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

Those were indeed human bodies that got up, but cobbled together based purely on proximity—the blond head of a young man sat on the torso of what was clearly a middle-aged man, and both the right and left arms didn't belong to him either. And while the legs were a matching set, they didn't belong to the owner of the head or the torso. However, that wasn't uncommon. At the very least it had one head and torso, and two arms and legs. Another body could only be described as a prank by some god of creation. Two right arms wrestled with each other for dominance, while both legs were left ones. And the face that gazed down stupidly was upside down.

“Stop it!” Kuentz ground his teeth. “Stop it, you goddamn monster! Put all of them back the way they were.”

“All of them? Not one of them can remember who he was. They are empty vessels, just like this,” the giant said, striking his chest. “But it would seem that, to you, they are still friends. Therefore, you can do them no harm.”

He gestured with his arm to Kuentz.

The dead—in the horribly twisted forms they now possessed—began to advance on Kuentz with stiff steps. There was no way to describe the sight of them walking across the spearhead fragments other than to say they were like demons from the fires of hell.

Though he had his iron arrows and concealed blade ready, Kuentz still hesitated. No matter how grotesque their forms, their faces were still those of friends. Friends he'd studied with, played with, and squabbled with since he was little. A troubled sweat broke out on Kuentz's brow, and his hands shook badly.

“What's wrong? Simply think of them as corpses. Or if you raise your hand to them, will you be labeled a friend killer for the rest of your days?” the giant said, leaning back for a hearty laugh.

Dead friends reached for Kuentz's throat with both hands. Even if he were to break free of them, there were still those metallic thorns at his feet. And if he somehow managed to tramp across them to freedom, the giant's longsword would be waiting for him.

The circle closed in on him. However, as Kuentz glared at the giant, his eyes weren't filled with despair, but rather burned with the will to fight. This young man would surely choose to go down fighting.

The trembling of his left hand stopped dead. When he held his arm out straight, the iron arrow was aimed not at his dead friends, but at the giant behind them. He would retaliate. Even now, he still challenged his fate.

The giant's laughter stopped unexpectedly. Like a person awakening to learn their whole world was just a dream, he suddenly turned and looked behind him. Three figures stood in the same depths of the darkness from which the giant had come. One was a woman; the other two were inhumanly beautiful men in black who were identical in appearance.

“There's the ringleader,” one of them said to the other. “And that brings my part to a close. I leave the rest to you. Now, don't forget about the three days we agreed on.”

The woman stared at the gorgeous figure that'd been the target of that remark.

“D, I'm going down there. If I should die, it's up to you to—”

“It wouldn't do to have my employer die on me.” Glaring intently at his other self, D then made a toss of his chin at the giant and said, “Call him off.”

“I can't do that,” the fake D said with a disagreeable expression as he, too, looked at the giant. “It's part of the recovery process after the research facility was completely destroyed. There are parts of it that recognize me as the master, but there are also systems that haven't accepted that. Unfortunately, this character represents the latter. Although sooner or later he'll come under my command, at present, he would view me as a foe as well.”

At what some might even describe as an embittered reply, D said softly, “In that case, you can dispose of him.”

“I thought you might say that,” the fake said, shrugging his shoulders. “But this is hardly the time or place to stand around debating. That young man's in danger.”

“He's right, D,” Mia agreed.

Never taking his eyes off the fake, D said, “Get out of here.” He was concerned about Mia's safety while he was busy fighting.

“Fine. If you'd be so good as to destroy him, you'll just be doing me a favor. I'll be wishing you luck from afar.”

And with that obtuse reply, the fake walked off toward the depths of the darkness, turning after he'd gone a few paces. When his eyes met Mia's, he said, “Pleasant journey to you, brave little miss.”

He addressed her in a gentle tone that made him seem like a completely different person from who he'd been up until now, but before Mia could frame a reply, he vanished into the darkness.

