perhaps noticing at that point that he’d been letting his mouth run, the manager held his tongue, coughed nervously, and made a show of fiddling with his bow tie with his thin fingers. “But please, watch out for yourself. For someone prone to flying off the handle like he is, you couldn’t find a more vindictive bastard, either. He won’t just let this sit. The sheriff’s busy with his own work and can’t be worrying about the town every minute of the day, so Clements might get away with something like throwing a bomb into your room here.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Please do. Well, I’ll be off now. If you need anything, kindly press the buzzer.”

Once the manager had gone, D stripped off his coat and took a seat on the sofa. There were a number of things he had to consider. The fact that everyone in the village dreamt of him could be attributed to the incredible power of the young lady who summoned him. It was a fairly common occurrence for those with certain mental powers to have an effect on people around them, so it wouldn’t be that strange for the girl to draw others into her dream. Still, for what purpose had the girl called D there? What did she get out of the dance in the blue light? And another thing—the thug who’d attacked D had been shot with a steel arrow that should’ve existed only in dreams. Was that supposed to mean the same man who’d shot D in his dream the night before didn’t want the Hunter dead? No, his incredible shot in that dream had been charged with murderous intent. Then why had he helped D later? Or was it just a coincidence? There was only one way for him to shed some light on these matters.

D lay back against the sofa and closed his eyes. Dhampir or not, he still needed sleep. As fighting at night was unavoidable to curb the night-prowling Nobility, the daylight hours were naturally the time to rest. The superhuman biorhythms of the Nobility had their nadir at high noon, but were depressed for a good two hours both before and after that. Veteran Hunters usually arranged to dispatch their prey during that time frame, and if all went well they would ordinarily sleep after that until night fell. If they botched their assignment, the complete advantage they had over their foes would last only until the sun sank and the afterglow was gone. After that, they could either fight a battle that was already a foregone conclusion or hole up somewhere and wait for dawn. Either way, a Hunter didn’t have any time to rest. That was why only the most outstanding individuals—only those who could survive under the most extreme conditions—were fit to be called Vampire Hunters.

At present, it was coming up on one o’clock Afternoon, the most suitable time for a dhampir to sleep. What would D dream about? What worlds awaited him, and who dwelt there? The calm breaths of slumber that soon trickled from the Hunter were far beyond the range of human hearing, and the room alone was privy to them.

.

Fog flowed around his ankles. The grove of trees that surrounded D had become as thin and flat as a paper silhouette. There was just enough breeze to carry the vapor. Every time he took a step, the fog was brushed out of his way. Suddenly D was greeted by an iron gate, which he recognized as that of the mansion.

He heard voices alive with laughter, plaintive dance music played by an orchestra, the chime of crystal-clear glasses meeting in midair, jokes rich with humor. He saw amber liquid being poured, shadowy forms of men and women meandering in the gardens. It seemed the party was taking place this evening as well. The question that remained was whether D was invited?

Slipping through the gates, D headed down a path through the elaborately landscaped gardens. He was just stepping onto the magnificent mansion’s veranda when all the noise receded like the tide, leaving the Hunter surrounded by nothing but the embrace of the blue light. The slight sound at his feet as he walked was from a carpet of fallen leaves, now yellowed and tattered. It was not clear whether the countless cracks lacing the mansion walls caught D’s attention or not as he entered the building.

Standing inside the mansion, a thin shadow flickered beyond the still blue light. It was Sybille.

Without a word, the young lady in the white dress and the Hunter in black faced each other. Distance no longer existed. At the same time, the few yards between them were infinite.

“What business do you have with me?” The blue light flickered before D’s lips like an illusion as he spoke.

There was no answer. And yet, that somehow seemed appropriate for this girl. Sybille gently pushed a single lock of hair that had strayed across her brow back into place. A mysterious glimmer resided in her eyes—one that could be taken both as pleasure and as pain. Perhaps both were one and the same hue?

