Vampire Hunter D (24 page)

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“Let us out of here, damn you! Let us out!”

“If you don’t let my brother out, I swear I’m gonna come looking for you every night once the Nobility make me one of their own!”

Wham!

Slamming the door shut with all his might and cutting off further bluster from the Langs, the man returned to his cramped office. Moments earlier, the mayor and other important members of the community had headed home. Here in the asylum, with no furniture save a battered desk and chair, their buzz still seemed to hang in the air.

“Those freaking kids. I figured at least one of ’em would be crying and pleading, but both of ’em go and threaten a grown man.”

As he grumbled to himself, the man pulled out the wooden chair and took his post in front of the steel door that separated the office from the lock-up area otherwise known as the cages. There were ten individual cells in the cages, each surrounded by bars of super-high-density steel. They’d been built to be a comfortable size, and Doris and Dan had been locked up together. Originally, a family had kindly volunteered to look after Dan while Doris was confined, since the boy wasn’t involved in this, but Dan had fought like a tiger and said he’d die without his sister. There was also a very good chance that, if left to his own devices, he’d have tried to spring Doris, which is how the current arrangement had been reached.

Victims of the Nobility were confined here regardless of the degree of their affliction; if the Noble responsible was destroyed then the curse on them would be lifted and all would be well. If not, the standard operating procedure was to release the victim after a given period and chase them out of town.

That “given period” was the number of days until the frustrated Noble attacked someone else, but this varied from village to village. In Ransylva it was approximately three weeks. The reason it was so long was because, based on past experience, it took an average of three attacks before the Count was done draining his victim, and there was usually an interval of three to five days between attacks.

Of course, because every village could expect their asylum to be stormed by the Nobility during the victim’s confinement, for the most part the asylums were guarded by well-armed men confident in their fighting abilities. Because they’d have the Nobility to contend with, no village ever skimped on buying armaments for the asylum. In fact, in addition to the five fully automated, steel-spear launchers and the ten remote-controlled catapults surrounding this thirty-foot-long, half-cylinder building, there were also three laser cannons to neutralize the vehicles of the Nobility, and a pair of flame-throwers from the Capital. The villagers wanted an electromagnetic barrier as well, but the Capital’s stores were running low, and they were hard to come by even for those willing to pay black-market prices.

The man guarding the cages was a member of the mob that stormed Doris’ farm. The reason the mayor left only one man on watch was because he’d decided that, after sucking the blood from three people tonight already, the Count wouldn’t be in quite such a hurry to attack Doris. But if it came to that, the guard could wake up the whole village with a single siren, and the weapons outside could be operated from the control panel on his desk. Most importantly, in four more hours the eastern sky would be growing light. The man wasn’t concerned.

Just as he was starting to doze off, there was a rap at the door. The man raced over to the video panel and struck a single key. Greco’s face showed on a small video monitor inside the asylum. “What do you want?” the man said to the intercom operating through the wall.

“Be a pal and open up. I came to see Doris.”

“No way. Your father told me specifically not to let you in.”

“Come on, don’t be a jerk. You must know how crazy I am about Doris, right? This is just between you and me, but when day breaks they’re gonna bring her up to old fang-face’s place on orders from my father. Meaning tonight’s my last chance to see the woman I love. And, as you can see, you stand to get a little something for your trouble.” Greco pulled a few gold coins out of his pocket and waved them in front of the camera. They weren’t the new dalas currency the revolutionary government started issuing five years ago. These were the “aristocrat coins” the Nobility had used. When the revolutionaries finally managed to take power, they destroyed vast quantities of these coins in order to get their new government’s economic policies off to a good start. One of them was worth at least a thousand dalas on the black market. That was enough to live off for half a year out on the Frontier.

After staring at the shiny gold for quite some time, the man hit a button without a word. The electronic lock on the door was disengaged, the handle spun around, and in sauntered Greco.

“Thanks, buddy. Here you go!”

