Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2

Other Vampire Hunter D books published by

Dark Horse Books and Digital Manga Publishing

-

vol. 1: Vampire Hunter D

vol. 2: Raiser of Gales

vol. 3: Demon Deathchase

vol. 4: Tale of the Dead Town

vol. 5: The Stuff of Dreams

vol. 6: Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane

vol. 7: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea part one

vol. 8: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea part two

vol. 9: The Rose Princess

vol.10: Dark Nocturne

vol. 11: Pale Fallen Angel parts one and two

vol. 12: Pale Fallen Angel parts three and four

VAMPIRE HUNTER D 13: TWIN-SHADOWED KNIGHT PARTS ONE AND TWO

© Hideyuki Kikuchi 1996, 1997. Originally published in Japan in 1996 and 1997 by ASAHI SONORAMA Co. English translation copyright © 2009 by Dark Horse Books and Digital Manga Publishing.

-

No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Dark Horse Books® and the Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cover art by Yoshitaka Amano

English translation by Kevin Leahy

Book design by Krystal Hennes

Published by

Dark Horse Books

A division of Dark Horse Comics

10956 SE Main Street

Milwaukie OR 97222

darkhorse.com

-

Digital Manga Publishing

1487 West 178th Street, Suite 300

Gardena CA 90248

dmpbooks.com

-

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

-

Kikuchi, Hideyuki, 1949-

[Di soei no kishi. English]

Twin-shadowed knight. Parts one and two / written by Hideyuki Kikuchi ; illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano ; English translation by Kevin Leahy. -- 1st Dark Horse Books ed.

p. cm. -- (Vampire Hunter D ; v. 13)

“Originally published in Japan in 1996 and 1997 by Asahi Sonorama Co.”--T.p. verso.

ISBN 978-1-59307-930-7

I. Amano, Yoshitaka. II. Leahy, Kevin. III. Title.

PL832.I37D9713 2009

895.6'36--dc22

2009034016

-

 

ISBN 978-1-59307-930-7

ePub ISBN 978-62115-499-0

-

First Dark Horse Books Edition: December 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

-

I

-

A heavy wind raced by. It bore a weight because it carried the molecules of what was termed a killing lust.

Two shadowy figures squared off on a desolate patch of earth. Whenever the wind passed them, it grew furious.

The sky was as dark as the afterworld.

Suddenly, one of the shadowy figures pounced. As he rose ten feet straight up, he swung both arms down.

Two spiteful flames erupted from the black earth, shooting straight for the figure still on the ground. Like lines drawn by a talented artist, the fiery streaks came together on the figure.

Two silver flashes crossed.

If fire is a physical phenomenon, it has to have mass and substance. Thus, it is possible for a greater mass and harder substance to deflect it.

The light from the flames bouncing off the stark cutting edge became a sword rising into the air. A simple leap made the second figure a sparrow in flight.

Faster than the figure in midair could rise to greater heights, the sword came straight down on him, splitting him from the crown of his head to the base of his neck.

The wind was stained red. As it slapped bright blood against the black earth, the two figures landed on their feet a dozen yards apart. One of them collapsed, while the other stalked across the ground.

Not even bothering to wipe his blade off, the victor returned it to the sheath on his back. There wasn't a speck of gore on it. There was nothing special about the blade, but its speed had prevailed over the cohesive powers of the blood.

The wind had a fawning glow, for it had blown across the shadowy figure's face. Deep, dark eyes gleaming beneath the wide-brimmed traveler's hat, the line of a nose that was sure to send tens of millions of artists into despair, lips that quietly brimmed with a will heavier than anyone would ever know—

The wind had a request. Tell me your name, it said.

“D . . .” a voice called out.

The figure with his head split in two had called to him. Though already a death mask, his face wore a smile.

“D . . . Listen to me,” he said, even his voice that of the departed.

The heavens and earth roared, and the hem of the black coat hid D's face. As if to shield him from the words of the dead. As if to keep him from hearing.

There was a sharp slap. A hand in a black glove had knocked his coat out of the way.

“Oh . . . so you intend to hear me out . . . One word will say it all . . . Of course . . . for you . . . that one word . . . might send you to hell.”

