However, all did not go quite as expected.
“Could you elaborate on what’s happened in this case so far?”
D’s voice carried no fear or uneasiness, and for a moment the mayor was left dumbstruck. So, the horrifying thought of bloodthirsty vampires running amuck in the world by day had no personal impact on this dhampir? Wrestling down his surprise a split second before it could rise to his face, the mayor began to speak in a tone more subdued than necessary.
It all started with the ruins and four children.
Even now, no one knew for sure just how long the ruins had stood on that hill. When the village founders had first set foot in this territory nearly two centuries earlier, it was said the ruins were already choked with vines. Several times the hill had been scaled by suicide squads who produced roughly sketched maps and studied its ancient history, but while they were doing so a number of strange phenomena had occurred. Fifty years ago a group of investigators had come from the Capital to see it, and they were the last—after that, there were very few with any interest in surmounting the hill.
It was about ten years earlier that four children from the village had gone missing.
One winter’s day, four children vanished without warning from the village—farmer Zarkoff Belan’s daughter (eight at the time), fellow farmer Hans Jorshtern’s son (aged eight also), teacher Nicholas Meyer’s son (aged ten), and general-store proprietor Hariyamada Schmika’s son (aged eight).There was some furor over the possibility that it might be the work of a dimension-ripping nueby beast that’d been terrorizing the area, but then there were villagers who’d seen the four of them playing partway up the hill, forcing the community to eye the ruins with suspicion.
For the first time in fifty years a suicide squad was formed, but despite a rather extensive search of the ruins no clue to the children’s whereabouts could be found. Rather, toward the end of a week of searching members of the squad started disappearing in rapid succession, and the search had to be called off before all the passageways and benighted subterranean chambers that comprised the vast complex of ruins could be investigated.
The grief-stricken parents were told their children had probably been taken by slave-traders passing by the village by some strange twist of fate, or had been lost to the dimension-ripping beast. Whatever fate awaited them in either of those scenarios, it was a far more comforting hypothesis than the thought of the children disappearing in the remains of a vampire’s mansion.
One evening, about two weeks after the whole incident had started, the tragedy came to its grand—if somewhat tentative—finale. The miller’s wife was out in the nearby woods picking lunar mushrooms when she noticed a couple of people trudging down the hill, and she let out a shout fit to knock half the town off its feet.
The children had returned.
That was to be both a cause for rejoicing and source of new fears.
“For starters, only three of the kids came back.” The elderly mayor’s voice was so thin, it was fairly lost to the popping of the logs in the fireplace. “You see, Tajeel—that would be Schmika from the general store’s boy—never did come back. To this day we still don’t know whatever became of him. Can’t say it came as any great surprise when his father and mother both passed away from all their grieving. I’m not saying we weren’t glad to get the rest of them back, but maybe if he hadn’t been the only one that didn’t make it—”
“Did you examine the children?” D asked as he turned his gaze toward the door.
On guard, no doubt, against any foe who might burst into the room, the mayor assumed. It was said that even among Hunters, there was an incredible amount of animosity, with hostility often aimed at the more famous and capable. D’s eyes were half closed. The mayor was suddenly struck with the thought that the gorgeous young man was conversing with the night winds through the wall.
“Of course we did,” the mayor said. “Hypnosis, mind-probing drugs, the psycho-witness method—we tried everything we could think of. Unfortunately, we used some of the old ways, too. I tell you, even now the screams of those kids plague my dreams. But it was just no use. Their minds were a blank, completely bare of memories for the exact span of time they’d been missing. Maybe they’d been left that way by external forces, or then again maybe it was something the kids’ own subconscious minds had pulled to keep them all from going insane. Though if it was the latter, I suppose you’d have to say that as far as Jorshtern’s boy went, the results weren’t quite what you’d hope for. To this day, Cuore’s still crazy as a bedbug.
“The upshot of this is, exactly what happened in the ruined castle and what they might’ve seen there remains shrouded in mystery. I suppose the only saving grace was that none of them came away with the kiss of the Nobility. Cuore’s case was unfortunate, but the other two grew up quite nicely, becoming one of our school teachers and the village’s brightest pupil, respectively.”
