D doubled over, and then fell to his knees. A flame danced atop the stick of Time-Bewitching Incense in Rei-Ginsei’s right hand. He’d deceived D. In the blink of an eye, a shrike blade was whizzing through the air.
But the reason he’d defeated D back at the farm was because he had the muscle-amplifying components of the combat suit aiding him. His face twisted with agony, D knocked the shrike-blade out of the air and leapt.
It was like a complete reenactment of their duel at the ruins. What was different was that Rei-Ginsei didn’t dodge, but left his head wide open for the silvery flash. He imagined D would be aiming for his limbs. However, the instant he realized that the blade coming down at him was unmistakably aimed at his head, he let the extra-dimensional gateway within his body open and didn’t try to run.
D’s forehead split, but it was just a thin layer of skin. An instant later, bright red blood gushed from Rei-Ginsei’s abdomen. The dashing young man’s expression was one of stupefaction as he gazed at the blade protruding from his belly…the same blade that was supposed to split D’s head in two. The Vampire Hunter had swung his sword overhead and only cut the outermost layer of skin on Rei-Ginsei’s brow, then changed his grip on his sword in midair, and drove it right through his own stomach. Already linked by the extra-dimensional passageway, when the blade went into D’s body it materialized in Rei-Ginsei’s belly instead. Aside from his ability to twist and link points in space, Rei-Ginsei was otherwise a normal human who couldn’t survive that sort of punishment. This was the sort of absurd method of killing only a dhampir like D would be capable of.
“Dan, put that candle out for me.”
As he listened to the boy dash into action, Rei-Ginsei thudded to the ground. The incense left his hand, and his bright blood stained the earth.
“Hey, don’t you keel over yet. Do at least one good thing before your miserable life ends,” Dan said, stomping the incense out. A chill came over him as he watched the blade poking from the abdomen of the fallen Rei-Ginsei slide smoothly back into his body. D was pulling his own sword out of himself.
“And what is that ... one good thing?” asked Rei-Ginsei.
“Tell me where my sister’s at.”
“I don’t know ... Search to your heart’s contentment ... By now, the Count has made her his bride ... ” A clot of blood spilled from his mouth, and the last spasms of impending death twisted his gorgeous countenance. “If only I had been made one of the Nobility ... ” And then his head dropped to one side.
“He bit it, the damn jerk,” Dan said with sorrow. “If he’d actually acted good instead of just looking good he might’ve lived a nice, long time ... ”
“That’s right,” D said, breathing heavily. The effects of the Time-Bewitching Incense were gone the instant it was extinguished. The reason he looked to be in such pain was the wound to his stomach.
“Where do you think they’ve got my sister? This place is so huge, I don’t even know where to begin to look.” Dan was on the verge of tears, but D tapped him on the shoulder.
“You’re forgetting that I’m a Vampire Hunter. Come with me.”
..
The two of them went straight down to the subterranean chamber. Dan watched in wonder as shut doors flew open as soon as D approached. Nothing could stop them. From time to time, they passed expressionless people who seemed to be servants and ladies-in-waiting, but none of them so much as attempted to look at them before disappearing into the darkness.
“Robots, I guess,” Dan said.
“Leaders of a false life—this castle flickers in the light of destruction now. As the Nobility themselves have for a long, long time.”
Descending a narrow staircase for two stories, they came to a massive wooden door. Studded with hobnails from top to bottom, it testified to the import of the dark ceremony taking place beyond it.
“This is it, right?” Dan was tense.
D took off his blue pendant and put it around the boy’s neck. “This will repel the robots. You stay here.”
The door had neither lock nor bolt. It looked to weigh tons, but when D’s finger brushed it, the hinges creaked and the doors opened to either side. Wide stone stairs worn low in the center flowed down into the darkness. Somewhere far below there was a barely perceptible light. On descending the staircase, D came to the subterranean chamber. Far off to his right flames danced.
Coffins caked with dust, some with skeletal hands and feet protruding through gaps in the half-decayed boards, others with wedges of wood driven right through their lids—this was what greeted D in the darkness. Weaving his way through the final resting place of rows upon rows of the dead, D arrived at last at the blood-hued dais, where he came face to face with the Count.
