“Suppose you tell me what the hell brings you up here?” said Haig, his words dripping like molasses. His gaze had fallen to Lina’s bare feet. “It ain’t like you don’t know the shit that’s going on in town. The whole place’s been turned inside out and we still didn’t find it. Meaning this is the only place left for it to hide, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, that doesn’t mean you have to haul a load of bombs up here, does it? Stakes and Molotov cocktails should do the job.”
“That’s nothing that concerns you,” Haig said scornfully. “Now answer the damn question. Why the hell are you here? We sure as shit didn’t see you on our way up here. Just how long you been here, anyway?”
“I just got here. And for your information, I came up the other side. So of course you didn’t see me.”
As the men looked at each other they had a strange glint in their eyes.
“Well in that case, I guess the hill can’t fool you none—looks like we had it figured right all along. Unless I miss my guess, you’re the one responsible for what’s happening in town.”
“Spare me your conjecture. You know I’ve been at home every time anything happened.”
“You don’t say. Hell, the whole bunch of you have been screwy since that happened. We got no way of knowing what kind of powers you been using behind our backs.”
Haig suddenly had nothing more to say. He gave a toss of his chin to his cohorts. All of them smiled lasciviously as they started to close in on Lina.
“We’re gonna have to check you out now. Gonna peel you down buck-ass naked.”
“You stop this foolishness right now. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll get in if you even try it?”
“Ha! That supposed to be a threat?” one of them jeered. “Everybody in town knows full well what’s going on between you and the mayor, missy. If we can prove you’re a plain ol’ woman now, the old geezer’ll be happier than a pig in shit.”
“And that ain’t the half of it,” another added. “After all of us have had a turn with you, you’ll be feeling so damn good you’ll lose your tongue for ratting us out.”
Haig licked his lips. These young men were known to be rough customers—that was precisely the reason they were perfect for protecting the village from brutal groups of roving bandits or vicious beasts spawned by the Nobility’s technology. But now, their exhaustion and the fear of the work to come churned together in a slimy mess that suffocated what little sense they’d been born with.
Lina made no attempt to escape as Haig grabbed her by the arms and pulled her close. His greasy lips savagely latched onto her fine mouth. Pulling her coat up with one hand, he groped at her thighs while his tongue tried to force its way between her perfect teeth.
Suddenly, there was a dull smack and his massive frame doubled over at the waist. With lightning speed Lina had slammed her knee into Haig’s privates, leaving him speechless and on his knees. She didn’t even spare him a backward glance as she disappeared into the same entrance from which she’d first appeared.
“You little bitch!” shouted one of the three men who went after her.
While it was still daytime, it was only anger and lust that managed to beat back their fear of entering the ruins.
Weird machinery and furniture seemed to float in the chill darkness, but the men were intent on ignoring these objects as they ran. Twisting and turning down one sculpture- and painting-adorned corridor after another, it was in a vast room, a hall of some sort, that they eventually caught up to Lina.
Stripping off her coat when they caught her by the shoulder, she stumbled and fell face first, but the three of them tackled her and rolled her onto her back.
Lina cried, “Quit it!”
“Stop your squirming. We’re gonna do you real good. All three of us at once!”
Just as the men were pinning her pallid and desperately thrashing hands and feet and closing on her sweet lips, the creepiest sensation struck them all. Even Lina forgot her struggles as terror overcame her. Four pairs of eyes focused on the same spot in the darkness.
A single shadowy figure emerged out of the blackness. A figure that seemed to them darker by far than the blackness shrouding this whole universe.
“One civilization met its end here,” said a soft voice flecked with rust, the words drifting through the darkness. “While it’s impossible to halt the progress of time, you would do well to show some respect for what’s been lost.”
Lina scrambled up and took cover behind the figure, but the men didn’t so much as twitch. They couldn’t even speak. Animal instincts honed by more than two decades of doing battle with the forces of nature told them just what this person was. It was something far surpassing what they’d expected to find here.
Footsteps rang out at the entrance to the hall, but soon halted. Haig and the rest of the men had burst into the room with enraged expressions, but then froze in their tracks.
