Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (16 page)

Terror clawed at Mia's heart, for she had just recalled a legend that was told about the snow-covered mountains in this region. The legend of the Caladoma—abominable creatures that found people and brought them back to their lair in the snow to be devoured.

I've gotta run, and quick. Gotta make it to that building! But how am I gonna get Kuentz there?

As Mia looked down at the fallen youth, fretfulness and despair tinged her eyes for the first time.

-

III

-

Fifty minutes later, Mia looked out at the windblown snow covering the base of the boulders and sighed. Kuentz was lying on a simple bed. There was no change in his condition.

As expected, the building was an emergency shelter from days of old. According to the plate on the door, it dated from more than a hundred years ago, but at present, its concrete outer walls easily kept the snowy gusts at bay, while its interior walls and ceiling were utterly spotless. More than anything, the girl was glad that the heating unit, which had seen more than its share of usage over a century earlier, went into action with a single flip of a switch. Filled to the brim with freeze-proof oil, its most breakable parts had been fully reinforced and repaired. That'd probably been seen to by the last people to use the place. And though she might never meet them, Mia was deeply grateful for their thoughtfulness. Thanks to them, she and Kuentz—whom she'd grabbed by the feet and dragged there—didn't have to freeze to death. Better still, the shelves in the back room were stocked with cold-weather gear and preserved rations. They would have everything they needed and more to get back down the mountain.

Going back over to the bed, Mia put her hand to Kuentz's brow, and then checked his pupils. His body had grown cold, his pulse was zero, his pupils were fully dilated—he was utterly dead. However, her instincts said otherwise.

When a person died, some essential part of them left the body. Some referred to it as the soul, and without it, the corpse was nothing more than an empty husk. Because her mother the fortuneteller was often asked to officiate at funerals and Mia had helped her since she was a little girl, she had seen literally hundreds of corpses. There had never been an exception. A corpse was an empty husk.

But that wasn't the sense she got from Kuentz. Something that made a person a person maintained the life force within his body. That was the proof he lived. Mia was determined to somehow bring him back to the village. But her feverish determination was shaken by a certain wind as if it were a tower built on a foundation of sand. A wind that was black and pale, beautiful and mysterious beyond compare—and it wore the face of a certain young man. D.

What did it mean that he was the obstacle blocking their path? Although at first she thought it might have been the face of the fake D that she saw take shape in the jewel just before it crumbled, Mia had gotten the distinct impression that the image was that of the real D. Why him? The mere thought of it threatened to crush Mia's heart with anxiety and kill her courage to share the fate of the black jewel. What was that gorgeous Hunter?

Her field of view unexpectedly fell into shadow. Mia turned to look and was startled. While her attention was diverted, the demonic whiteness had piled up outside the window. The wind shifted direction.

If it weren't for this shelter—feeling relief, she brought her face closer to the windowpane.

A fiendish visage was pressed against the window. Eyes that turned up at the corners, eyeballs cold and dead, a crescent gash of a mouth exposing rows of yellowed teeth. Thick with bristling white fur, its face was more atrociously cruel and cunning than any monster known to Mia.

“What in the world?” she cried. At the same time she pulled away, the face vanished and was replaced by a white fist that hammered fiercely at the pane of glass.

It was them. Monsters that traveled with the gusting snow, the Caladoma had come there when the whipping wind changed direction. Or this might be another Caladoma, though it meant the same to Mia either way.

The door rattled. As she turned to look, there were noises up on the roof. The number of foes was unclear.

Dashing into the back storeroom, Mia grabbed the bolt gun that was leaning up against the wall. This wasn't a rifle that used bolt action to chamber a round, but rather it literally fired metal bolts propelled by highly pressurized air. There was every reason to fear that the thunderous report of a gunpowder rifle could cause an avalanche all too easily. Those who'd used this shelter—or more likely, those who'd designed it in the first place—had no doubt taken that knowledge to heart.