Having progressed this far in his story, the mayor seemed to finally be at ease, and he walked over to a sideboard against the wall, got a bottle of the local vintage and a pair of goblets, and returned.
“Care for a drink?”
As he proffered a goblet, his hand stopped halfway. He’d just remembered what dhampirs usually consumed.
As if to confirm this, D replied softly, “I never touch the stuff.” The Hunter’s gaze then flew to the pristine darkness beyond the window panes. “How many victims have there been, and under what conditions did the attacks occur?”
“Four so far. All close to town. Time-wise, it’s always at night. The victims have all been disposed of.”
Just then the mayor’s voice left him. Surely the ghastly task of their disposal had come back to haunt his memory, for his hand and the drink it held trembled. After all, not every victim had been given a chance to turn into a vampire before they met their end.
“Finding missing kids and putting ’em down—this is a nasty bit of business to go through with spring so close and all.”
With a strident clang, the mayor slammed the steel goblet down on his desk. The contents splashed up, soaking his palm and the sleeve of his gown.
“It’s by no means certain that Schmika’s boy Tajeel had a hand in this. There’s a very good chance one of the remaining Nobility has slipped in here, or a vampire victim run out of another village is prowling the area. I’d like you to explore those possibilities.”
“Do you think there are Nobles who can walk with their victims in the light of day?”
At this softly spoken query the mayor clamped his lips shut. It was the very question he’d posed to D earlier. Suddenly the mayor donned a perplexed expression and turned his eyes toward D’s waist. However faintly, he could’ve sworn he’d heard a strange voice laughing.
“Sometime tomorrow, I need all the information you have on how the victims were attacked, their condition following it, and how they were handled,” D said without particular concern. His voice was callous, completely devoid of any emotion concerning the work he was about to undertake. Apparently this Vampire Hunter knew no fear, even when confronted with a foe the likes of which the world had never known: demons who could walk in the light of day. With an entirely different kind of terror than he felt toward the Nobility the mayor focused his gaze on the young man’s stunningly beautiful visage. “Also, I’d like to pay a visit to the three surviving abductees. If it’s any great distance, I’ll need a map to their homes.”
“You won’t need a map,” a feminine voice cooed.
Suddenly the door swung open and a smiling face like a veritable blossom drew the eyes of both men.
Eyes that shone with curiosity returned D’s gaze as she said, “Not the least bit surprised, are you? You knew I was standing out there listening in the whole time, I’m sure. I’ll tell you all you need to know. Lukas Meyer will be at the school. After classes I can take you to where Cuore lives. And you needn’t look far for the third. So, we meet again, D.”
Farmer Belan’s daughter, now the mayor’s adopted child, made a slight curtsy to D.
..
“Say, are you sure this is okay?” Lina asked the next morning, gripping the reins to the two-horse buggy she drove toward the school.
“Sure what’s okay?”
“Going out like this first thing in the morning and all. Dhampirs don’t like the daytime, right, on account of having part Noble blood in them.”
“Just full of weird tidbits, aren’t you?” D muttered as he looked over the backs of the six-legged mutant equines. If a telepath had been there, they might’ve caught a whisper of a grin deep in the recesses of his coldly shuttered but human consciousness.
Inheriting characteristics of both their human and vampire parents, dhampirs were also physiologically influenced by both sides in different respects.
Humans slept by night and were awake by day, while the opposite was true for the Nobility. When the genes of the respective races came into conflict, it was generally the physiological traits of the Noble half—the vampire parent—that proved dominant. A dhampir’s body craved sleep by day, and wanted to be awake at night.
However, just as a left-handed person could learn to use either hand equally well through practice, it was entirely possible for dhampirs to follow the tendencies of their human genes and live just as mortals did. And while they might have nearly half the strength, sight, hearing, and other physical advantages of a true vampire, it was that adaptability that was their greatest asset. With that fifty percent, they had a measure of power within them no human being could hope to attain, allowing them to cross swords with the Nobility by day or night.