It was less than a second later that Mia returned to her senses from the strange feeling that'd come over her. By the time she turned her eyes to where the lurid life-or-death battle would unfold, D had already finished descending the staircase. Less than sixty feet stood between him and the giant. Perhaps that was an appropriate distance for the boundary between the stillness that seemed to hang in the vicinity of the gorgeous Hunter and the sudden shift to cries of deadly battle, or perhaps not.

D advanced without concern. In response, the giant stood stock still. When the silently advancing D was finally below the blade the giant had raised, the giant made a horizontal swipe at the base of the Hunter's neck. Blue sparks shot out like glittering grains in the feeble light, and a crisp metallic clang rang out. D had parried the blade in the act of drawing his own.

Wasn't the giant staggering? If he was, it lasted only a second before he managed to maintain his balance and lift his sword above his head for a second blow.

D didn't parry it. He kicked off the floor lightly and slashed down with his blade in midair. At essentially the same time he sheathed his sword, the giant's upper body—from the right side of his neck to the bottom of his rib cage on the left—moved slightly out of alignment. Like it was going down a slide, it slipped off and fell to the floor with a booming thud.

The eyes of Mia, Kuentz, and even the reanimated dead bulged in their sockets.

After merely taking a glance at the portion of the giant that still stood on the floor and his sword, D walked over to Kuentz. Actually, in the whole course of the battle, the Hunter had never stopped moving for a second.

Behind him, what remained of the giant's lower body bent over slowly. Lifting the severed left portion, he tried to stick it back in place. After all, he had reanimated the villagers' corpses. He barely got it back in position.

Raising his longsword, the giant was about to bring it down once more on D.

As D walked, he tapped his right foot lightly against the floor. Once again the giant's upper body slid off, and by the time its echoes boomed, D had already dived into the thick of the living dead. Not at all concerned with the metal fragments on the floor, he flashed out with his blade and swiftly took apart the reanimated corpses. There wasn't a mote of humanity in his “dissection,” so brutal even Kuentz—who was caught in the middle of it—couldn't bear to watch.

The Hunter went on to sweep the fragments from the floor, saying, “Come with me.”

After slipping free of the net of fragments, Kuentz, dumbfounded, looked at D and Mia and asked, “Who the hell are you two?”

“Didn't you see us back in town?”

In response to Mia's question, Kuentz shook his head, saying, “No, I know. You're Miss Mia, right? And that's the Vampire Hunter ‘D.' ”

An intense glint filled the eyes that gazed at D. As far as Kuentz was concerned, he was still a murderer.

“What are you doing here?”

“We kinda wandered in,” Mia lied. Even if she were to tell him the truth, he wouldn't understand. For Mia herself, comprehending all of this was only a distant dream.

“In that case, you'd better hurry up and get out of here.”

“We'd better? What about you?”

“I've still got work to do. I've gotta find out for sure what's going on down here.”

“Forget that and just get out, okay? No matter how long you stay, you'll never learn anything and you'll only get yourself killed. Like all of them.”

But Kuentz had a fierce light in his eyes. “Then I have to avenge them. You two go on ahead.”

“No, I can't just leave you. You'll die for nothing.”

“I'm prepared to do that. I can't very well go dragging my tail back all alone.”

“No, that's exactly what you should do. You must've seen how terrifying the things infesting this place are. They control the dead, for God's sake!”

“There was nothing inside that armor. All I heard was a voice,” Kuentz muttered absentmindedly.

“You can't win against things like that. No one will blame you for going home.”

“That's if he makes it home,” D interjected.

The other two looked at him with bulging eyes.

“Your friends are all dead. The reason you alone made it in here is because the enemy invited you in. A foe like that won't let you go again easily. Whatever was in that suit of copper armor is probably watching us right now.”

“What was he?” Kuentz asked, his face distorted.

When it came to various monsters and spirits, he knew quite a bit, and he'd encountered them on a number of occasions. That thing had been something entirely different, because Kuentz was wearing a charm against supernatural beings.

“We'll know soon enough.”