Three gold coins clattered down on the desk. Forgetting to shut the door, the man snatched up one of the coins and busily bounced his gaze back and forth between it and Greco’s face before eventually nodding with satisfaction. As he dropped all three into his shirt pocket he said, “I suppose it’ll be all right—but you’ve only got three minutes to see her.”

“C’mon, make it five.”

“Four.”

“Okay—you drive a hard bargain.”

The man shrugged his shoulders, and then turned toward the door to the cages and reached for the key ring on his belt. The keys jingled together as he chose one and fit it into the lock. It wouldn’t do to have this door opening automatically.

“Say—” As the man turned around again, his eye caught Greco’s strangely bloodless countenance, and a flash of white light headed right for his own chest.

Killed instantly by a stab to the heart, the man’s body was laid out at one side of the room, and then Greco turned the key still jammed in the lock, opened the door, and went into the cages. His knife was already back in the case on his belt.

“Greco!”

There were cages to either side of the narrow corridor, and Doris’ cry came from the first one on the left. “You bastard, you come here to get your block knocked off or something?”

“Shut up.”

Doris fell silent. She got a bad feeling from Greco’s expression, which was more foreboding then she’d ever seen it.
What the hell’s he up to?

“I’ll get you right out of there. You’re gonna run away with me.”

Beyond the iron bars, the Lang children looked at each other. In a low voice, Doris said, “Don’t tell me you ... you didn’t seriously kill Price ...”

“Oh, I killed him all right. And he’s not the only one. My father got his, too. That’s what he gets for trying to whip the shit out of me when I came home. The old bastard. I help make his job easier, and that’s how the ingrate repays me. But that don’t matter now. At any rate, I’ve got to get out of town tonight. Are you with me?” His eyes had an animalistic gleam to them, but his voice was like molasses.

The propriety of his actions aside, some might even go so far as to say the devotion he showed to the woman he loved was admirable, but Doris said flatly, “Sorry. I’d rather go up to the Count’s castle than run off with you.”

“What the hell do you mean? ...”

Tears sparkled in the girl’s eyes. Tears of hatred. “You teamed up with that butcher and ... and killed him of all people ... Just you wait. I don’t care what happens to me, I’m personally gonna see to it you get sent to hell.”

She’d always been strong willed, but seeing in those beautiful eyes of hers a fundamentally different and desolate light, Greco abandoned all his schemes and dreams. “So that’s how it is? You’re saying you’d prefer the Nobility to me?”

When he looked up, all emotion had drained from his face, but the gleam in his eyes was unusually strong.

“If that’s the way it’s got to be, I guess when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go—and you’re about to go join that punk in the hereafter.” Taking a step back, he drew the ten-banger from his hip.

Dan shouted, “Sis!” and grabbed onto Doris’ neck for dear life while she tried to hide the boy behind her back.

“You’re out of your mind, Greco!”

“Say what you like. But I’d rather do this than have any other man take you—vampire or otherwise. You and that smart-mouthed little squirt get to check out of this life together.”

“Stop!”

That Doris’ cry had been to beg for her own life was the last coherent thought to go through Greco’s mind. Someone behind him grabbed the hand with the ten-banger by the wrist. Though whoever it was was just barely touching him, his finger lost the strength to finish pulling the trigger. An unearthly chill spread from his wrist to the rest of his body. Breath with the sweet scent of death tickled his nose, and frosty, dark words struck his earlobe.

“Better you had killed me when you had the chance.” Larmica’s pale face eclipsed the nape of Greco’s swarthy neck.

Frozen in horror, Doris and Dan watched as Greco’s face grew paler and paler, like he was disappearing into a fog. Seconds later, the young lady in the black dress pulled away from the man and approached their cage. With a thread of blood running from the pale corner of her mouth, this beauty that seemed to sparkle in the darkness could be likened to nothing save a vengeful wraith. Perhaps her thirst wasn’t sated yet, for a glance from her bright red eyes shook Doris and Dan to the bottom of their souls.

An expression of unfathomable terror plastered on its face, Greco’s body fell to the floor, an empty husk drained of the very last drop of blood.