Still, while it was true they could resist their fundamental biological urges, it was also undeniable that operating in daylight severely degraded a dhampir’s condition. Their biorhythms fell off sharply after midnight, reaching their nadir at noon. Direct sunlight could burn their skin to the point where even the gentlest breeze was pure agony, like needles being driven into each and every cell in their body. In some cases, their skin might even blister like a third-degree burn.
Ebbing biorhythms brought with them fatigue, nausea, thirst, and numbing exhaustion from the slightest activity. The proportion of dhampirs that could withstand the onslaught of midday without experiencing those tortures was said to be less than one in ten.
“Still, it looks like you don’t have any problems at all. That’s no fun.” Lina pursed her lips, then quickly hauled back on the reins. The horses whinnied, and the braking board hanging from the bottom of the buggy gouged into the earth.
“What’s wrong?” D asked, not sounding the least bit surprised.
Lina pointed straight ahead. “It’s those jerks again. And Cuore’s with them. Yesterday was bad enough, but now what the hell are they up to?”
Some thirty feet ahead of them, a group of men walked past a crumbling stone wall and was just turning the corner. There were seven of them. Three of them, most notably Haig, they’d met in the ruins the day before.
Walking ahead of the group as the others pushed and shoved him was a young man of seventeen or eighteen dressed in tattered rags. He was huge. He must’ve been six-foot-four and weighed over two hundred pounds. His gaze completely vacant, he continued down the little path pushed along by a man who barely came up to his shoulder.
“Perfect timing. We were just going to see him anyway. What’s down that way?”
“The remains of a pixie-breeding facility. It hasn’t been used in ages, but rumor has it there’s still some dangerous things in there,” Lina said. “You don’t think those bastards would bring Cuore in there?”
“Get to school.”
By the time the last word reached Lina’s ears, D was headed for the narrow path, the hem of his coat fluttering out around him.
As soon as he rounded the corner of the stone wall, the breeding facility buildings came into view. Although “buildings” wasn’t really the word for them. It appeared the owner had removed all the usable lumber and plastic joists, leaving nothing more than a few desperately listing, hole-riddled wooden shacks on the edge of collapse. The winter sun glinted whitely on this barren lot and on the naked trees frosted with the last crusts of snow.
The men slipped into one of the straighter structures. They seemed fairly confident that few people passed this way, as they never even looked back the way they’d come.
Perhaps thirty seconds passed.
Shouting exploded from within the building. There were screams. Lots of screams. And not simply the kinds of sounds someone makes when they run into something that scares them. Startled, perhaps, by the ghastly cries, the branches of a tree that grew beside the building threw down their snowy covering. Inside, a cacophony of something enormous shattering to pieces could be heard.
Just seconds after the reverberations died away, D entered the building.
The screaming had ceased.
D’s eyes got the faintest tinge of red to them. The thick smell of blood had found its way to his nostrils.
Every last man was laid out on the stone floor. Aside from a few steel cages along one wall that evoked the pixie breeding facility’s past, the rest of the vast interior was filled with the stink of blood and cries of agony. For something that had been accomplished in the half minute the men had been inside with Cuore, the job was entirely too thorough. There could be no doubt that some sort of otherworldly force had completely run amuck.
Two things caught D’s eye as the thugs convulsed in their own puddled blood.
One was Cuore’s massive frame, sprawled now in front of the cages. The other was a gaping hole in the stone wall. Six feet or more in diameter, the jagged opening let the morning sunlight fall on the dark floor. Whatever had left the eight strapping men soaking in a sea of blood had gone out that way.
Without sparing a glance to the other young men, D walked over to Cuore. Crouching gracefully, the Hunter said, “They call me D. What happened?”
Muddy blue eyes were painfully slow to focus on D. The boy’s madness was no act; his right hand rose slowly and pointed to the fresh hole in the wall. His parched lips disgorged a tiny knot of words.