Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (20 page)

“Hey!”

“Catch up to me later.”

And with that, the rider in black galloped away in a cloud of dust. To the north.

While he trailed the Hunter in a daze, the fake D bared his teeth and snarled, “The nerve of that guy. The next time I see him, he'll have to answer for this.”

Behind him, Mia added, “I'll say. As soon as we get Kuentz to the hospital, let's head right out after him.”

At that, the fake D laughed aloud.

-

III

-

Three days and three nights D kept his horse ceaselessly galloping down the road north, finally arriving at the first tiny community. There he left his exhausted cyborg steed, asking that the animal be serviced and its needs attended to. When he asked at the stables about a woman named Menda, the reply he got was, “Ah, you're too late, you are. She passed away three years back.”

Though her home had also been demolished, he asked where it'd been located, heading out there on a horse borrowed from the stables. Sure enough, nothing but the house's foundation remained in the hilly region spreading to the west of the village. As he was looking at the surrounding area, a wagon came along. It stopped in front of D.

“You there, pretty boy—what are you up to?” a personable-looking farmer in a battered hat called out to him from the driver's seat. “There's nothing left there. A witch woman who was no-one-knows-how-many centuries old used to live there, you see. Caused all kinds of trouble, and on account of that, her house was burned to the ground. Even now, the will-o'-the-wisps light up the place come nighttime and strange, shadowy characters creep around. I don't mean to tell you your business, but you'd best be hurrying on your way.”

“Does she have a grave?” D asked in return. Although he was over thirty feet away, his low voice reached the farmer's ears without the least bit of distortion.

“She does. The village holy man said a body with no one to see to it was just too pathetic, so he set up a grave for her. From where you're standing, you can see that hill off to the right, can't you? It's at the foot of that.”

Giving the man his thanks, D got back on his horse.

It was less than five hundred yards to the hill. In a shallow depression that'd been dug in the slope there stood a tall, slim gravestone. On it was carved Menda's name and a date three years earlier. There was no date of birth.

Staring for some time at the humble grave, D then set his left hand on the top of the gravestone. To an observer, he might've looked like a dashing man wracked by deep emotion at the thought of the departed. And then, said observer would no doubt have imagined that the grave's occupant was a woman of peerless beauty now lost to him.

“Well?” D asked. His inquiry was directed not to the gravestone but rather, as illogical as it seemed, to his left hand.

“There's no hideout here. It's a grave all right. Except it's made of incredibly heavy stone.”

Processed stone was renowned for being essentially as dense as iron, and it was used to bind ghosts and vengeful spirits that might harm the living.

“And inside it?”

“That much I can't tell.” Perhaps noticing that D's right hand was reaching around to his back, the voice hurriedly added, “You—you can't seriously be thinking of stabbing your sword into that stone, can you?”

It was more of a desperate plea than a question, but before it had even finished, D's right hand flashed into action. Drawing the blade from his back, he made a thrust. Naturally, the sword should've limned an arc and then streaked straight forward in a piercing blow. But it merely looked as if D's blade had flown straight from the sheath to the gravestone.

Stabbing into the base of the gravestone at roughly a sixty-degree angle, the blade appeared to stop for a second when it was a third of the way in, but it merely slowed a tiny bit before sinking in halfway.

“Oh, my—here it comes!” the left hand shouted.

For some reason, whenever a person referred to the arrival of something inhuman, they invariably said some variant of “It's coming!” And something certainly did come. At the same time D's blade was being pulled back out, a clearly visible miasma-like substance was rising from the gravestone, but it then dispersed in the air.

D turned around and looked.

There stood a woman in a white death shroud. The scenery behind her was visible through her transparent skin.

“Menda?” D asked as if he were addressing a living person.

“You're—D.”

“You know me?”

“Surely you know the power of the soul. Everything that's been said about you reaches my ears.”

“Where is Muma?” D asked. Though he'd confirmed who she was, he didn't seem the least bit surprised. Of course, he didn't seem at all frightened, either.

“Do you want to know? If so, you must grant me a favor.”

“Name it.”

Joy tinged the cheeks of the transparent woman. Her right hand rose to her chest. It stopped there for a moment, and then came away again. Within her blurry body, a black lump swelled and shrank by turns. It was obvious at a glance. That was her heart.

“The great one—oh, but then you must know of whom I speak. He put this into me. Even when I was killed, it beat on. And it prevents me from undertaking my eternal journey. If you wish to know the way to Muma, I want you to stop this.”

D saw tears well up in the woman's eyes. Could a soul cry?

“You must've come from the subterranean realm where my uncle was. I am not uninformed as to what transpired there.”

“Hmm,” the left hand replied.

The woman smiled thinly.

“I was one of those who worked there. You see, the great one's experiments required not only the science of the Nobility, but also the primitive magics of every race. As it continued, it affected my mental state—in truth, it got to the point where even the minds of the pitiless Nobles working there could bear it no longer. Weird children born one after another—oh, I can still hear them! This heart carries the noise to me. The heartrending whimpers of the babies deemed failures. All of them were discarded in a bottomless pit. No one can know how the sight of that has tormented me. On the brink of losing my mind, I talked with a number of my associates, and then we set the subatomic reactor to overload and fled the subterranean realm. I galloped off on a horse then, riding a full year until I took up residence in a freezing village nestled between the glaciers.”

One after another, the woman's words rang out with a despair that was denser than the dark of winter. And it was because of this that D remained silent and listened to her.