“What do you—”

The tremble in Doris voice was apparent, but Larmica simply urged, “Go.” The hue of madness had left her eyes and, quite to the contrary, her expression now seemed tinged with sorrow.

“Huh?”

“Make good your escape. Father will be coming soon. And when he does, I shan’t be able to do any more.”

“But ... we can’t get out of here. Get us the keys, please,” Dan said, grabbing the bars. His flexible, eight-year-old mind had already adjusted to this vampiress being their ally.

She seized the steel bars with dainty hands that looked like they’d break in a strong wind. What strength the vampires possessed! With one good pull, the bars of super-high-density steel tore free of the ceiling and floor, sending screws shooting in all directions.

“Unbelievable ... ”

Still trying to keep the wide-eyed Dan behind her, Doris asked Larmica, “You’re serious—you really want us to get away, don’t you? But why are you helping us?”

A shade of sorrow colored Larmica’s moonflower of a face when she turned around.

“
He
died ... but he defended you right to the very end. It would sadden him to see you fall into Father’s hands. I have no desire to cause the dead any more sorrow ... ”

As Dan took her hand and tugged her out to the corridor, Doris realized this fearsome young woman harbored the same feeling as herself.

“You ... you felt something for him ... ”

“Go—make haste.”

The three went into the office.

A figure in black stood in the center of the room.

“Father!” Larmica cried out in terror.

..

“What the hell, still nothing?!” the countenanced carbuncle spat in disgust, its face pressed to D’s chest. “A sword or spear wound wouldn’t have been so bad, but after taking a wooden stake, his little ticker ain’t listening to me. Beat. Just give me one good thump—c’mon and beat already.”

Making a fist of the hand it occupied, it rose to strike D’s chest as hard as it could, but stopped in midair.

Something was coagulating in the night sky.

A host of white, semi-transparent membranes swirled above the house, then started to come together to form a single mass. Once it had drawn itself together, the glowing cloud swooped down toward the farm, oddly shaped organs becoming visible through its partially transparent body. This was another of the artificial monstrosities spawned by the Nobility—a night cloud. A life-form able to reform itself from single cell organisms, by day the cloud remained in the freezing extremes of the stratosphere, and at night it came back down to earth in scattered form to hunt for prey.

Frighteningly enough, these damned things were dangerous carnivores that would form a single mass when they found a victim, enveloping their prey from all sides to digest and absorb it. They posed a major threat to lost children and inexperienced travelers, and, along with dimension-ripping beasts, they caused a great many people to go inexplicably missing. The electromagnetic barrier had been a godsend in that it alone kept them from wreaking havoc on Doris’ farm.

At one point the cloud came down about fifteen feet above D’s head, but it seemed to catch wind of something and drifted off to one side, toward the barn where the animals were stabled. Only pausing before the doors for a heartbeat, it spread itself flat as a sheet and easily slipped through a gap between the wall and the doors. The shrill cries of cattle reverberated, the walls shook two or three times, and all too soon it was silent again.

“Those things eat like pigs. It’ll be back soon. So get busy beating already, you lousy, good-for-nothing heart!” The complaining fist beat wildly against D’s chest and sucked in air. The body didn’t move in the slightest. “C’mon, you bastard!”

If there’d been anyone there to see the bizarre but desperate one-man show that went on for a few minutes more, they most likely would’ve laughed out loud.

And then …

The barn doors bowed out from the inside and splintered, flying everywhere. A second later, an unspeakably grotesque thing appeared in the moonlight. Within the semi-translucent cloud mass was a cow, writhing in agony as it dissolved! Its hide split, red meat melted, and the exposed bone slowly wasted away like popping soap bubbles. As flesh and blood mixed in a narrow tube that seemed to be an esophagus of sorts, the liquid swirled around and the cloud began glowing brighter than ever. It was feeding. For a few seconds the corpulent mass wriggled at the entrance to the barn and then, perhaps sensing other prey, it began to drag itself toward D. Thanks to the weight of the half-devoured cow, it was moving in slow motion.