Kuentz's eyes leapt to the vicinity of D's left hip. Although Mia knew that the hoarse voice had come from his left hand, she said nothing.

“But more importantly, now we simply can't afford to wait three days up on the surface. Those two aren't in league yet.”

By that, the hoarse voice was referring to the fake D and the thing in the armor.

Mia swallowed hard.

“This place is coming back to life. If it's fully restored, it'll become a tremendous fortress we'll be powerless against. Needless to say, we can't stay here safe and sound. We've gotta get back up to the top as soon as possible.”

Since D wasn't talking, Kuentz was completely bewildered. The hoarse voice definitely seemed to come from D's hip—where his hand hung easily by his side.

“Shall we go,” D said, and he started walking.

“But that's—” Kuentz began, and then he was left breathless.

Before the figure in black loomed the same stone wall where the door had disappeared earlier. And then the wall in front of D fragmented like an electronic image, and what should suddenly appear again but the door.

In spite of himself, the boy looked over at Mia, and seeing in her profile the shock and fear and even adoration that rocked the girl's features, the young man felt a pang shoot through his chest.

 

-

I

-

"Where are we, anyway?” Mia fairly groaned a little over an hour after they'd left the ritual chamber. Traveling down the corridors and climbing stairs with D in the lead, the girl wasn't uneasy, but the relentless march was physically more than she could take.

“We haven't even gone halfway.”

“I'm sorry, but I need a break. And I'm thirsty too,” Mia said, sinking to the ground.

Before her lay another staircase. The top of it dissolved into the darkness. And that endless climb was enough to rob the girl of both her will and her strength.

“It's weird, though. We've been climbing all these steep stairs and we still haven't reached the surface yet,” Kuentz said, his voice heavy with distrust for D, but not because he thought he was a murderer. Those suspicions had faded in the short time he'd spent with D. That was partly because he was working for Mia, but it was really because the girl had told him what D was. A dhampir—he didn't like that one bit.

Weren't they kin to the Nobility? In that case, he should be living in secret high in the mountains or deep in a valley where no one would ever find him, not walking around interacting with people like everyone else. To make matters worse, he made his living as a Hunter, and a Vampire Hunter at that. Vampires—weren't they his kind? Although Kuentz didn't quite consider him a traitor, he most definitely didn't approve. Something wasn't right there. When Kuentz looked at D, his eyes were anything but amiable.

“Something's interfering,” a voice grumbled in response.

“Interfering?” Eyes wide, the man looked over at D's hip and asked, “Are you into ventriloquism or something?”

“The thing in the armor we ran into earlier has distorted space. And as a result, the distance to the exit increased tenfold. As we press forward, I'm undoing it, so we're making some progress. If not, we'd just keep going and going till we died.”

“So, when will we get there?”

“Well, I'd say in an hour and a half. But that's only if nothing else interferes.”

“Nothing else?”

“If we keep going like this, we'll get out eventually.”

“Yeah. That's just great,” Kuentz said, slapping his hands together with a touch of desperation. “Well, whatever we're doing, we'd better do it fast. The air's got a dangerous feel to it.”

Mia looked up. D had walked over and crouched down. “What?”

“He'll give you a piggyback,” a hoarse voice told her.

“But—”

“It's okay. He's made of sterner stuff than the average customer.”

“Okay,” Mia said, standing up and climbing on without any further argument. Perhaps it was his black raiment, but while he appeared svelte at a distance, now that she was touching him, she found his back to be so broad and muscular it held her spellbound. Relief spread through her body.

“You sure that's a good idea?” Kuentz said snidely.

“What?”

“I have no problem with you wanting to show your best face for the lady. But worst comes to worst, you wouldn't be able to strike back as quickly, and that's a problem. Don't come crying to me then, lover boy.”

The young man was surprised at his own hostility, but his expression suddenly stiffened. For a hoarse voice had let out a low chuckle.

“Something funny?” Kuentz asked angrily. Mia was right beside him. It was a natural reaction.

“We'll see who comes crying to—gaaaah!”