D turned his back and started to walk away. Seeing Sybille directly ahead of him again, he stopped in his tracks. Apparently, the door was behind him now. “So, you invite me here, but won’t answer me or let me leave?” D muttered. “I can’t stay around here forever. You may not wake from this dream, but I—”

Sybille nodded. “I know.” Her voice seemed somehow feathery. “I simply had to have you come here. Please—you must help me.”

“What can I do?”

Sybille fell silent.

“Then I suppose I can’t do anything for you. I’m a Vampire Hunter. There’s only one kind of job I perform.” Once again, D turned sharply. The door was straight ahead of him and he began walking toward it, scattering blue light all around him.

“Please, wait.”

Sybille’s words halted his steps, but D didn’t turn around.

“I know you’re a Hunter. In which case, there’s only one thing you could do for me. Put an end to him.”

She hadn’t said to kill him, she said
put an end to him
. This young lady knew her own fate and what the one who’d consigned her to it truly was. There was only one person she could mean by
him
.

“This is a dream world. I don’t know if I can even find him, or if beating him here will put an end to him. And then—”

“And then—?” Sybille repeated after D, swallowing hard.

“What was it he wanted from you?” He stopped himself, asking the question not as a continuation of what he’d just been saying.

During the brief silence that followed, Sybille’s expression stiffened. “You . . . you know him, don’t you?” she stammered.

“Answer me. What was he after when he bit you?”

“Stop it!” Sybille cried, her whole body quaking. “Don’t ask me such a horrid question.”

“That’s how this all started. That’s why you called me here. I have no problem with doing away with him, but first you must answer me.”

Sybille said nothing. Tears spilled from her eyes, but as she gazed at D, there wasn’t a trace of hatred or resentment in them.

The black Hunter loomed with frosty indifference in the blue light. “Answer me,” he repeated. Was this D’s dream, or the world that Sybille controlled?

At the ice-cold query, the young lady’s throat moved imperceptibly. “He wanted . . . the whole world to . . .”

An instant later, D unexpectedly faded away.

Sybille couldn’t say another word. She grew as rigid as a stone statue, leaving only shimmering blue light at the end of her outstretched hand.

“He wanted . . . the whole world to . . .”

.

D awoke.

The opening of his eyes was nearly simultaneous with the twist of his body. There was the sound of shattering windowpanes and a black cylinder rolled to the center of the room, but only after D had leapt to one side. Most likely, it’d been propelled there by a grenade launcher mounted on a rifle.

The ceiling, walls, and floor all bulged out at once. The explosive energy from the special gunpowder packed in the cylinder ripped through what resistance the room offered in a thousandth of a second, and material from the hotel flew out
of the building.

Several minutes later, the manager, fire extinguisher in hand, raced into a room that bore no resemblance to its former state. “What?!” he coughed, although his choice of words was a bit tame for the horrible spectacle that froze him in his tracks.

The ceiling and walls had been blown away so that beyond their shattered remains the fair afternoon sky could be seen. Somehow, the figure garbed in black stood aloof amidst the rubble. The manager surveyed the scene with utter amazement. There wasn’t a single flame anywhere. Wisps of smoke rose from the few scraps of the curtains that remained, but the smoke was quite thin for a weapon that was supposed to produce a thick cloud of it, and the air was just as clear here as it was outside. It was almost as if something had swallowed it all.

“Damnation! What in the world happened here?!” the wide-eyed manager asked the Hunter. But he quickly added, “Oh, you don’t have to say a word. I can see that someone lobbed a bomb in here. What I want to know is what happened after that. Like, what happened to all the smoke and flames?”

“It seems retribution was swift.” D glanced down at the wispy purple smoke coming from his long coat. No one would’ve thought its thin fabric could’ve protected him from the blast and flying fragments. “Thanks for the hospitality,” D said as he held several gold coins out in front of the manager’s face.

“I’m terribly sorry about this. We’d truly love to have you stay here, but this is likely to happen every night.” And scratching his pate nervously, the manager took just a single coin, saying, “This will suffice.”

“Go on and take the lot of them,” the extended left hand said.

The manager gasped. Thinking he had just heard the words come from the Hunter’s limb itself, his eyes fell reflexively, but by that time D’s left hand had already dropped the remaining coins into the chest pocket of the bald man’s shirt and settled back at his side.