Taking a look at the tin bucket that sat next to it, she found that an even dozen ammo clips of fifty shots each and three gas cylinders remained. Grabbing the bucket by the handle, she returned to the combined living room/bedroom. As it was fairly heavy, Mia had trouble walking with it.

The instant she stepped into the room, the windowpane shattered. As the shock wave and the sounds of destruction struck her full on, Mia dropped the bucket and used one hand to shield her face. But she quickly opened her eyes.

The upper half of a Caladoma hung from the window—the hole it'd made was too small. It was trying to use the misshapen object in its right hand to smash the rest of the glass. Horrifying faces bared their fangs at the other three windows.

Mia raised the gas-powered rifle. “Stay back! I'll shoot!” she shouted.

Looking up at her, the creature she sought to stop let out a single beastly howl and brought up its right hand.

“Stop it!” Mia screamed, pulling the trigger.

Even before her finger felt the vain and hopeless click of the trigger, Mia realized the terrifying truth. The rifle wasn't loaded with an ammo clip or a gas cylinder!

“Hold it!”

Cursing herself for an idiot, she went down on one knee, flipped over the rifle, then pulled one of the cylinders from the bucket and slapped it in the bottom of the weapon's stock. Every girl on the Frontier was familiar with the use of a number of weapons.

The voice of the beast was near.

The gas cylinder was good to go. Scooping up a clip, she shoved it into place in front of the trigger. There could be no sweeter sound than the click of the ammo locking in place.

When she braced the weapon against her shoulder and rose again, a mass of white landed right in front of her. With a howl that split her eardrums, the beast hurled the same weapon that'd shattered the window at Mia. She thought she'd pulled the trigger before she felt a terrific impact on her left shoulder, but she couldn't be sure.

The thing's face caved in like a mortar, with the base of its nose at the very center of the damage. Its head alone snapped backward, splattering against the wall behind it.

Mia's body was slammed back against the storeroom door, where it halted. She planted her feet to stop herself from sliding down to the floor, but when she tried to raise the weapon with her left arm, the pain made an agonized groan slip from her.

Apparently they only had that one weapon for smashing windows. When the next one leapt in through the same window, Mia gripped the rifle with just her right hand. Her back was pressed against the door to steady her, and as she took a deep breath, she raised the gun. Including the clip of ammo it weighed over ten pounds, so holding it steady was next to impossible. She aimed by pure instinct. Due to the weight of the rifle, the gas had essentially no kick at all.

The bolt it spat out with a rasping whistle struck the chest of the second one at a speed of Mach 3. From the exit wound on the Caladoma's back a tremendous amount of meat and entrails shot out, but even as they exploded from the creature, Mia experienced such agony she lost consciousness.

The impact of the rifle had been minor, but it knocked her body against the door, and from there the force traveled back through her. And her left shoulder bone had been fractured.

-

An extraordinary cylinder towered just before D. The strange thing about it was that although the cylinder rose more than three hundred feet, the entire form was subtly twisted in a manner that seemed to ignore three-dimensional geometry.

“Never seen one of these before. So this is a sway reactor? I've heard they used freaking alien technology, but they sure built a hell of a thing here.”

Even in the world of the Nobility, the energy that drove their civilization was of the utmost importance. Ironically, the nearly ideal form of energy to be had by conventional means was solar power run through an amplifier, but on ethical grounds they set about developing an energy source that was fundamentally different. Though the first approach to prove successful used mathematics and geometry to draw energy from another dimension, roughly a millennium later it was rendered useless by attacks by bizarre creatures on the other side.

At approximately the same time, the energy-development center under direct control of the Sacred Ancestor succeeded in developing a new source of energy—to be precise, the power of perpetual motion. The fact that nearly a hundred thousand ageless and immortal Nobles literally worked themselves to death during its development was a testament to the price that had to be paid to accomplish something the laws of physics vehemently declared an impossibility. So appalling were the conditions that the Sacred Ancestor himself ordered that all accounts of the great undertaking be purged, and five millennia passed before it produced any measure of success. Making something from nothing, this device made a reality of what was only a dream in physics, but even the Nobles' civilization didn't manage to construct more than three of them, each of which was set up in a top-secret location. The secret to producing an essentially endless supply of energy lay in certain distortions and vibrations. Choosing the optimal pattern from the nearly infinite number of combinations required five millennia of scientific endeavor on the part of the Nobility.