The hoarse voice let out a cry of pain, and then was silenced.

“That's pretty big talk. What do you say we see for ourselves who's gonna do some crying?” Kuentz said, naturally going into a combat stance. He let all the power drain from his body and collect in the tips of his toes. Ten feet lay between him and D. While the concealed blade on his right arm might not be much good, the iron arrows from his left should prove effective at that range.

“Don't,” D said. A thread-thin groan of pain escaped from his left fist as he balled it even tighter, but of course that didn't reach Kuentz's ears.

“C'mon. Knock it off,” Mia told him from D's back. “This is no time to be doing this, is it? If we don't work together to get out of here—”

Kuentz stared at the girl and her fervent expression. Her crystal-clear eyes stripped away the damp fever that'd been spreading through his head, and in a heartbeat he was back to his senses. “You're right,” he said, nodding.

Turning to D, he continued, “Sorry about that. I'm pretty bushed, too.”

“No. You were right.”

Mia was the first to grasp the meaning of D's icy reply. Her body stiffened with shock on his back, and all she managed to say by way of protest was, “D . . .”

“Hey,” Kuentz said, unable to hide how shaken he was. “What did I do? I said I was sorry.”

“Come on,” D said quietly. He still had Mia on his back, tying up both his hands.

“Stop it, D. What are you trying to prove?”

“He wants a fight. So I should give him what he desires as soon as possible.”

“I'm not in the mood for that anymore,” Kuentz said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Something blistering hot skimmed by his right cheek. What jabbed viciously into the stone wall behind him was a needle of unfinished wood. But how had the Hunter managed to hurl it with both hands occupied?

“So that's how you want it?” Touching his right hand to his cheek, Kuentz then looked down at his fingertips. Blood stained them.

“I don't know what's bugging you, but I'll finish this fight you're starting,” he told the Hunter, his mind and body already prepared for war. The will to fight now bubbling up in him was so pure, a grin even appeared on Kuentz's lips. “But set Mia down first.”

Over his head, a flash of light limned a glittering semicircle.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed, only able to leap clear thanks to his incredible speed. When he landed, he saw that D was closing on him. With both hands around Mia's back, the Hunter didn't seem to be holding a weapon.

“Shit!”

Kuentz was about to launch an iron arrow when he noticed he hadn't raised his left arm yet. Lifting it, he brought it to bear on D's stomach. It seemed like it took a year to do so. He heard the rasp of compressed oxygen being released. But once he'd fired, his blood froze.

He's got Mia. What if it goes right through him?

However, rather than follow the path of the arrow, the boy took a more circuitous route. As he listened to the sound of D's attack splitting the air just a hair above his head, he drove the concealed blade on his right arm toward D's waist. Shocked at meeting nothing with it, he sprang away. And when he landed, there was something cold hanging directly over his head.

D was right in front of him. Kuentz was paralyzed by the realization of what the wind that'd whistled down on his forehead meant, but the Hunter asked him, “What will it be?”

“Kill me!” Kuentz shouted, eyes still shut, but just as he did, he felt the blade pull away from him. At his feet there was a hard metallic clatter. Lowering his eyes, the young huntsman found something to truly freeze his blood this time—the two arrows he'd launched. D had had both arms behind Mia's back, as always. He wasn't even holding his sword. If anyone had the skill to stop the second arrow Kuentz had launched at him at the speed of sound as he brought a blow down that would've split the boy's head like a piece of firewood, it was this gorgeous Hunter.

All the strength drained from Kuentz, and he slumped to the ground. Having seen the unbridgeable gulf between their respective abilities, he was mentally and physically burned out.

“Can you stand?” D asked.

“Yeah.” Kuentz himself was surprised by how easily that reply came out and the way it carried no hard feelings. D's superior abilities had wiped away all the prejudice he felt toward the Hunter in one fell swoop. The freshness inherent in youth and the heroism attendant to the Hunter profession freed Kuentz from the weird atmosphere that'd been gnawing at his mind.

