“I kinda get the feeling I know why she called you here,” Nan said. Even she was startled by how smoothly the words came out. “Mind if I tell you?”
“Go ahead.”
“Because you don’t have any connection to this village or our world. I don’t know why that’d be important, I just think it’s the reason she chose you. Because you’re someone who won’t be moved by the joy or grief Sybille feels while she sleeps, or by the hopes and despairs of our world. You come, you go. That’s the kind of person you are.”
Once she finished speaking, she had the feeling it hadn’t been a nice thing to say, but D didn’t seem to mind in the least; he just kept staring straight ahead. As she gazed at his perfect profile, Nan felt a fire she’d never really known before welling up in her heart. While she was fully aware he wasn’t the kind of person who got involved with others, that made her feel all the more like she wanted him to be someone special. And she wanted him to feel the same way about her. She’d seen D more than anyone else in the village had, after all. This thought rose from the deepest reaches of Nan’s psyche, easily weaving its way through the safeguards of rationality before it moved the girl’s hand. Another thought, a different thought.
The girl’s fingers touched D’s shoulder. Somewhere inside her, an image of Kane may have remained, but it swiftly vanished. “D,” Nan said to him, “this is probably the last time I’ll ever see you.”
She had no proof of that, but it just felt so incredibly true. Nan quietly brought her cheek to rest on a powerful shoulder that spoke volumes about how solid he was. It was the only thing she could do, even though she’d seen his face in her dreams three nights more than the rest of the villagers.
D didn’t say a thing. At least Kane would’ve hugged her to his chest and stroked her hair.
“D,” Nan said, not expecting anything, but still wanting something nonetheless. Once more she called his name, but it was then that she was pushed away, and the Hunter rose with such speed he whipped up a black wind.
“Stand back,” was all he said. Ringing cruelly as the crack of a whip, the words drifted off into the forest as Nan and D both turned their gaze in the same direction.
“Papa—” the girl cried out reflexively when she saw what was clearly her father at the entrance to the vacant lot. And it wasn’t just him. “Mama, and Kane, too?!”
Perhaps the three figures had heard her voice, because they looked at each other and hastened closer.
“Nan, what in blazes are you doing in a place like this?” her father shouted, but the girl averted her face from his admonishment.
“We looked in on your bed and found you gone. And Kane was so worried, he came along, too,” Nan’s mother said, driving the girl’s spirits still lower.
“I suppose you’re gonna tell us you didn’t lure her out here, eh?” Kane spat, his fiery words prompting all to turn in his direction.
D was in front of the boy. The Hunter stood a head taller than him. Though the other man was like a massive wall before him, Nan’s boyfriend focused every bit of defiance he could muster on the Hunter.
“Kane, he had nothing to do with it,” Nan protested. “I came up here on my own, I’ll have you know. I couldn’t get to sleep.”
“Now, you listen to me,” the boy said, thrusting a trembling finger at D. “Me and Nan are gonna get married one of these days. I don’t take kindly to some lousy wanderer coming in and dirtying her up.”
“Kane, quit it. I don’t recall promising you any such thing.”
“Hush, Nan,” her mother said in an attempt to stop her. “At any rate, if nothing’s happened, then we’re fine. C’mon, let’s go home.”
“And I’ll thank you not to come nosing around these parts again,” the girl’s father said as he glared at D.
“I just can’t walk away,” Kane said, shaking his head. “Someone takes my girl out in the middle of the night, and you think I’m gonna just let that go? Duel me!”
Nan felt like she’d been paralyzed. “What did you say?!” she shouted. “Stop it, Kane!” But it was the next words she heard that made her hair stand on end.
“Fine. Let’s do it,” D replied.
Dumbfounded, Nan turned to her father. Stern as ever, his expression plastered a look of ghastly terror to his daughter’s face. “Papa?!” she exclaimed.
“It’s no use. Come with me,” Nan’s mother said, grabbing hold of the girl’s shoulders and dragging her back. Even her mother was going along with this . . .