“Wha—What the hell are you?”
Not surprisingly, it was the leader of the suicide squad who finally managed to speak, but just barely, his voice tremulous through the chattering of his teeth. His tone spoke volumes about how he, too, had been laid low by this ghastly aura beyond human ken. The only thoughts running through the minds of Haig’s men at that moment concerned getting down off the hill as fast as humanly possible.
“Leave. This is no place for you.”
As if at the stranger’s bidding, the men got to their feet and started to back away. The reason they remained facing forward was not so much due to the old adage about never letting your foe see your back as it was to their terror at not knowing what might happen to them if they turned around. The adage “Some things are worse than dying” passed through the heart of hearts of all the men.
The men regained some of their spirit once they’d fallen back to the hall’s entrance. Sunlight poured in through the cracked roof of the windowless corridor.
Haig pulled out a Molotov cocktail and another man produced some matches. Striking the match on his pants, the Brigade member put the flame to the rags and Haig heaved the firebomb with such an exaggerated throw he seemed to be trying to blast his own fears away. No consideration at all was given to Lina’s safety.
The blazing bottle limned a smooth arc across the room and landed at the pair’s feet. But no lake of flames spread from it. The bottle simply stood upright on the intricately mosaicked floor. There was a tinkling clink as the neck of the bottle and the flaming rag it contained dropped to the floor.
The men probably hadn’t even seen the silvery flash that had split the air.
Panic ensued.
Screaming, the men scrambled over each other in their effort to flee back down the hallway. And they didn’t look back. Reason left them, and the fear of the supernatural world bubbled forth. The men drove their legs with all their desperate might to avoid having to see what shape their fear would take.
Once she was sure their footsteps had died away, Lina stepped from behind the stranger. Sticking out her cute little tongue, she turned to the exit and made the rudest gesture she knew. She must’ve been amazingly sedate by nature, because she no longer seemed the least bit troubled as her eyes gazed first at the truncated bottle and the guttering flame, then up at the muscular stranger with admiration.
“You’re really incredible, you—” she began to say, but her voice gave out on her.
As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness they took in the face of her savior. An exquisite face, like a silent winter night preserved for all time.
“What is it?” he said.
Shaken back to her senses by the sound of his voice, Lina said the first thing that popped into her mind. She was a rather straight-forward girl.
“You sure are handsome. Took my breath away, you did.”
“You’d best go home. This is no place for you,” the owner of that gorgeous countenance said once more, his words not so much cold as emotionless.
Lina had already reclaimed enough of her senses to shamelessly eye the man from head to toe.
He couldn’t have been a day over twenty. His wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and the elegant longsword he wore across the back of his black long-coat made it clear he was no mere tourist. A blue pendant dangled before his chest. The deep, soul-swallowing shade of blue seemed to fit the youth perfectly.
Like hell I’m leaving. I’ll go wherever I damn well please, Lina wanted to say, but the words she hastily uttered were the exact opposite of what she actually felt.
“If you insist, the very least you could do is walk me out.”
At this unexpected request, the youth headed toward the exit without making a sound.
“Hey, wait just a second, you. Aren’t we the hasty one!” Flustered, Lina hurried after him. She thought about latching onto the hem of his coat or maybe his arm, but didn’t actually go through with it. This young man had an intensity about him that completely locked him off from the rest of the world.
Mutely trailing after him, the girl stepped out into the courtyard.
To Lina’s utter amazement, the youth quickly turned around and headed back toward the entrance. She jumped up again.
“For goodness sake, would you just wait a minute? You didn’t even give me a chance to say thank you, you big dolt!”
“Go home before the sun sets. The way down is normal enough.”
The shadowy figure didn’t even turn to face her as he spoke, but his words made Lina’s eyes go wide.
“And just how would you know that? Come to think of it, when did you get here, anyway? It couldn’t be you can walk up here like normal, could it?!”
Just shy of the entrance, the young man halted. Without facing her, he said, “So, you can climb the hill normally, too, I take it?”