“But alas, as I feared, I wasn't safe there. Those who'd labored at forbidden tasks in the subterranean realm would never be allowed to escape the black arms of the great one. Every day and every night, I heard his voice in my dreams whispering to me, Come back. And after living there a hundred years, I turned my back on the glacier village. For the next three centuries I walked across the Frontier, looking like some wandering wraith, and then I settled on this village. All the bizarre experiments I conducted here were done at the great one's bidding. As a result, I wound up cursed and killed. Not that I'm resentful of that—I was painfully aware that the great one never forgave traitors when I chose to rebel. However, the fate the great one bestowed upon me was not the peace of death. My ears ring with the cries of desperately clinging babies who realized their fate just as they were about to be hurled into a dark hole. Babies who wrapped their arms around my neck. When I close my eyes, their faces appear, begging to be spared. I have been locked away with the very things I sought to flee. And for the rest of time I'll be unable to escape them. Not so long as I have this heart—the heart the great one gave me in place of my own when he appeared to me in a dream the night before the villagers murdered me.”

The woman covered her eyes. She plugged her ears. She wrapped her arms around herself. As overly dramatic as these gestures were, they laid the woman's misery bare.

“Stop this heart of mine,” the woman said, her words growing slurred. She was desperate. It wasn't life she desired. The freedom of her soul hung in the balance. “No one can stop a heart made by the great one. Except for his one success, that is.”

You were my only success.

“You know the way to Muma, don't you?” D asked, just to be sure.

“Oh, will you do it, then? Of course I know the way. I was a handmaiden to the great one.”

D didn't move from that spot, but held his sword ready in his left hand, drawing it far back under his arm. Poised for a thrust. Could the same blow that'd pierced the superdense stone destroy the heart housed in her spirit—an artificial heart that'd been put into her in a dream?

D's eyes glowed with an intense light. His eyelids slid shut, and a second later, the sword blade pierced her black heart.

Menda screamed. Though the writhing figure clutching her heart was semitransparent, she was just like a real person of flesh and blood experiencing real agony.

D lowered his sword. He knew his blade had met no resistance—it was like stabbing into thin air.

There was no change in the evil beating of the black heart. An artificial heart made of the same material as a dream, and which, when damaged, put the soul into hellish agony—what in the world was it, and how on earth could it be destroyed?

“Stop this. You'll only torture her soul,” a hoarse voice choked with distress called out to stay his hand.

“Looks like I failed,” D said to the soul of Menda, which had finally finished twitching. “What do you want to do?”

“How about you? Do you pity me? Are you loath to make me feel the same pain again? Do you wish to run away with your tail between your legs?”

She looked up at D with tears in her eyes. That single blow had left her face gaunt, but a hopeful smile gradually spread across it.

“You're ready now, aren't you? You're going to do it. You really, truly intend to free me from this accursed existence. Thank you.
Thank you so much.”

“Stop this madness,” the left hand urged them. “Her soul won't die. But every time you fail, she'll go into agonized convulsions. Unless you have some proof you'll succeed next time, this is just torture. Gaaaah!”

Opening his hand again from the tight fist he'd just made, the Hunter closed his eyes. He was focusing his mind.

Would the second thrust bring salvation, or would it give rise to tragedy?

A chill spread through the air—a paranormal phenomenon associated with D's intense concentration. Once more he held the sword by his side—and when it blistered through the air, it impaled the black organ again, snapping Menda backward.

At the same time, D clutched his chest and staggered forward. A steely arrow ran into him through the back and poked out of his heart. Someone had shot him from behind.

Ordinarily, the Hunter would've sensed the murderous intent before his opponent had even fired and gone on the offensive. However, his intense concentration hadn't allowed him to do so.

Reaching with his right hand for the part that protruded from his chest, D yanked it forward. Pulling eight inches of gory arrow out, he then fell forward as if in keeping with the speed and angle of that tug.

“Oh, D! D! D!” Menda cried, forgetting her own pain and clinging to him, but her face was heavily tinged with the hollowness of one who knew her own fate.

The wind blew across her grave. Aside from the fallen Vampire Hunter, there was no sign of anyone else there. For her soul wasn't permitted to exist in the ordinary world.

To D's rear—actually, on the road some fifty yards away—a wagon was stopped. In the driver's seat with a twelve-pound crossbow propped against one shoulder was the same personable farmer who'd told D about this place.

“You were just so good-looking I knew you had to be up to something, so I follow you out here and sure enough, you're getting into all kinds of weirdness. Trying to help the evil spirit of that witch after I went to all the trouble of sealing her up in that stone—that's patently offensive. Shooting you in the back might've been unsporting, but heaven's wrath shows no mercy. You can go straight to hell.”

Lowering the crossbow, he took off his hat. There wasn't a single hair on his head. Then he took a folded-up monk's cap from his chest pocket and put it on. The holy man who'd erected Menda's grave was this very same man.

Fixing a cylindrical magazine of arrows to the crossbow, the monk got down from his wagon.

“The ghost of Menda is cursed. She'll never be able to pass on. But if she lingers long in this world, she's sure to cause harm. That's why she was confined to this grave, until you stuck your busy little nose into this!”

Walking over to D, he kicked the Hunter's face as hard as he could. D's lips split and blood went flying.

“Stop it!” Menda cried out, bending over D.

“Are you trying to get smart with me, you vile spirit?” the monk cursed at her. For he could see souls.