She watched as her father said, “Here,” and handed Kane an ax. Just as he took it, Kane backed away a few steps, and Nan’s father stepped back, too. D stood still. Completely forgetting to put up any kind of struggle against her mother, Nan was rooted to the spot. What was happening was so hard to believe that she thought it must be a nightmare. At that moment, there was a weirdly colored explosion of light inside her head.
This is a nightmare. A dream . . . I’m—
A weird cry brought the girl’s eyes around in D’s direction. Kane had brought his ax down. It whined through the air. Though it didn’t look like he’d done anything at all, D had smoothly moved over to the grass. The air was crushed with a heavy
whoosh!
The very instant a horizontal flash seemed to be swallowed by the Hunter’s black torso, a streak of silver shot up from below, causing Kane’s hand and the ax it gripped to vanish. Nan held her breath. D watched silently as Kane collapsed backward with a cry like a beast. Behind the Hunter, another figure was drawing closer.
“Papa?!” the girl exclaimed, but her cry wasn’t as fast as the sword that pierced her father’s chest as he was about to pounce. Slumping across D’s back, the girl’s father let the machete he’d hidden fall from his hand, and a cry of pain spilled from his mouth. By the time he hit the ground, he was already dead.
“Papa! How could you do such a thing?!”
Flicking the gore from his blade with a single shake, D headed for his horse without saying a word. “I don’t want to kill, but I can’t die just yet, either,” he finally said. And then his words were all that remained in the night air.
As Nan stood there frozen in her mother’s arms, her brain incapable of forming even a single thought, she heard the sound of dwindling hoofbeats ringing in her ear.
.
III
.
So, what are you gonna do?” D’s left hand asked with laughter in its voice as the Hunter galloped for the edge of the village. “Some want you to wake her up, and some don’t—and both sides are pretty damn serious about it. Hell, both sides are trying to settle the battle themselves. To be destroyed, or not be destroyed? You’re the man of destiny for them. What kind of star were you born under?”
“I’m leaving the village,” D said as they tore through the blue darkness ahead of them.
“It’s no use. This is a dream world. You can’t leave unless the dreamer lets you.”
“Take in the wind,” the Hunter said. His words were as hard as the slap of a gale.
Almost immediately, his left hand went out by his side as if to challenge the winds buffeting him, and his palm inhaled with an incredible whistling sound.
“We’ll make it out at this rate,” the Hunter said, but it wasn’t clear if the remark was directed at his left hand or himself. D’s feet struck his mount’s flanks, and the creature galloped on madly.
D turned to the right suddenly and caught sight of a black shape racing right with him along the fence. It was the black panther.
The instant D saw Duncan sitting there on the beast, a flash flew from the Hunter’s right hand and his reins sailed through the air.
The rough wooden needles sank into Duncan with fierce accuracy. But a heartbeat later, the panther’s charging body split into three parts, all of which leapt straight for D. As they came down at him, the fangs and claws grew like silver serpents. All of them were deflected with a beautiful ring, and, as they hung in the air helpless and unprepared for another engagement, the Hunter’s weapon once again flashed out. This time, the three pieces were bisected by a horizontal slash, but by the time the bloody mist shot out, D had already galloped ahead another forty feet. Behind him, the forelegs and hind legs gave chase—though they were now reduced to mere chunks of flesh. The distance grew swiftly between him and the remnants.
Ahead of him, a stand of high trees was visible. D was at the edge of the village. Perhaps he had a chance of escaping after all.
His left hand reached out before him. A human face formed on its palm—and the lips on that face pursed. The wind howled. Before, it had inhaled, but now it exhaled.
It wasn’t clear exactly what kind of infernal manipulations his palm might’ve done to the air in the interim, but the scenery ahead of it began to quiver like mist. Like a thin sheet of paper shredding in the face of a hurricane, the fence and the forest beyond grew hazy. Behind them, another scene came into view—though there was no way to gauge the distance to it. A vague, phantasmal grove of trees and a dawn sky—that had to be the real world out there.
His horse picked up speed. Just before the fence, its four hooves left the ground in a mighty leap. Headlong, it rushed at a scene that was like a double exposure in some gorgeous, mesmerizing film. But the beast floundered in midair.
Leaving his horse as it dropped like a stone, D sailed through the air, then came back to earth. His sword raced out, deflecting a knife flying at him.