But one such combination loomed before D now.

“So, another symbol of the Nobility vanishes, eh?” the left hand muttered—but what did D make of this?

As he walked toward it without evincing any particular emotion, a shower of gold poured down on him from above. A billion-degree heat ray that would instantly erase any living creature lost all its heat the second it touched D. The blue pendant on D's chest glowed softly.

The supercomputer acting as guardian recognized that the intruder wasn't just anyone. Canceling any further attacks, it set all its systems into defensive mode.

An invisible shield stretched before D. An antimatter field—anything that touched it would cease to exist. Only three steps away. Two. One.

D breezed right through it. All that remained was the last redoubt—the blood seal. A barrier that only those of the Sacred Ancestor's line would be allowed to pass.

Suddenly, a final directive locked away deep inside the computer activated. It overrode the will of the computer, taking precedence in virtually any situation. Circuits switched, and for a millisecond, all the energy in the sway reactor was channeled into the black box set in the bottom of the reactor. A dull thrum! shook the air.

“I'll be damned,” the left hand said, its eyes bulging in their sockets.

Before them lay nothing save a vast black lake. The symbol of the Nobility that had loomed there, filling all that space, had vanished without warning.

“Teleportation? That's a dirty trick,” the left hand grumbled.

“Where'd it go?”

D's query was met with silence.

“To Muma?” D then asked.

“Odds are.”

“Where is that?”

“I—I don't know.”

This was the point where D would've ordinarily squeezed his hand into a fist, but instead he let it go and turned around, saying, “Then I'll have to ask someone else. Someone who knows more about this place than me.”

The Hunter's words drew an uncanny sense of alarm from his left hand.

 

-

I

-

When D reached the end of the dark corridor and slipped through the open door, he found another D leaning back against an enormous rectifier.

“You called?” the D who'd just come in said perfunctorily, and the other one nodded. He had summoned his other self using a communication system only the two of them knew about.

“I didn't think you'd be in here. Get out of here at once,” the fake D snarled.

“Where's the assassin?” D asked. His comment didn't seem to have anything at all to do with the topic at hand, but anyone who guessed what he was driving at would've been terrified.

“Oh, him?” the fake D said, an implacable grin spreading across his lips. “What do you intend to do when you catch him?”

“Ask him the way to Muma.”

“Muma?”

“You mean you don't know what it is either?”

“Nope. But the second I heard you say that word, it sent a chill down my spine. What's there?”

“A secret about me, it would seem.”

“Then it's a secret about me, too,” the fake D said, growing thoughtful. “I'd also like to know what the word means. The assassin is still in the facility. No one's made it out except for that couple.”

And then, peering at D, he continued, “I thought you promised to leave here if anyone else managed to escape. It would seem I am just a great big liar.”

“If you're talking about the two of them, they'll be back,” D said.

“Excuse me?”

“So, am I also adept at feigning innocence?”

After a short time, the fake D put one hand across his belly. Though it looked as if his body doubled over from a sudden stomachache, it was laughter that spilled from his mouth. “Ha ha ha . . . You've seen through me, have you? Indeed, I've had them brought back here. But it was you that made it necessary. Don't try to shift the blame.”

“Where are they?”

“Well, there's no point in keeping up the act—come with me.” Tossing his chin down the corridor, the fake D turned around and walked out.

After a walk of five or six minutes, a door opened. Lying on a bed set in the center of a room filled with light were Mia and Kuentz. A number of white shapes milled around the bed, growling in a base tone. Caladoma snowmen.

“The man will be out of it for some time, but the woman should soon be—”

Before the fake D could finish speaking, Mia began to stir, and she immediately opened her eyes. Bringing her hand to her left shoulder, she grimaced, and then donned a stunned expression.