Getting back to his feet, he grinned sheepishly and said to D, “You're a psychologist, aren't you?”

The Hunter didn't even smile at that but told him, “Up we go.” And saying that, he headed for the stairs.

After climbing about fifty steps, they reached the top and a broad corridor. D halted.

“What is it?” Kuentz asked, having been stopped just as he was about to press forward.

“Both of you need to shut your eyes and cover your ears,” the Hunter said.

Though he knit his brow suspiciously, Kuentz was well aware of the young man's almost limitless skill, so he was compliant, saying, “Okay. Is that all?”

“When we go down this corridor, something is certain to try to stop us,” D explained. “I don't know what it'll be. But under no circumstances are you to turn around. If you look back, it'll be over then and there. You probably won't make it out of the fortress.”

“Understood,” Kuentz said with a nod, but then a question suddenly occurred to him. “So, how is it you know so much about this corridor anyway?”

D's answer was short. “I don't know.” Then he added, “Let's go.”

They started forward, but before he'd taken three steps, Kuentz sensed someone behind him.

“Kuentz!” a voice called out to him, and in his heart he let out a furtive gasp. Though he had both ears covered tightly, he could hear the voice with perfect clarity. And it belonged to—

“Graff?”

He was about to turn in spite of himself, but barely managed to stop when he recalled D's warning. What could the same friend who'd gone missing at the bottom of the great subsidence then lured him to that bizarre giant be doing here?

“Kuentz—can you hear me? I'm hurt. Some weird monster thing bit my leg, and I can't move. On top of that, it got me in the gut. I've lost so much blood. I'm in a bad way. You've gotta help me!” The shouts were strained, the words spat out like so much blood.

D and Mia kept right on going as if nothing had happened. Apparently Kuentz alone could hear Graff's voice.

And then his friend continued in a feeble, urgent tone, “Help me! Don't leave me down here, Kuentz. You're the leader, right? It's your job to save me. I'm begging you, do your duty. Get me out of here!”

“Graff!”

Unable to stand it any longer, he was just about to turn when a great force came to bear on his shoulder. Though it was unclear when D had backed up, the Hunter remained facing forward while reaching back with one hand to grab the man's shoulder. He couldn't begin to imagine how D could've noticed the strain he was under. At that moment, a terrifically wrathful scream rang in his ears, fading just before it could drive Kuentz mad.

They advanced down the endless corridor for another hour. When they came to the next corner, D told them, “It's okay now.”

And with that, the three of them took a rest right there.

-

II

-

Graff must be dead, Kuentz was thinking numbly when he was startled by Mia's sobs and turned to the girl.

“What's the matter?”

Having climbed down off D's back, Mia sat on the floor. There were a number of blotches on her knees. Stains from tears.

“What's the matter?” he asked once more.

Giving a feeble shake of her head, she said, “Nothing.” But her voice belied her words.

“It can't be nothing. You're crying, aren't you?”

“Just leave me alone.”

“Sure. For the next five minutes, at any rate.”

Looking up, Mia asked, “What's that supposed to mean?”

“After you've cried for five minutes, you'll feel better. And then we can get down to some quality boy/girl talk.”

“You dope!” Mia spat, but her tone was faint and not very cross at all.

Remaining silent for a while, she then said, “My mother called out to me. She must've passed by now, but she called to me again and again. And when I thought about her really being gone, I just couldn't help it.”

“Did you turn around?”

“Nope,” she said, looking at D. The exquisite youth was leaning against a wall a short distance away. “He took me by the hand. And then, all of a sudden, I didn't feel so bad.”

“You don't say. That's just great,” Kuentz said brusquely, leaving Mia's side and walking further down the hall. Planting his back against the wall, he looked sullen.

“What's wrong? Was it something I said?” Mia asked, looking dazed.

“It's just a seasonal malady. You only get it while you're young,” a hoarse voice replied.

“What should I do?”

“You ever dated a fella before?”

“I've been too busy fortunetelling.”