Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (28 page)

It was Mia. The fake D had jumped down three hundred feet with her under one arm, and she'd come through without a scrape.

“There's something wrong with the reactor!” she continued.

“What?” the fake D exclaimed as he turned to look, but the sword he had leveled at D's chest didn't move in the slightest.

D also remained motionless. For the person pointing that sword at him was himself.

The gently swaying movements of the reactor were growing more violent.

“Well, I'll be—the core's going out of control!” the fake said. “You know, I thought something was wrong when I was up top earlier.”

“And you're just going to let that happen?”

“Don't be ridiculous. If this thing blows, it'll leave a crater with a seven-hundred-mile radius and half the Frontier won't be fit for man or beast. Worse yet, it'd mean the end of us. I'm not so sure we could regenerate from being reduced to our constituent atoms. But not to worry. After all, I know how to control the reactor. There's one other person who can do it, too, but his fate depends on the question I just asked him. So, how about it?”

D replied, “Go to the Capital alone.”

The fake D squinted and smiled sadly. “Really? That's how it's gonna be, eh? Then I'll be the only one left to control the reactor, I guess.”

A second after he turned away with a hint of indignation, his face and body remained still—and his right arm alone limned an arc. As the fake's blade seared through the air, D backed away, dodging it by the proverbial hair's breadth. Amazingly enough, he'd only had to take a single step back to do so.

“I'm sure you already know this, but I was just sizing you up,” the fake D said, grinning as he remained poised with his sword still fully extended.

Mia drew a ragged breath. She'd finally noticed what had happened. The fake D had been quick with his sword, and D's movement had been still quicker. But the attack hadn't been in earnest.

“He vanished quickly when you saw him, but with me he stayed and talked awhile. He told me all kinds of things. How he controlled the Nobility and the humans, and what he was able to get out of that.”

“And then you started to want that?”

“Yeah, I guess I did. What's wrong with that? I have a right to it. So do you, but you turned it down.”

“What did he promise you?”

“Nothing. He didn't even say I could succeed him. Nor did he tell me to cut you down. These are all things I decided to do on my own.”

“Stop it!” Mia shouted. “Stop it, both of you. You said you're the same, didn't you? It'd be like killing yourself!”

“There's no way around it,” the fake D replied, every inch of his body radiating a murderous intent that made Mia flinch. “Things have gone too far, and both of us being one and the same has become a problem. In the end, it's every man for himself.”

D seized on that perfectly, saying, “You're human, then?”

The fake D's expression changed in a flash, and he howled with rage as he swung his blade. Although the Hunter ducked down to avoid it, the sword reversed and made a second stroke from an unbelievable angle that sent fresh blood gushing from D's left shoulder. D covered the wound as he backed away, while above him a shape rose like a black and ominous bird.

“Have at you!”

Confident of absolute victory, the fake brought his blade down with the crushing force of an angry wave.

D was still fifteen feet from the sword on the floor—he'd never make it in time.

Just then, vermilion spattered the fake D's face. Fresh blood had flown from the wound on D's left shoulder. Thanks to this, the Hunter would undoubtedly be using his right hand to cover the wound.

“What?” the fake D groaned hopelessly, amazement swimming in his eyes because the edge of his weapon had met nothing when coming down to split the Hunter like a piece of firewood, but a diagonal flash of silver shot up at his torso from below.

Cut open right between the floating ribs all the way to the spinal column, the fake D opened his eyes. In a world of vermilion, he saw D—who had delivered the one-handed stroke—and the sword in his right hand. Down at the Hunter's feet, the black scabbard stuck up at an angle. The line binding the blade to the sheath had been undone and coiled up again, and the end of the sheath was gripped by D's severed left hand.

“I didn't know . . . it could walk,” the fake D said, bright blood spilling from his mouth. “Or that it'd be able . . . to untie that string. So, this thing's the difference . . . between me and me?”

As he said that, the sword he held in his right hand flashed toward D's waist, but he no longer had any strength or speed, and D bounded to deliver a straight vertical slash that split the fake's skull all the way down to his chin.

D said nothing as he looked down at himself lying in a bloody mist. It was himself. Really, truly himself.

“Well made . . . Poorly made . . . Guess there was no way . . . around it,” the fake D said, his bloodied lips trembling. “But he really did . . . want to make . . . equal love . . . his motto . . . In the end . . . was it you . . . he loved? Whatever you do . . . don't wind up . . . like me. Have the life . . . I . . . couldn't . . .”

The fake D expired.

“Why do this?” the left hand said, but no one replied to him.

Picking his left arm up off the floor, D reattached it to his elbow, and then walked over to the sway reactor.

“Well, all I can tell you is what I think happened,” the left hand muttered, not speaking to anyone in particular. “A shift in the earth's crust or something set this thing back in motion down in that subterranean facility.”

The thing to which he referred was the sway reactor.

“And that's when the other you woke up. But that was a mistake. Both he and the facility had been sealed away. And then he took notice. Now this is just my theory—I have to wonder if the complete devastation back in that facility wasn't something he himself had done. It wasn't that he was afraid someone would make use of the facility, or they got the results they were looking for and pulled out, or anything warm and fuzzy like that. I think he cursed the experiments he'd conducted there. And that's why he noticed before anyone else that the facility and your other half were active again, and he set things in motion to destroy them. It could be that the Noble who got you headed to Muma in the first place was sent by him.”

“So I could take care of everything? Dispose of his failure?”

