Vampire Hunter D: Pale Fallen Angel Parts Three and Four (14 page)

Wiping both eyes with his left hand, D then looked off to his left. It was from that direction that he'd caught the sound of an engine drawing nearer.

What appeared was a stocky vehicle reminiscent of a beetle. The moonlight sent cold, hard ripples across its metallic surface. The wind.

Was this a friend or foe? Whichever it was, D should've been terribly curious about it. However, he only gave it a glance before going over to the hut.

Although it had collapsed, it hadn't merely been knocked over. Wreckage was scattered in all directions. Locating Taki was actually rather easy. She lay in essentially the same place as before, and in the same pose. The problem was the iron grate that lay on top of her. Though it weighed nearly five hundred pounds, D grabbed it with his left hand and effortlessly heaved it away. The bars jabbed into the ground right in front of the beetle, forcing a sudden stop. The squeal of hydraulic brakes split the night.

D didn't turn to look, but rather checked on Taki's condition. The effects on a human body would be very different depending on whether the iron mass had simply fallen on it or been hurled at it by an explosion.

Bright blood dripped from Taki's mouth. Her internal organs had undoubtedly ruptured. It was strange that no hint of pain could be gleaned from her expression.

Sliding his left hand from the top of Taki's head to the back of it, then from her neck to her spine, he touched her waist and thighs before ending at her toes.

“Two thoracic vertebrae are busted,” a voice was heard to say from the palm of his left hand. “On top of that, her stomach and part of her small intestine have been damaged. She's hurt bad. Good thing she's not aware of it.”

“See to it she holds on long enough to get her to a doctor,” D said.

“I'm already on it. I've dropped her metabolic functions as far as they'll go. Call it a kind of hibernation, if you will.”

In the meantime, a section of the beetle had lifted like the wing of a bird, and out stepped a figure so massive he called to mind a wall. From head to toe, he was neatly sheathed in silvery garb. Although its luster suggested it was metallic, it didn't have so much as a single joint to it, yet as the man walked closer, the action was perfectly smooth.

The massive form halted about fifteen feet away.

Rising, D turned to face the silvery giant.

“I'm the one who hired those five,” the man said in a voice without inflection, having passed it through some kind of device.

“And are you the one who interfered, too?”

While D was referring to how Duke Greed's attack had been blocked, at the same time he was referring to how the man had also hindered his own parting shot.

“I suppose you could say that.”

The giant grinned wryly. His metallic mask was featureless, like the perfectly smooth face of some monstrosity, but when he smiled, his nose and lips had clearly risen to the fore. Undoubtedly it was liquid metal.

“Man alive! Don't hit me with that killing lust. You'll make my heart burst.” The giant backed away, saying, “I may have interfered with you, but you've gotta at least be able to tell I'm not your foe. Hear me out. But before any of that, we'd better get this girl to a doctor. Got anyone in mind? If not, we can take her to someone I know. How does that sound?”

After a few seconds, D said, “It's in your hands, then.”

It wasn't clear whether or not he believed what the glittering giant had said. Taki's welfare was his primary concern. And he didn't ask who or what the giant was because it really didn't matter anyway.

“Follow me,” the giant said as he walked back to the beetle with a quick gait.

By the time the door had been shut and the engine had begun to snarl, D was on his horse. He had Taki across his knees.

The beetle started a leisurely run. After following it for a step or two, D wheeled his mount around without warning. Galloping almost five hundred feet in another direction, he then stopped.

Five cool bodies lay on the black earth like stones. Bross. Zecca. Schuma. Byrne. And a short distance off, Clarice. Although the armor that covered her from the neck down had been charred black, the face that was turned upward didn't have a mark on it. Her loose red hair swayed dolefully against her cheek.

D changed direction without saying a word. The stars were shining. But this young man had no words to send the departed on their way.

The beetle slowly pulled out of the ruins. And after it came the horse and its exquisite rider.

There were three hours until daybreak.