“I can’t believe the nerve of them, pulling something like this,” the manager snarled. “Must be Clements’s bunch. But this time he’s bitten off more than he can chew. After all, you’re a Vampire Hunter. You’ll teach him a thing or two, won’t you?”

Not saying a word, D walked over to the devastated door.

“Wh . . . where will you go, sir?”

“There’s a windmill out by the hospital.” Then, saying nothing more, the figure in black headed down the stairs.

.

II

.

As the sun sank, there was the sound of footsteps on dead leaves moving through the forest. It was Nan. The last few days seemed to be the worst for falling leaves, and every ten feet or so she had to bring her hand up to brush off bits of foliage that’d lodged in her hair. A nasty cold that’d been making the rounds the last couple of days put all the teachers out of commission and cancelled school as a result, so Nan’s parents didn’t object to her just hanging around. But they most certainly wouldn’t approve of her paying a call to the Vampire Hunter. Going there was a bit of an adventure for Nan.

For all intents and purposes, this visit was to talk about her own dreams and Sybille at greater length, and to resolve some of the mystery surrounding D. But while she had these thoughts in mind, her heart of hearts beat feverishly on account of what could only be described as the young Hunter’s dazzling beauty. Nan had dreamt of him three days before the rest of the town. And from the first time she’d laid eyes on him, his solitary figure had been chiseled into her bosom with all the detail of the finest engraving. Gorgeous was the only way to describe the man. Nan was only eighteen years old, after all. And who could laugh at something that made a young lady’s heart beat fast?

The windmill tower was suddenly visible in the golden glow of evening. The four massive blades cast a deep black cross of a shadow on the ground. Treading across a lawn that still retained some of its green, Nan headed for the living quarters that stood to the left of the tower. With its roof on the point of collapse, the rusted hub of the windmill blades and the walls with boards that looked like they’d fall off if someone breathed on them too hard, the structure was terribly dilapidated. A decade earlier, it had the most powerful generator in the area and was the village’s main energy source before it was abandoned. All things considered, the village was lucky that monsters hadn’t made it their home.

The door to the living quarters was open. A foul, musty stench assailed Nan’s nostrils, and she used one hand to cover her nose and mouth. There were bedrooms to either side of the hall that ran straight from the entrance way. By all accounts, eight people had worked here around the clock. But D wasn’t in any of those rooms.

Taking the semi-cylindrical passageway that connected the living quarters to the windmill, Nan entered the tower, where a thin darkness had congealed. A huge conical space greeted the girl. The distance from the ground to the uppermost reaches of the tower was easily fifty feet, and was split into three tiers. The first floor was intended for the power-generating facilities, but anything serviceable had been hauled off to the nuclear fusion power plant three miles away. All that remained now were a few pieces of machinery red with rust. That other power plant was out of service now, too.

The force of the gigantic rotating shaft and the rollers that relayed the blades’ revolutions to the energy transformers would’ve been enough to inspire something akin to dread. The sunlight glittering off the shattered windowpanes was beginning to take a bluish tint. Cables that ran up to the ceiling hung like vines, and as Nan took a few steps forward in her search for D, her shoulder brushed against one, causing her heart to stop for a moment. If the generators had been operating as they used to, she would’ve been given a lethal jolt at best, or more likely burnt to a cinder. Slowly exhaling, Nan started walking again. Along the way, part of the floor she stepped on gave way and her right foot sank up to the ankle, leaving her ready to scream.

“I hate this place,” Nan fumed quietly as she pulled her foot out. Just as she did so, something black cut across the circle of light ahead of her. It was the doorway to a passageway that ran around the hut. “D?” she cried out in a tone unavoidably tinged with reliance, but the shadowy figure didn’t show even a moment’s hesitation as it disappeared down the passageway.