The figure on the ground was an old man with white hair and a white beard. His long robe was woven from metallic threads in a wide range of hues, and its distinctive color scheme declared that even among the Nobility, he was a necromancer of some stature.

The beautiful figure stood there without saying a word, as if he'd heard these words tens of thousands of times before.

The bisected and bloodied face split apart, and the old man raised his hands to hold it together again.

“Go to . . . Muma . . .” he said, his voice sounding like it came straight up from hell.

And as he finished speaking, he took his hands away, and something that might've been blood or brains oozed from the reopened skull.

A life that'd lasted who knew how long had ended.

Only the wind growled across the wilderness until a new voice was heard, saying, “Did he say, ‘Muma'?”

It sounded like it came from D's left hand, which hung at ease by his side.

“What's that mean?” D asked.

Signs of surprise seemed to rise from his left hand for a second.

“Damned if I know,” the dried, cracked voice responded. “Just the babbling of some guy about to die. A little memento to mess with you.”

The voice then mixed with groans of pain. D had squeezed his left hand into a tight fist.

“D-don't . . . do . . . anything . . . stupid . . .”

The fist trembled. Finger and finger pressed together, and nails broke through skin and muscle. A thin red stream had begun to drip to the ground.

“Answer me,” D said.

“About what? Ow! I don't know . . . anything at all . . .”

“What is ‘Muma'? A person? The name of a place? Or is it—”

“I . . . don't . . . know . . .” the hoarse voice said, its manner changed so that it now sounded like it might throw up.

He gave his fist one more squeeze. Silence resulted. After maintaining the fearsome tension for several seconds, D opened his fingers. The blood that covered the palm of his hand was scattered by the wind.

D squinted his eyes. He had no memories of this word Muma. And yet, his body told him of subtle changes. His blood was coursing faster by a thousandth of a second. D instinctively knew when something that small had changed.

Was it in his heart or his genes? It was like he'd felt a mysterious excitement from the second he'd heard the word Muma.

D turned his gaze to the far reaches of the gloom-shrouded plain.

Something roiled like smoke all along the horizon: a mob of countless figures shaken by the wind. Their vile forms were evident to D's eyes alone. Arms like withered branches, fingers tapering into claws, skin that seemed born of corruption, cloudy eyes reminiscent of a dead fish, bodies covered with pustules—all of these creatures had been summoned from their graves deep in the earth by the necromancer who'd just been slain. Even D didn't know what they actually were. Nor did he know what they were supposed to accomplish. Their overlord had just been reduced to a blood-soaked cadaver.

D gave a brief whistle. The sound of iron-shod hooves approaching rang out. Before the white cyborg horse could come to a stop, D was in the saddle. As he took up the reins, the horse went right into a gallop—in the opposite direction from the mob of misbegotten dead. And most likely toward the hell the necromancer had mentioned.

-

It was after midnight when the white horse and black rider blew into the village of Gilhagen like a monochrome cyclone. Street lamps glowed through the weighty darkness of the wee hours.

Atop a hill that was rather high, even for a village in the rolling terrain at the foot of a mountain, a house with roof and walls painted black squatted in the darkness. It didn't have windows, either. It was impossible to tell if it had a door or not, but D stood in front of the house and brought his fist down just once.

A thin crack of light spread through the dark. The door that'd opened in response to that single knock couldn't even be seen.

Standing there with a soot-stained lamp in hand was a gray-haired crone. She had a face that looked like leather pasted on a skull. The black leaf that covered her left eye must've served as an eye patch.

Opening a crack of a mouth, she said, “To be calling on the home of Origa, the greatest sorceress in the southern Frontier, at this hour, you must be prepared to sacrifice your life . . . if not your very soul.”

Her voice was like a chill wind gusting from a dark grotto.

“I will, if that's your wish,” D said.

The sorceress's eyes snapped wide open.

“That voice . . .” the crone said, blinking vigorously behind the light. “Yes, and that beautiful face . . . It can't be . . . You're—”

“I've come because there's something I'd like to ask Origa the Sorceress.”