-

The dawn-loathing darkness was now about to raise the curtain on an abominable play at the manse of one Jean de Carriole. The scene was the vast laboratory that occupied the topmost floor of the tower. On stage were de Carriole, Chlomo, Sai Fung, and a trio of golem assistants. In a massive tank of water set in the center of the room floated a Noblewoman—Miska. And there was one other person present.

De Carriole was completely absorbed in giving commands to his golems, adjusting the cycles on the generator, and personally checking the tank's ionization field. Sai Fung looked askance at him and muttered, “Please, give it a rest already, boss.”

Chlomo stood beside him, and on hearing that, he added with a calculated empathy, “I hear Lord Vlad's manor was a complete shambles.”

“Oh yeah. Boss, you'd have to be out of your mind to want that to happen again. I swear, this time it'll be the death of us.”

“Come now. You should be looking forward to seeing this.”

“I would, if I could watch it from outside the tower,” Sai Fung replied.

“Excellent! The preparations are complete,” the old man proclaimed, his tone unusually triumphant as his words spread throughout the laboratory. “Quickly now—bring out our final subject.”

A pair of golems jerkily yet hastily went over to a well-like structure on one side of the room. The rope that hung from a rail set against the ceiling disappeared into the darkness. One of the golems took the end of the rope that was secured to a cleat on the floor and gave it a pull. The pulley turned, and soon a figure thoroughly bound in rope came out of the well and into the light.

“Who the hell have you got there?” Sai Fung inquired.

“A Hunter named Vince. He was caught after coming out to my place to try and get the baron.”

“Did you say Vince?”

Having forgotten his anger at being slapped awake in the middle of the night, Sai Fung now wore a look of understanding.

“I've heard rumors about him. They say he can instantly regenerate from any kind of wound at all. It seems Vince is a nickname he takes from ‘invincible.' So, boss, you've got one hell of a scheme cooked up.”

“You comprehend what it is that I attempt, do you?”

“More or less. Hey, we'd better hurry up and get the hell out of here. If it goes wrong this time, we'll be dead men!”

As he spoke, Sai Fung began backing toward the door, but Chlomo grabbed him by the arm. “You might be out to save your own skin, you bastard, but that's not the way it's gonna go. Like the saying goes, we're all in the same boat here.”

“What are you two blathering about over there?” de Carriole bellowed abruptly, and his two henchmen snapped to attention. “I'll have you know, you are privileged to have been chosen to witness an unprecedented feat of science. Composure, lads. Try to show a bit more composure.”

“Yes, I'm terribly sorry, sir.”

“Ditto.”

Though Chlomo didn't yet grasp the situation, Sai Fung's voice was coated with despair.

What did de Carriole intend to do? Hunched over at the waist as always, he waddled over to the water tank that restrained Miska and pulled a large lever set to one side of it. And once he did, every last window in the room opened in unison, and a wind laden with an unspeakably eldritch aura gusted in, racing around the chamber in a most unsettling manner.

As they tried to turn their faces from the wind that practically slapped at them, Chlomo and Sai Fung's thoughts quickly raced back to something that had struck them as incongruous since first entering the room—the beautiful woman adrift in the tank of water. Water was anathema to the Nobility. Nobles were robbed of their consciousness when they were trapped in it, and thus subjected to an endless sleep.

“Lady Miska has been sealed away,” de Carriole muttered as he studied the lovely woman in the shifting waters of the tank. “As has the other entity. So long as it resides within a Noble, it should have difficulty dealing with water. And by ‘it' I mean the Destroyer.”

He rapped on the floor with his cane. From the tank of water, tubes beyond number looped out onto the floor, and they rose like serpents preparing to strike, raising their needle-tipped ends before moving toward where Vince dangled above the well.

On seeing the needle tips sink deep into every inch of the Hunter's body, Sai Fung clutched his throat and remarked somewhat uncharacteristically, “I think I'm gonna puke.”

Another elbow jabbed against his.

“What the hell was that for?!” Sai Fung snarled, his teeth bared.

“Look,” Chlomo said, pointing to the tank.

A blue light had begun to spill out into the water from Miska's mouth.