“I am impressed by the way you managed to come back to life. And to come here.” The Count’s tone went beyond awe. D turned his eyes to Doris, standing stock still on the dais. A cool smile nudged his cheeks for an instant.
“It seems I’m just in time.”
At some point Larmica had vanished.
“There shall be plenty of time for that when you are dead,” the Count replied. “However, as Larmica herself has said, it is truly a shame to slay you. You came back to life after taking a stake through your chest—now there is a secret I myself should very much like to know. What say you? Will you not reconsider this one last time? Have you no wish to take Larmica as your wife and live here in the castle? She has lost her soul to you.”
“The Nobility died out long ago,” said D. For some reason, his voice seemed to have a sorrowful ring to it. “The Nobility and this castle are no more than phantoms forgotten by time. Return to where you belong.”
“Silence, stripling!” the Count moaned, gnashing his teeth in rage. “Born of Noble blood as you are, surely you must know what immortality means. Life given until the end of time—it is our duty to do just that, crushing the human worms underfoot all the while.”
As he finished speaking, the Count knit his brow. He had just noticed that D was not looking up at himself, but rather at the portrait behind him.
If it had been that alone, he wouldn’t have paid it much heed. What triggered this surprise—which was actually closer to horror—was that he saw that the face of the youth in the flickering torchlight was the same as the visage in the portrait holding his gaze.
At the same time, the Count realized words he’d heard twice before were ringing in the depths of his ears. Unconsciously, he let them slip from his mouth.
“Transient guests ... ”
In all the proud, glorious history of the Nobility, this one pronouncement of their godlike Sacred Ancestor alone had met suspicion and denial from all Nobles. The Nobility’s Academy of Sciences had developed a method of mathematically analyzing fate, and, after they cross-referenced these figures with the historical import of all known civilizations they canceled all presentations on the findings of their research. When they came under fire for this decision, it was the Sacred Ancestor who came to face the critics, appearing in public for the first time in a millennium to control the situation. And those words were the ones he’d let slip out then.
The great, eternally flowing river that was history had a civilization temporarily resting on its placid surface—the Sacred Ancestor referred to those propping up the civilization as transient guests. The question was, did he refer to the Nobility or humans?
The tangled skein of the Count’s thoughts grew more knotted, and then a single thread suddenly pulled free. A bizarre rumor that had circulated briefly among the highest-ranking Nobility whispered into life in his ear once more.
Our Sacred Ancestor, it seems, swore to a human maid—they would make children and he would slay them, but even after slaying them he would still have her bear more. Impossible!
The Count’s brain was driven to the limits of panic and confusion.
He couldn’t possibly be … Could the Sacred Ancestor have planned the joining of human and Noble blood all along?
Not knowing what was truth or lies, the Count stepped forward, chilled by his own thoughts. “Stripling, I shall see to it you feel the full might of the Nobility before you die.”
As he finished talking, his cape fluttered. The lining was red and glistening. The air howled around the chamber and every flame danced a step shy of being snuffed. Astonishingly, the cape spread like a drop of ink dissolving in water and tried to wrap around D.
D drew his sword and slashed at the edge of it in one fluid motion. His blade stuck to the lining. This was the same blade D had used to destroy the bronze monstrosity Golem and slay a werewolf running at half the speed of sound!
The lining twined around and around his sword, tearing it from D’s grasp a second later. But actually, D himself had released it. Had he resisted, his own hand might have been wrapped up and crushed in the process.
“And now you stand naked,” the Count laughed snidely, taking D’s sword in his right hand. His cape returned to its normal dimensions. Making another grand sweep of it, the Count said, “This was stitched together from the skin of women who’d slaked my thirst, and it was lacquered with their blood. Thanks to secret techniques passed down through my clan, it’s five times as strong as the hardest steel and twenty times more flexible than a spider’s webbing. And you have just witnessed its adhesive power for yourself.”