“I healed the bone for you,” the fake D called to her, at which point she finally noticed him and snapped up in bed.

“But this is—”

“That's right, you're back where you started.”

“How . . .” Mia muttered, but then she noticed the snowmen all around her. “So these things do your . . .”

She turned a wrathful look on the fake D.

Extending his index finger, the fake D waved it in front of his face, saying, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. It isn't my doing. To be precise, it's the work of my father.”

A puzzled silence from the girl.

“The man who built this place. Incredible, isn't it? These things were also created by my father and given a duty.”

“A duty . . . You mean carrying people off?”

The fake D smiled wryly at her blunt question. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“And what did you plan on doing to us now that we've been brought here?”

“What, indeed. However, it's not their fault the two of you are back here. If that young man was in proper shape, I'm sure you would've made it safely down the mountain.”

That was certainly true. Even alone, Mia had managed to hurt the Caladoma badly.

“Then whose fault is it?”

“His.” Grinning, he stuck a finger in D's direction.

“Why?” Mia cried out, her eyes going wide.

As the look she trained on him changed from one of anger to loathing, the fake D winced.

“You're trying to tell me D did something? Don't try to shift your blame off on him!”

That was exactly what the fake D had told the other D only a short time earlier.

The fake D's grin grew broader, but getting it back under control, he tossed his chin in Kuentz's direction and said, “Your boyfriend there wasn't overcome by pain on the way down by any chance, was he?”

Without waiting for Mia's reply, he said something astonishing: “That was his doing. I saw it all on the monitors. Without leaving a mark, without drawing even a drop of blood, he slashed clean through the guy's torso.”

Mia gazed at D, dumbfounded. She couldn't even speak. D—was that young man honestly the real D? Mia got the feeling that both of them were impostors.

“Oh, don't give him that look,” the fake D said with much pretense. “If he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to get back in here. You two came back. In other words, you didn't make it out, so he gets to stay too. An unavoidable turn of events, if I do say so myself. However, it would seem that even that wasn't enough to satisfy him, was it now?”

“D, is what he just said true?” Mia asked, still clinging to her desperate thoughts. She knew the answer.

“It is,” D said clearly.

“If only you'd told me, I never would've tried to leave.”

“But he would've left. And he'd have taken you with him.”

If D had tried to stop him at that point, Kuentz would've undoubtedly resisted him to the death. And all for Mia. That was the sort of young man he was.

“How horrible of you!”

“You can say that again,” a hoarse voice remarked from the vicinity of D's left hand, but Mia ignored it.

“So tell me, what's going to happen to us now for your own convenience? I beg of you, don't ever tell me you're going to save us if it's just a lie that serves your purposes.”

Her tone might well be described as icily stern, and it was met by what could only be termed the frozen beauty of D's handsome visage. As she glared at him, Mia got the feeling her fit of rage was clearing from her head.

“Someone will be coming soon. Once I've met with him, you can be on your way.”

“What do you mean, someone?”

As she stared at D, out of the corner of her eye she caught the fake D pretending to pull a hair from his head.

“That guy. When's he coming?”

Somewhere in the wall there was a faint electronic sound. Essentially in unison the eyes of all three of them saw a picture form in a section of the wall they hadn't noticed up until now—a map of the facility. It couldn't possibly have been any more detailed. A red point of light was moving through it.

“Monitor,” the fake D called out, and the antiseptic schematic faded to show them an image of a man on a horse silently making his way down a dark corridor. It was the assassin in blue—Yuma. A scaled-down version of the previous map showed in the upper right corner of the screen.

“That's the number two passageway in the northeast quadrant. Wonder where he thinks he's going?”

Mia gasped.

The point of light had just disappeared.

“I take it he noticed he was being monitored. Just the sort of thing you'd expect from someone sent to fight us, eh? Now there's no way of knowing where he's headed.”

“Really?” D asked.

Grinning, the fake said, “No. There is a way. Care to join me?”

“I have business with him, but you don't. Why invite me along?”

“You just don't get it, do you? Because I'm you. If you want to see him, then I need to do the same. Baby—”

“The name is Mia.”