“The Destroyer,” Sai Fung said, unable to keep the tremors out of his voice.

-

IV

-

The insane doomsday weapon the Nobility had brought into being—a monster so terrifying it would bring madness not only to our world but to this entire dimension—was once again trying to get free. However, on leaving the body of Miska—who was, in a manner of speaking, its “host”—the blue light twisted in obvious agony. As it dwelt now in the flesh of a water-loathing Noble, the Destroyer itself had become hydrophobic. Writhing and eddying, the blue light was drawn toward the tubes that had just gone into one end of the tank. The tubes themselves weren't sucking it up. In its pain, the Destroyer sought a means of escape. Miska's mouth continued to disgorge light, and now all the tubes were tinged with the pale blue as they carried the flow into Vince's body. And Vince's invincibility had only been bolstered by an immersion in the well, which had been filled with a liquid that enhanced cellular regeneration.

A minute. Two. And still the infusion continued.

When the last of the blue light had been disgorged by Miska's mouth, Vince's eyes snapped open. They were blue glows in the shape of eyes.

“No—it's too soon!” de Carriole shouted as all the tubes sprang away from Vince's body in unison. Each and every one of them returned to the tank, and the waters were instantly tinged with blue.

The rope snapped, and Vince's body fell to the floor. No. Look—the floor sank in a conical shape as cracks shot out from it in all directions. He was now an invincible Destroyer.

“It's not accustomed to that body yet,” the aged scholar remarked. “It should stop presently.”

The trio of golems closed on Vince, and the second they touched him, they were reduced to dust that fell in piles on the floor. When Vince reached for the ropes that still bound his body, they came loose easily, coiling like whips in his hand.

A hot wind that could've been a miasma, or an unearthly aura, or sheer insanity assailed the room, blowing the door down.

Sai Fung and Chlomo hit the floor without any further squabbling.

However, something horrible happened a second later. The tank shattered without a sound, and Miska went down toward the floor along with all the spilled water. But she didn't fall. Standing on her own two feet as water dripped from every inch of her, she stared at Vince.

There was nothing left in the water that covered the ground.

Miska opened her eyes. And they were choked with blue light.

“The Destroyer that remained in the tank has returned to Miska,” de Carriole cried, his words carrying heartfelt fear and despair. “Yet neither has been fully assimilated by its body. Here! Here they shall fight. It's the end of the world!”

De Carriole spread both hands and dashed between the two blue-eyed beings. But his actions weren't prompted by thoughts of saving the world—as his next outrageous statements made clear.

“Destroyer! Hear me out. I have transferred you into an invincible form so that you might rid us of Lord Vlad.”

Down on the floor, Sai Fung and Chlomo stared at the old man in amazement, and perhaps that was why neither of them noticed the ghostly figure who came in through the door just then.

Something awesome hung in the space between Miska and Vince. When it reached the saturation point, the world would most likely be obliterated.

Perhaps de Carriole couldn't do a thing there in the entity's sights, for the second he finished an arcane gesture in front of his own chest, the blue beams of light that surged from Vince's eyes sent him flying, smashing him against the wall.

Rousing his force-shielded body from the floor, the aged scientist cried, “Oh, my!”

And the gasps from Chlomo and Sai Fung mirrored his.

“You were sleeping down on the floor below—have these blustering auras brought you to the battlefield, milord? Yes, of course—you are a Noble, through and through.”

The Nobleman to whom de Carriole's remarks were addressed—Baron Byron Balazs—had an utterly blank expression as he listened to the old man's words, which surpassed mere admiration and bordered on overwhelmed.

-

The beetle guided D and Taki to a room in a building that towered in the middle of the pleasure quarter. The door read “Lubeck Clinic.”

“After she's been treated, we'll move her to another location,” the giant told D.

Once he'd knocked on the door, a woman in a long white lab coat appeared and invited the little group inside.

“I'm Mireille Lubeck,” the woman said, a hollow ring to her voice as she introduced herself naturally due to her having seen D.

D told her about Taki's condition and requested treatment.

After thirty minutes had passed, including the initial exam, Mireille told them she was finished.