Several flashes of light scorched through the air. The cape spread. All the wooden needles D had hurled dropped to the floor in front of the Count.
“Enough of your foolish resistance.” The cape opened like the wings of a dark, mystic bird and the Count threw it and himself forward.
D leapt out of the way. The sleeve of his coat sported a fresh tear. That was thanks to the trenchant blade the cape had become.
“Oh, whatever is the trouble, my good Hunter? Could it be you’re powerless now?” His snide laughter came over the top of the attacking cape. The speed with which he swept it around was incredible. Unable to close the gap between the Count and himself, D moved like the wind to evade the assaults.
At some point the two of them had changed positions, so that D now stood in front of Doris, shielding her.
The Count’s eyes glowed. His cape howled through the air.
As D was about to leap away once more, something wrapped around him from behind. Doris’ arms!
A heartbeat later D’s body was entwined in the cape. In this battle that demanded the utmost concentration, even he’d forgotten for a moment that Doris was in the Count’s thrall.
D’s bones creaked from the enormous pressure. His gorgeous countenance twisted. And yet, who else would’ve been skilled enough to push Doris out of harm’s way a split second before the cape engulfed him? D’s sword glittered in the Count’s hands.
“Your destruction will come on your own blade.”
The Count intended to lop off his head. D’s body was wrapped in a cape his blade hadn’t been able to pierce, and the sword mowed through the air with all the Count’s might behind it, until it suddenly it stopped.
At the same time the cape crumpled and D leapt clear of the bizarre fabric restraints. The instant the Count’s concentration had been broken, the spell over his cape had faltered as well. He landed right before the Count. And what did the Count make of that?
“Ha!”
With a premonition of his firmly skewered foe bringing a smile to his face, the Count thrust the blade. The sword was caught and stopped dead right in front of D’s chest. Caught between the palms of the Hunter’s hands. Their roles had been completely reversed from their first encounter!
Without letting up in the slightest on the unspeakable pressure he brought to bear four inches from the weapon’s tip, D twisted both hands to one side. The Count didn’t go sailing through the air, but the end of the blade snapped off. The broken tip still between his hands, D leapt back ten feet.
“Why, that’s the very same trick … ”
It was truly grand the way the Count sent out his cape even as he shouted this, but the difference between being the one doing the trick and the one on the receiving end in this case became the difference between life and death. The tip of the sword flew from D’s folded hands in a silvery flash that neatly knifed through the heart beneath that black raiment.
For a few seconds the Count stood stock still. Then the flesh on his face began to melt away, and his eyes dropped to the floor, trailing optic nerves behind them.
Mere moments after he hit the floor, his rotting tongue and vocal chords forced out his final words.
“I ... I had to beg our Sacred Ancestor to teach me that very same trick ... Could it be ...
Milord, are you truly his
... ”
..
D quickly made his way over to Doris, who lay on the floor. Something strange was happening to the castle. The faint ringing of the warning bell from the Count’s chest was proof of that. The Count’s deadly attack had faltered because the bell had caught his ear—turning him from the path of certain victory to a plunge into the abyss of death. The floor shook ever so slightly.
A light tap to her cheek was enough to wake Doris. There was no trace of the fang marks on her neck any longer.
“D—what in the world is going on?! You’re alive?”
“My work is done. The wounds on your throat have vanished.” D pointed to the far end of chamber and the way he’d come. “If you go up that staircase you’ll find Dan. The two of you should go back to the farm.”
“But you—you’ve got to go with us.”
“My work is finished, but I still have business here. Hurry up and go. And please be sure to tell Dan not to forget the promise he made his big brother.”
Tears sparkled in Doris’ eyes.
“Go.”
Turning time and again, Doris finally disappeared into the darkness. A salutation rang from D’s left hand, though it probably never reached her ears.
“So long, you tough, sweet kids. Godspeed to you.”
..
D turned around. To one side of the chamber stood Larmica.
“Was that your doing?”
Larmica nodded and said, “I reversed all the computer’s safety circuits. In the next five minutes the castle shall be destroyed—please, flee while you may.”