D entered the reactor's control compartment. As he adjusted its controls, Mia stood watching him.

“Now this reactor will never work again. I've sent along just enough energy so the underground facility will break down on its own. Go back to the village and tell them everything's safe again.”

“Go with me,” Mia said, running toward him.

Her body tumbled forward. D glimpsed the blue line jutting from her pale throat.

As soon as the girl's body hit the floor, a blue mist billowed toward D. A split second before it could sweep over the Hunter his sword flashed out, bisecting the blue cloud, but a new wave of hair wrapped around both his body and his blade.

“Those who learn the secret of Muma must die.”

Needless to say, it was Yuma who appeared from the depths of the darkness.

“While you were laying waste to the rejects where I was created, I was underground being supercharged by a device the great one built. Even you can't cut this hair.”

As he approached, he pulled a hair from the top of his head and brought it to his lips.

“I'll run you right through the heart with one breath. Farewell.”

“Goodbye,” said a voice that came from where Mia had fallen. He'd walked right past her.

As Yuma spun around for a look, a burning-hot thrust took him through the chest and out through the back, while above the reeling assassin, D had leapt up and was bringing his sword down. Even wrapped in blue hair, it was easy enough for the blade to split Yuma lengthwise.

Not even watching the assassin fall, D walked over to where Mia stood deathly still. One after another the hairs around him came free. With Yuma's death, the assassin's hair had lost its unholy power.

“You have my thanks.”

“Don't mention it,” Mia said, shaking her head. “I can't very well go back to the village like this, can I? But you knew that, didn't you?”

Mia pointed to the needle-like hair in her throat with the dagger sheath she held. Two of the teeth that poked from her lips came to sharp points.

“Was it him?”

She nodded in response to D's question. “I was given the task of protecting whichever of the two of you survived. But I have the feeling the great one knew it'd be you. He loves you, doesn't he?”

Mia hid her mouth behind her hand. She'd smiled.

“Okay, on your way now,” she told him.

“What about you?”

“I'll stay here,” the girl replied. “I wanted to go with you, but not with these fangs. If you can, set Kuentz right again. Goodbye. Soon, this will turn back into that mountain chain. Farewell, D. I'm glad I met you. And the other you, too.”

Tears glistened in Mia's eyes.

In that murky world, they remained motionless as a pair of statues, simply staring at each other.

-

The morning sun colored the jagged horizon. No one who saw that grand collection of peaks would've ever thought they were an enormous facility. From the saddle of his cyborg horse D looked back at the mountain range.

“That was probably your home, you know,” the hoarse voice
remarked, but the Hunter's gorgeous countenance didn't betray a hint of emotion. “But even now, we don't know anything. So, shall we go?”

D wheeled his mount around.

“Hey, that's not the way to—” the hoarse voice began to protest, but it quickly added, “Oh, I get it.”

It had realized that was the way to the village where Mia's mother lived.

-

END

-

T
he setting of the Vampire Hunter D series sprang from my greatest love—movies. The wild Frontier through which D wanders isn't Transylvania, but rather the Great Plains of American westerns. The sheriffs of my westerns are the lawmen, the houses are connected by elevated plank sidewalks, and the towns' residents wear swords on their hips instead of guns. However, there is no Castle Dracula out on the Great Plains. Vampire Hunter D is a direct descendant of Hammer Films' horror movies, so the European castles, towns, and villages depicted in those films were incorporated into the backdrop of the D series.

I didn't intend to make D's story a horror tale set in the future. Well, at its core, the story isn't far from horror, but at that time, horror wasn't the kind of product to pull in readers. The target audience of the Asahi Sonorama Library line was teenagers. But the young have the instinctive ability to evade the true fear that horror brings. At the same time, they're interested in the future and the technology that will accompany it. The only field of literature to incorporate that is science fiction. In this manner, the Vampire Hunter D series became the half-breed child of horror and science fiction. Just as its protagonist is himself a half-breed.

The character of D came from a compilation of all the things that are commonly considered virtues in a man: he's taciturn and strong, gentle beneath a cold exterior, handsome, and tall, plus he looks good in black. However, on further consideration, that doesn't seem like the sort of man who'd be very good company, does it? As far as fashion was concerned, I decided to have him in a double-breasted, long coat with high boots and long gloves. I never considered giving him a cape. Putting someone with vampire blood into a black cape would be too easy. Too expected. Therefore I had him in a coat, although in that respect he's like the handsome hero of one of my other series, Setsura Aki from “Makai Toshi.” Though lacking a longsword, a wide-brimmed traveler's hat, and a cyborg horse, the man-searcher armed with a mysterious titanium wire that can slice through steel certainly has the same superhuman blood in his veins that D does. However, as readers are no doubt aware, D can't be mentioned without a black cape springing to mind. This is due to the power of Yoshitaka Amano's brush. The “coat” in the text was forever altered by one of Mr. Amano's cover illustrations. The strength of pictures is incredible. Incidentally, the most faithful illustration Mr. Amano has done is the cover to the fourth book,
Tale of the Dead Town
.

Thanks to the film
Twilight
being a big hit, the live-action version of Vampire Hunter D that's been stalled for some time looks like it's starting to move forward at last. As the creator of the series, my curiosity is boundless as to just how D will strike readers when he appears before them as a real actor and how those same readers will greet him.
Twin-Shadowed Knight
is a tale that was born from the simple speculation of what it'd be like if there were two such Ds. I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it.

-

Hideyuki Kikuchi

May 23, 2009

while watching Count Dracula