“She needs complete bed rest for a month. Or that's what I'd normally tell you, but she's already half-recovered. That's par for the course for a girl who's received the kiss of the Nobility. I suppose another two days will be sufficient for a full recovery.” Then, shifting her gaze to the silvery giant, she said, “Is this the ‘pretty boy' you had them out looking for?”

“That's right.”

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

“None of your business.”

At that, the doctor shrugged her shoulders.

“But when you get right down to it,” the giant continued, “I don't suppose there's any point in me keeping up the act anymore. I'll have to come clean with you sooner or later. Should I tell you who I really am?”

A small spot formed at the top of the giant's head, and then the silver armor coursed down him like water, revealing the man beneath. With only one good eye, the face was one D had seen before.

“Well, I'm Fisher Lagoon.”

D's complete lack of reaction apparently betrayed Lagoon's expectations.

“What? Did you know that?” he asked somewhat suspiciously.

“We met once,” D said. “No two human beings have exactly the same build.”

Shifting his eyes to his own torso, Lagoon gazed down intently for a few seconds, then said, “There are some scary folks out there in the wide world.”

“I owe you for bringing us here. Let's hear what you have to say.”

“Oh, don't make it sound as cold as all that,” Lagoon said with a thin smile.

Though his expression was cruel, he also looked terribly human. In the presence of someone of such unearthly beauty, surely anyone would act the same way.

“Ordinarily, somebody would ask why it was I helped them out.”

“If you've got nothing to say, then I guess I don't owe you anything.”

“Hold up,” Lagoon said in a composed tone. “I've met
the big guy
.”

For the first time, emotion surfaced on D's face.

“When and where?”

“What was it, some thirty years back now? I was just a fresh-faced little punk, and it was right here in the village.” Drawing a breath, he continued, “You know of anyplace else where there's a Noble's manor and the people can still raise such a ruckus at night? You see, not even Lord Vlad can raise a hand against me. Because
the big guy
has laid down the law.”

“Laid down the law?”

“Firstly, the villagers aren't to be drained of their blood. Secondly, so long as Fisher Lagoon is in charge of the nighttime amusements, he's to be given free rein. There are others, too.”

“Why is that?” D asked.

The expression that surfaced on Lagoon's face beggared description. Perhaps this man had had unrivaled good fortune, but no human could've been unhappier.

“Before I tell you that, D, could you show me just how good you really are?”

The gleam of liquid that crept up from the tips of his toes transformed him into a silver giant.

“Mireille, blast me with that bad boy,” the giant said, his finger pointing to the gunpowder rifle that stood in the far corner of the room.

Perhaps the lady doctor was accustomed to his odd behavior, because she didn't hesitate at all, walking over to get the double-barreled weapon, then checking that it was loaded before shouldering it.

“All set,” she said.

“Fire.”

There were sparks as the deafening reports shook the room.

An armored man who'd asked to be shot in a doctor's examining room, a lady doctor who was only too happy to oblige, and a dashing young man who watched it all without raising so much as an eyebrow. This was just the sort of outré world conjured up by dream demons.

Two holes opened in Lagoon's chest. Strangely enough, ripples spread across the surface as if a pebble had been dropped in the water, and the bullet holes disappeared as if they, too, were water. Lagoon gave his right hand a shake. Ripples crossed the palm of his hand, and the pair of slugs were ejected to fall to the floor.

“No weapon can get through this. Except, that is, for a sword in the hands of the person I have in mind. Now it's your turn, D.”

As he spoke, there was a silvery flash of light.

“Hot damn!” Lagoon exclaimed as he reeled backward, surprised that the attack had been so abrupt.

From the top of his head to his crotch a clean cut had opened up, but it quickly vanished.

D had already sheathed his blade.

Dr. Lubeck let out a sigh.

“I guess maybe I was wrong,” Lagoon said, his tone cold.

And then he exclaimed, “Sonuvabitch!”

As his astonishment gave way to that cry, the line that appeared once more sent the liquid armor spilling to the giant's feet in a heartbeat.