“That’s right. My circumstances are kind of special,” Lina said, sounding strangely resolved for once. “Wanna hear about it? Of course you do. After all, you came all the way up here to see these ruins—the remnants of a Noble’s castle.”
The youth started to walk away again.
“Oh, curse you,” Lina cried, stomping her feet in anger. “At least give me your name. If you don’t, I’m not heading home—come sunset or not. If I get attacked and maimed by monsters, it’ll be on your conscience for the rest of your days. I’m Lina Sween, by the way.”
Apparently her badgering had paid off, for a low voice drifted from the silhouette as it melded with the darkness filling the doorway. He said but a single word:
“D.”
Late that night, a Vampire Hunter paid a call on the home of the village’s mayor.
“Well I’ll be—”
Having pulled on a dressing gown over his pajamas and come downstairs, the sleepy-eyed mayor forgot what he was about to say when he saw the beauty of the Hunter standing there at the other end of the living room with his back to the wall.
“I see now why our maid’s walking around like something sucked the soul out of her. Well, I can’t very well put you up here in my house. I’ve got a daughter for one thing, and the women’s groups are always coming and going through here.”
“I’ve already put my horse and my gear in the barn,” D said softly. “I’d like to hear your proposition.”
“Before we start, why don’t you set yourself down. You must be coming off a long ride, I’d wager.”
D didn’t move in the slightest. Nonchalantly drawing back the hand he’d used to indicate a seat, the mayor gave a nod. The valet, who was awaiting further instruction after having thrown a load of kindling and condensed fuel into the fireplace was ordered out.
“Never show the enemy your back, eh? Indeed, I suppose you’ve got no proof I’m on your side.”
“I was under the impression you hired Geslin before me,” D suggested. It almost appeared he hadn’t been listening to a word the mayor had to say.
By the look of him, the mayor was a pushy man, but he didn’t let the slightest hint of displeasure show on his face. In part this was because he’d heard rumors about the skill of the Grade A Hunter he was dealing with, but more than that because just having him standing there made the mayor feel in his flesh and bones that here was a being from a whole other world. Though he had exquisite features far more beautiful than any human’s, the ghastly aura emanating from him brought to the fore something mankind usually kept buried in the deepest depths of its psyche. The fear of the unknown darkness.
“Geslin’s dead,” the mayor spat. “He was a top-notch Grade A Hunter, but he couldn’t find us our vampire and got himself killed by an eight-year-old girl to boot.Throat ripped clean open, so we don’t have to worry about him coming back, but we paid him a hundred thousand dalas in advance—what a fiasco!”
“I understand the circumstances were somewhat unusual.”
The mayor pursed his lips in surprise. “You know about that, do you? Well, that’s a dhampir for you! Seems there might be something after all to them rumors you can hear the winds blowing out of Hell.”
D said nothing.
The mayor gave a brief account of the disaster that had occurred on the bridge roughly two weeks earlier. “And all of this happened in broad daylight. By the look of you, I’d wager you’ve seen more than I have in my seventy years on this earth. But I don’t suppose that’d happen to include victims of vampires who can walk in the light of day, now, would it?”
D remained silent. That in and of itself was his answer.
It just wasn’t possible. The Nobility and those whose lives they’d claimed were permitted their travesty of life by night alone, while the world of daylight had been ceded to humanity.
“I think you have a pretty good notion why I’ve called you here. Think about it. If those damnable Nobles and their retinue were free to move not just by night but by light of day as well, do you have any idea what would become of the world?”
The room seemed to grow darker, chillier. To save wear on their generators, it was commonplace to use lamps fueled with animal fat for lighting at night on the Frontier. The old man’s eyes seemed to smolder as he stared at the hands he held out to warm, and D didn’t move a muscle, as if he’d become a statue.
Really set my hooks into him that time, the mayor snickered to himself. His words had been chosen for maximum effect on the psyche of his guest, and surely they would’ve dealt a severe blow to the beautiful half-breed Hunter. Oh, yes—come tomorrow, things are bound to be a bit more manageable around here.