“Just as I expected. When I go after you head on, I ain’t much of a threat.”
D threw his gaze in the direction of the voice, having determined that the knife had come from the huge form on horseback lurking behind the trees. It was none other than one of the infamous Bio Brothers—Harold B.
“And that’s exactly why I’m gonna take you on from every which way—Look!” With these words, Harold’s body bent backward, and a false image pulled free from him.
A wooden needle shot out, passing in vain through the original body before imbedding itself in a tree behind it.
The false image grinned at the Hunter. Another transparent image flew to the fore. But the one that’d created it didn’t fade, and the newer image also went on to create another false image, as did the one it made, and the one after that—and in the space of a few seconds, the area around D was filled by countless images of Harold. That wouldn’t have been a problem if it was clear which one of them was real, but there was no sign of the true Harold. Even D, with his incredibly acute senses, found all the false images to be exactly like the real thing.
“This time, we’ll be using these,” dozens of mounted Harold images declared in unison, showing the weapons they had in their right hands: rough wooden stakes. “I hear these things work just dandy on dhampirs, too. And just so you know, we’re all real. If there’re a hundred of us, we’ll drive a hundred stakes into you. Except we’re gonna do it a little differently. Like this!”
Streaks of white light flew from the right hands of a few of them. As the whirling stakes rained down on him from horseback, D became a black wind and dashed into action.
Perhaps the images of Harold in the foremost ring knew what they were doing as they called out to attack in low voices, each with a stake in one hand. The question remained: what would happen when the lone beautiful figure collided with the countless black ones?
If Harold’s plan had a single miscalculation, it was from experience rather than the lack of it—and from conjectures he’d made about D’s speed and strength with a sword based on their previous battle. None of the wooden stakes the false images brought down met anything but air. Every time the black shape moved between them like a mystic bird with the hem of his coat flashing out around him, countless Harold images were cut in half, merging with the air as they vanished.
Less than twenty seconds later, D stood motionless and alone on the clear, moonlit ground. “What are you going to do? If you retreat now, then there was no point calling you at all,” the Hunter said in a low voice.
There was no answer for him, only a cold wind blowing by.
D’s gaze dropped to the corpse of his horse lying there on the ground. A knife was sunk deep into its neck. “Can we make it out without any acceleration?” he asked.
“Not on your life,” his left hand replied. “At times like this, what you need is for someone to just plunk you down a brand new horse right here and now. You know, as far as dreams go, this one ain’t very accommodating.”
Saying nothing, D shook the gore from his blade and returned it to the sheath on his back.
It was a second later that he did an about-face. Stopping an unseen attack with a metallic
clang!
and a shower of sparks, the Hunter’s blade slashed into a certain spot in the sky with overwhelming power. The unmistakable sound of flesh being rent resounded, groans of someone in their death throes rang out—and with these sounds, the badly battered form of Harold B. came into focus right in front of D.
“Don’t be thinking . . . you’re safe now . . . This . . . ain’t your world . . .”
As Harold finally finished getting the words out, blood spilled from his mouth and he fell flat on his face. The only reason he’d been able to wound D earlier was because the Hunter had been distracted by the hospital director and his machine.
“That was a lot easier than expected. So, what do we do now?”
Not even bothering to glance at Harold, D replied to his left hand’s question, “Nothing we can do but wait, even though the very shadows are our enemies here.”
“Yeah, that’s all well and good, but you can’t just stand around in one spot either. Well, are you gonna get walking or what?”
Even before his hand finished speaking, D had already started walking toward the fence. It was only a little over six feet high, but it was three layers thick. Lightly kicking off the ground, D landed easily on the other side of the fence. But he didn’t start walking right away.
There was no road on the other side of the fence. There wasn’t even a forest. The edge of the grove was off in the distance now, and before him the ground was cleared of trees, but well covered with gravestones—round ones and square ones, large and small. It was a cemetery. If this was to be the final battle, then this truly would be a fitting place for it. This place that Nobles and humans had once shared as friends was now desolate and decaying, and a stifling miasma shrouded the area, despite the fact that it was now night.