Anxiety enveloped Nan.
Clements’s bunch might be here
, she thought. She started running for all she was worth. The floor groaned, and dust flew up in a dingy curtain on her surroundings. She went out into the corridor, but the shadowy figure wasn’t there. It had simply vanished, without the sound of footsteps or any sign it’d passed this way. Running to the stairs, Nan charged up the creaking wooden steps as fast as she could. The door to the second tier was right at the top of the stairs. Nan leapt through it—then stopped suddenly so that only her hair and the beads of sweat on her body still surged forward.

In the blue darkness stood a figure in black raiment. He seemed like he’d been standing there for ages. D.

Nan wanted to call out to him, but couldn’t say a word. She’d already felt the ghastly aura emanating from his being. It was a call to battle.

The second tier was where adjustments were made to the windmill. A few dozen gears, both large and small, and a series of large energy rods ran across the room. The energy rods connected to the revolving shaft that went through the ceiling and ran all the way down to the floor, and they dispersed the excess energy generated by the wildly spinning shaft. There were hundreds of gears ranging in diameter from ten feet down to eight inches or so, and to keep them from interfering with human activity they were set on rods at least ten feet overhead or higher. Given the utterly chaotic way they were meshed horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, they would’ve been a disturbing sight to see back when they were in action.

While Nan was frozen in place, her eyes gazed at the thin darkness around D. There was nothing else there. All that was behind him was a worn-out locker with a toolbox beside it. Her vision grew blurry and she felt a sharp pain in her eye as a bead of sweat dripped into it.

Just as she shut her lids reflexively, a hard clang startled her out of her black field of view. Snapping her eyes open again with single-mindedness, Nan dimly viewed the collection of gears and rods, realizing that they were turning now. But how? At the same instant that she had a memory that the windmill controls had locked in place a decade earlier, D’s shadowy figure began to move. The stub of the longsword over his shoulder grew to twice its previous size. Just as Nan realized the Hunter was drawing his blade, she felt the familiar sting that always accompanied a drop of sweat in her eye and her vision again blurred.

In darkness, Nan could only hear the sounds. A shudder ran through her soul. That noise just couldn’t be right. It was definitely the creaking of gears, but even to a girl who knew nothing about technical things, it was clear from the sound that there was something wrong with the way they were running now. High and low, to her left and to her right, over her and under her. And along with the gears, there were indications the rods were moving differently, and the windmill’s shaft spun as well. If Nan hadn’t been troubled by her eyes, perhaps she would’ve noticed they were all moving in the opposite direction from normal. The windmill wasn’t driving them. Instead, the rods and gears were turning the enormous upright shaft. And, although there was no way Nan could see them, the windmill blades remained wrapped in twilight, without the slightest tremor.

The question was, had D noticed that all this activity was trying to supply energy to something else?

There was the sound of hinges snapping, and the door to the locker fell to the floor. When a black shadow within the locker stood up, D turned around, and at the very same instant Nan was freed from the paralyzing grip. Rubbing her eyes desperately, the girl tried to catch a glimpse of the battle taking place right in front of her. Perhaps she was lucky to at least see D’s leap the instant her eyelids opened. A cry of astonishment spilled from her mouth.

The shadow was leaping as well. The two figures passed in midair, and the second the beautiful sound of their meeting blades reverberated, the strangest sensation took hold of Nan.

Black garb swishing out around him, D landed right in front of Nan. But D then leapt away from that spot, turning about-face in midair.

Nan thought her eyes were going to explode into flames of astonishment. The person opposite them—he was D, too, wasn’t he? There were two of him?! Not only that, but the pose they both took now, with right hands holding longswords at the ready and left hands extended before their respective chests, were the same as their movements in midair—virtually identical!

Nan felt like there was a huge invisible mirror stretched between the two Vampire Hunters. Perhaps it was only natural that they both kicked off the ground at the same time. The movements of the two Ds were perfectly symmetrical—slashing down over their right shoulders for the left side of their opponent’s neck, their blades then flashed to the side, spitting blue sparks as they met. Their weapons touching but not locking together, the two Ds once again switched positions and landed. While Nan was aware of the fact that the D who landed in front of her again was the
original
, the two of them looked so similar her mouth simply hung open. This eerie battle, where the true tussled with the false, would tolerate no interruption by a human voice.