Before D had even finished speaking, the door opened wide.

A few minutes later, D sat at a heavy table, and the sorceress brought him a hot cup of tea. As she shot a mysterious look at a countenance so gorgeous it seemed to drink up darkness and light and even sound, she asked, “What can I do for you?”

“I've heard Origa the Sorceress specializes in memory regression.”

“That's right. Humans, horses, birds, flame beasts, shadow eaters—hell, I can slip into the memories of any supernatural creature and make 'em recall the past. But—”

Origa stopped there, the expression wiped right off her face, as if she'd just committed some unpardonable sin. A face of unearthly beauty was right before her. The woman's next words would be a betrayal—a betrayal of a beauty that couldn't possibly be human.

“But . . .” the old woman sputtered, trying desperately to retain her pride. “But . . . I won't for you. Be on your way. I didn't meet anyone tonight. Didn't see anyone, no matter how gorgeous. I'll believe that to my dying day.”

“Why are you afraid?” D asked from the other side of the little round table.

“I'm not afraid of anything, I'll have you know.”

“I don't believe we've met before. Or have we—”

“Hell, I've never laid eyes on you before. At any rate, kindly be on your way now. Or if you won't leave, I will!”

“Please, restore my memory.”

The crone quaked at D's words as if struck with palsy.

“I already told you . . . No more of this foolishness!”

“I'll pay you ten times your normal rate. And I'll do you a favor as well.”

“A favor?”

“I'll give you a look into your own past.”

“You're talking nonsense!” the crone said with a low laugh.

The laws of nature had decreed that sorcerers who could restore the memories of others couldn't go back through their own.

D wasn't smiling.

The crone stopped smiling, too. Licking her puckered mouth, she said in a parched, cracked voice, “You mean to tell me . . . you could do that? No, you could . . . I believe you could at that . . . you of all people. Nearly thirty bandits were cut down before my very eyes . . . back when I was five—and that's the only thing I remember from my past.”

“How about it?”

As the question was put to her, the crone suddenly turned her gaze to the vicinity of D's left hip. She'd gotten the feeling the hoarse query she'd just heard had come from there.

After a bit of consideration, the crone nodded and said, “Okay, my beautiful demon. My normal fee will suffice. That . . . that and the return of my past. Not that I doubt you or anything, but would you be so kind as to show me a little proof you can really do it?”

D's left hand rose before the crone's eyes, which were rocked by puzzlement. There was no glove on it.

When he reached across the table and touched that hand to her right temple, the crone's body arched in her chair. Her expression changed. The fluctuations came at intervals of a fraction of a second. Anger, hatred, fear, joy, and finally sadness skimmed ruthlessly across her deeply wrinkled face, hammering her, teasing her, and then leaving.

Somewhere, the lid of a pot rattled quietly. Apparently she was boiling medicinal herbs. Before it rattled a second time, the crone sat back in her chair normally. Her whole body was suffused by a mysterious kind of peace unconnected to the relaxation of her muscles, and tears rolled from her eyes.

What had she seen?

Blinking repeatedly to stem the flow of tears, the crone then focused her gaze on D.

“You pass muster, D,” she said in a perfectly clear tone. “I remembered all manner of things. But instead of thanking you, I'll see to it I give you what you want for certain. Come this way.”

Rising with the lamp in one hand, the crone began to walk toward the doorway, and then stumbled. Falling to the right before she could regain her balance, she was caught by the figure in black. D.

“You're a surprisingly good person at heart, D. Right this way.”

After stepping through the doorway and walking down the dark corridor a bit, the crone opened the door at the end.

The room was a dreary affair, with nothing but a metal bed and a chair.

“Lie down,” the crone told D, gesturing to the bed.

She then took a bamboo flute out of a niche in the wall.

“This is called the returning flute. It has a unique construction that allows it to extract memories from the brain. To date, I've used it on nearly twenty thousand people and supernatural critters, and not once has it failed.”

And yet, she hadn't wanted to use it on D. The incredible swordsman the crone had seen when she was five must've been him after all. But what was it she feared she might glimpse in his past?

“Lie back,” Origa said, pointing to the bed and readying the flute.