“Pardon me. You'd better come with us too, Mia baby. You needn't worry about this young fella. All our friend here has to do is make the same cut in reverse and he'll be back to normal.”

“Is that true, D?”

“Yes.”

“Then fix him now.”

“If he did that, I'd need him to leave,” the fake interjected, drawing a glare from Mia.

“You'll have to wait a while,” D told Mia, and then he turned to the fake.

“No, I'm going too. I've had it with being left in dangerous situations.”

“But what are you going to do about him?”

“We'll bring him with us. He won't be your problem. I'll carry him on my back,” the girl replied.

For a second, the two Ds looked at each other.

The fake one said, “Of all the nonsense. Oh, okay, you can come with us. And I will be so good as to carry that fellow on my back.”

The I to whom he referred, the other D, remained emotionless.

-

“This really stinks. I'm supposed to be the leader here,” the fake D grumbled several minutes later. On his back he bore Kuentz in his breathless sleep.

At Mia's suggestion, the three of them had settled matters via rock-paper-scissors. This was the result.

Perhaps tied to the massive installation by some sixth sense, the fake D walked on for ten minutes without losing his way, and then a huge black pit appeared before them. It was so wide they couldn't see to the far side. And their path cut straight across it.

“This part's a tad dangerous,” the fake D said, halting. “The floor is damaged out in the middle. If things don't go right, we could fall. I suppose we could go the long way around, but that would take a lot of time. Of course, it's not like we're foaming at the mouth to get there, so let's do that.”

“We'll go this way,” D said.

“I thought you'd say that. But what about these other two?”

“That's your department.”

“Hey!”

“We did rock-paper-scissors to determine who'd look after those two.”

“I guess you're right.”

“I can take care of myself,” Mia said stoically.

“Since you've got a guardian angel, you might as well make the most of him,” D countered, tossing his chin in the fake D's direction.

“Oh, shut up already. Fine. Let's go, then.”

The instant they set foot on the span, their dangerous foreboding manifested in a slight creak. There was a noise like glass grinding on glass.

“The molecular bonds have been really weakened. The two of us might manage it, but there's no way baby here could pull it off.”

“No, she'll be fine,” D said, reaching out to take Mia's hand. The second he touched her, presumably to lead her across, Mia's body went sailing through the air and landed on Kuentz's back.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“You should be able to handle the two of them. After all, you're me.”

“You're a bastard.”

The floor creaked beneath the fake D's feet.

“Oh, my!”

“Watch your step.”

Though the fake bared his teeth at that, he ultimately walked on without saying another word. Apparently he was the type who would at least honor an agreement. And in that, it came as little surprise he was just like D.

“I'm sorry,” Mia apologized from behind him. “Uh, I'll walk on my own.”

“Just try getting down now. Your feet would go right through the floor as soon as they touched it. Don't worry about it. Carrying the two of you isn't a big deal.”

“Thank you,” Mia said, bowing her head, and then she glared at the D behind her.

“Not a problem. Not a problem at all,” the fake said, waving his right hand before his chest as he did so. In his fist he held a single strand of hair.

“He's here.”

And saying that, he ducked, and a gentle wind passed over his head without a sound.

Catching the hair that came flying at him with his left hand, D then struck out with lightning speed. A new onslaught of hair was met by it, wrapping around the limb.

“He was just testing the waters with that one. He'll mean business with the next one,” the fake D shouted. “If he shoots through this span, we'll be in trouble. Let's get across here quick!”

His words alone were left there as he sprinted. With two young people on his back—Kuentz and Mia—it was miraculous how he could move without even making the floor creak again.

Even though the fake might've been termed the master of this facility, no matter how he stared into the darkness before him, he couldn't make out anything. The pit was the better part of a mile wide.

Though he dodged or cut down two strands of hair that came flying at him, there was nothing he could do about the third strand that pierced the floor at his feet. A thirty-foot section crumbled away, and the fake D and the young couple were swallowed by pitch blackness without a sound.