Vampire Hunter D Volume 18- Fortress of the Elder God

Other Vampire Hunter D books published by

Dark Horse Books and Digital Manga Publishing

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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

vol. 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight parts one and two

vol. 14: Dark Road parts one and two

vol. 15: Dark Road part three

vol. 16: Tyrant's Stars parts one and two

vol. 17: Tyrant's Stars parts three and four

VAMPIRE HUNTER D VOLUME 18: FORTRESS OF THE ELDER GOD

© Hideyuki Kikuchi 2012. Originally published in Japan in 2001 by ASAHI SONORAMA Co. English translation copyright © 2012 by Dark Horse Books and Digital Manga Publishing.

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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 either are 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.

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Cover art by Yoshitaka Amano

English translation by Kevin Leahy

Book design by Krystal Hennes

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Published by

Dark Horse Books

A division of Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

10956 SE Main Street

Milwaukie, OR 97222

DarkHorse.com

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Digital Manga Publishing

1487 West 178th Street, Suite 300

Gardena, CA 90248

DMPBooks.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Kikuchi, Hideyuki, 1949-

[D--Jajin Toride. English]

Fortress of the elder god / written by Hideyuki Kikuchi ; illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano ; English translation by Kevin Leahy. -- 1st Dark Horse Books ed.

p. cm. -- (Vampire hunter D ; v. 18)

ISBN 978-1-59582-976-4

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

PL832.I37J3513 2012

895.6'36--dc23

2012006292

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First Dark Horse Books edition: September 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed at Lake Book Manufacturing, Inc., Melrose Park, IL, USA

TRAVELERS ON A SKYBUS

CHAPTER 1

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I

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Apparently the waiting room was poorly maintained, and biting
drafts crisscrossed its not particularly spacious interior. You might even say the wind seemed to be showing off. It was better than being outside, however, as the warmth from a battered atomic heater offset the cold, and there was no howl from the wind. If the roar of the engines had been audible, it actually would’ve completed the picture.

There were ten passengers in the waiting room. For an airport situated in a hick town in the eastern Frontier, it certainly had drawn a mixed bunch. There wasn’t even a single example of those whom it served the most—farmers.

A young woman draped in a metallic stole walked over to the window, hair as golden as the fibers swaying as she did so.

“Looks like they’re done loading the baggage. Guess we’ll be boarding pretty soon,” she said. Her remarks weren’t addressed to anyone in particular.

A man with a crew cut who’d been fidgeting with a deck of playing cards and an old man and woman who appeared to be husband and wife looked at her, but all three held their silence. The man with the crew cut was young—undoubtedly under thirty—and he had a crescent-shaped scar running down his right cheek. Judging by the way he’d repeatedly tried to strike up a conversation with the young woman, he seemed pleasant enough, but he was clearly a mobster. The front of his synthetic-leather jacket was open, revealing his gun belt and the broadsword tucked through it.

“Any time now. Being able to get to the Capital in six hours is handy,” the mobster began, and wiping the smile from his face, he ran his eyes over the group until they bored through a trio seated in the opposite corner. “The only drawback is you don’t get to pick who you fly with.”

The object of this frank remark was an individual who remained completely motionless, an opaque black-canvas hood covering his eyes, and a pair of hands bound by handcuffs resting in his lap. Instead, it was the men to either side of him that shot the mobster vicious looks—one of them a big, bearded man with a sheriff’s badge pinned to the chest of his shirt, the other a much younger man wearing the uniform of a police officer from the Capital. The younger one had a metal cylinder strapped to his back, and a gold badge glittered on the chest of his leather coat.

A policeman from the Capital had come to take custody of a criminal captured in the Frontier, and a sheriff had joined him in that task as part of his duty—the situation would be clear to anyone at a glance. There was one other obvious assumption to be made—most of the criminals who wore hoods to protect themselves from the sun weren’t human.

Turning to the elderly couple, the mobster said, “You folks drew the short straw. You’re out enjoying a nice family trip, only to have a suckling spoil it all. Ain’t that right, kid?”

Though he was looking for agreement from the boy who sat next to the elderly couple, the child didn’t nod at this, or move a muscle, or even glance in the mobster’s direction. Apparently he was being transferred from one orphanage to another, and though he’d had a nun with him earlier, at some point she’d disappeared. Since entering the waiting room, the boy hadn’t uttered a single word. Maybe the nun had given up, because she’d held her tongue as well, and a coldness had hung between the two of them that suggested they were glad to be rid of each other. The fox-faced nun seemed to have her own issues, but from the look of the boy’s threadbare navy-blue overcoat, tightly wrapped muffler, drooping head, and nice-looking but pale face, anyone could see why someone would give up on him.

The rest of the people there glanced his way from time to time out of concern for his quasi-autistic condition and because his vacant, half-shut blue eyes would suddenly start gleaming. Most of them thought the same thing: People would pay money to see a boy with beautiful eyes like that. No point putting him on a skybus that flies over the Playground.

Unable to get any validation from the boy, the mobster clucked his tongue. There was one other person present, but he didn’t even look at him, let alone say anything. The man seemed to have something unearthly about him. With a crimson cape and a scarf of the same hue, he seemed to be ablaze. He had a hard face, like sculpted bronze, and despite his wardrobe he didn’t seem the frivolous type. When he’d entered the waiting room, he hadn’t taken one of the many empty seats; rather, he stood by the door, his left hand resting lightly on the hilt of his longsword. One didn’t need to see that his blade was longer and heavier than those usually used for self-defense to know that he was a combat professional—he carried himself like a warrior. The strangest thing about him was the quiver he had on his back—it was stuffed full of arrows, but he didn’t have a bow. Ordinarily, everyone else would’ve eyed him with suspicion, but it was completely the opposite. Whenever the elderly couple looked at him, they exchanged looks of relief and nodded to each other. Because there was a suckling there.

“Here comes the pilot!” the woman said, and this time everyone—except the warrior—looked out the window.

From the fat, cigar-shaped craft parked on the distant runway, a man in a flight suit was approaching. The pilot looked at his wristwatch as he told them, “Get onboard, please. Well, I’ll be damned. We’re only thirty minutes behind schedule.”

Before the passengers headed out, their eyes focused on the hooded man in handcuffs. However, when the sheriff tugged on the thin line attached to those cuffs, the suckling got up without any resistance and proceeded outside where only wintry sunlight and bare trees waited, with one lawman before him and the other behind.

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To either side of the cramped central aisle there were ten rows of seats, three to a row. First aboard, the woman took an aisle seat in the foremost row, and was sipping the contents of a small liquor bottle when along came the same mobster from earlier.