Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane (2 page)

In what was surely a rare occurrence for the young Hunter, he received a somewhat
sheepish smile from the other man, but when the man in black failed to move even a
single muscle in his face, Thornton shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, I suppose
I should tell you about the job, then.”

The reason he averted his gaze at this point wasn’t so much to change the tone of
the conversation, but rather because he’d reached the point where he could no longer
stand looking at D head-on. Regardless of gender, those who gazed at the young man’s
gorgeous visage for too long began to hallucinate that they were being drawn into
the depths of his eyes. Actually, the women that Thornton had shoved out of the way
had been ready to voice their dissatisfaction when D suddenly entered their field
of view and left them frozen with their mouths agape.

“Okay, get your asses out of here! I’ll pay you twice what you had coming,” the little
man—Thornton—said, but even as he shoved them out, the women kept their dumbstruck
gazes trained on D until the very end.

“Care for a drink?” Thornton asked the Hunter as he picked up the bottle of liquor
sitting on the table, but then he shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, that’s right—you dhampirs
like to say, ‘I never drink wine,’ don’t you? Sorry. I may be a lawyer, but I’m still
just a plain old human. Pardon me while I have one.”

Filling his glass to the very brim with the amber liquid, Thornton pressed it to his
lips. Time and again, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down before he exhaled roughly
and set his empty glass back on the table.

As he nervously brought his hand up to wipe his lips, Thornton began by saying, “I
wrote to you for one purpose and one purpose alone. I want you to cross the desert.
To go all the way to the town of Barnabas, across this ‘Desert of No Return’ where
so many have never been seen again.”

“For what purpose?” D asked, opening his mouth at last. “In your letter, you said
you could furnish me with information about someone I have a great interest in.”

“That’s correct,” Thornton said, nodding his agreement. “And the reason I can do so
is because the request to send you out into the desert comes from that very person.”

.

II

.

Now that it was late at night, the sound of the bugs had only increased in its plaintive
rhapsody. A few minutes later, blossoms covered the town and the sounds died out,
began anew, and then vanished again . . . as if the night would never end, and the
song of parting would never cease.

It was at that moment that a wrinkled hand knocked on the door to a room in a hotel
on the edge of town. There was no answer. Without waiting very long, the hand pushed
against the door. It opened easily. The interior was claimed by the same shade of
darkness as the world outside. The reason Granny Viper turned to the right side without
hesitation wasn’t because she’d memorized the location of the bed, but because she
could see as well in the dark as she could at midday.

“Pardon the intrusion,” the old woman called out in a hoarse voice, and although she
received no reply to her greeting, she could see the tall figure that lay on the bed
clearly enough. “Ordinarily, I’d call you careless, but for the Vampire Hunter D,
having the door locked or unlocked probably makes no difference. Anyone who came in
here with evil in mind wouldn’t live to tell about it.” Her tone was buoyant, and
she meant her words as a compliment. As always, there was no reply, so the hunched-over
figure said, “Sure, I’d heard of you before, but I never could’ve imagined you’d be
so incredible. Obviously, you’re awful good-looking, too, but what I couldn’t believe
was that someone actually ignored the Bullow Brothers. That’s when I thought to myself:
That settles it
. At first, I was aiming to ask the two of them to help, but forget that now. Who
needs a couple of punks fresh outta short pants, anyway? I’ve decided to go with you
instead.”

Here the old woman paused and waited for the Hunter to respond, but there was no reply.
Perhaps he was just a shadow that had taken human form? She strained her ears and
still she couldn’t hear him draw a single breath, nor could she catch the beating
of his heart. The crone realized that if her night vision wasn’t so keen, she’d never
have noticed his presence.

Any ordinary person would’ve lost hope at this exercise in futility, or grown indignant
at his cold-heartedness. But the old woman went on talking. “When I first came in,”
she said, “I didn’t feel the urge to kill from you, and I don’t now, either. I’ve
been to other Hunters’ rooms, but it’s unbelievable. They’re always on edge, never
knowing when somebody’s gonna try and get the drop on them, and you can feel the violence
just hanging around in the air outside their rooms. No matter how big they are,
you’re
above them all. If someone came in here, they’d take you for a stone until the second
you struck them dead. On the other hand, if you wanted to, you could stop a foe cold
through a stone wall with just a harsh look in their direction. But I suppose I’d
be surprised if you had a mind to do that even once in your life. And that’s why I’ve
pinned all my hopes on you.”

In a manner of speaking, all the old woman’s efforts were rewarded.

“What do you want with me?” asked the shadow of all shadows.

“I already told you, didn’t I? I want you to come with me. You know, across the desert
to the town of Barnabas. There’d be a nice piece of change in it for you. Enough for
all the booze and broads you’d ever want. I just know you couldn’t say no to a sweet
deal like this.”

“No.” His concise reply had an intensity that completely severed the discussion.

“Well, why the hell not?”

“Leave.”

“Stop mucking around,” Granny said to him. “I just told you how set I am on having
you. Maybe you think you’re too good to listen to some old bag, eh? Well, I’ll show
you. You might not think so, but I’m pretty well known across the Frontier. And while
they may not be quite as dangerous as you, I know a lot of people—folks that’ll come
running just as soon as I give the word. No matter how tough you are, up against a
hundred of them—”

The crone’s voice died there. As if pushed by something, her stooped figure leapt
back. Perhaps unable to weather the other-worldly air that staggered the imagination,
she flew out of the room with terrific speed. Light flowed in from the corridor.

“Stop it,” Granny shouted. Her words had the ring of an entreaty. “What, do you plan
on killing me? I’m more than a hundred years old, you know! What’ll you do if you
give me a heart attack or something?”

Yet the unearthly air continued to creep toward her.

“Just stop it, or this kid—this girl—will die, too!” she shouted, slipping around
the door and reappearing in the rectangular space pushing another figure. Someone
with eyes that could pierce the darkness would see the shoulder-length black hair
and the soft lines beneath the simple flesh-tone dress, and might even determine that
the girl was about seventeen or eighteen years old. Without saying a single word,
she just squatted there, hugging her own shoulders. The Hunter’s ghastly aura was
merciless.

“Please, stop,” the crone cried out from behind the door. “The girl’s name is Tae—she
was one of
the hidden
. What’s more, it was the Nobility that hid her!”

The girl’s rigid body collapsed unexpectedly. Bracing one hand against the floor,
she heaved a few short, sharp gasps. Rather attractive in its own way, her face was
as expressionless as stone now, as if it terrified her to draw even the smallest of
breaths. The girl seemed to have the world crushing in on her from all sides.

Granny’s face peeked around from behind the door as her expression turned deadly serious.
She came out slowly, moving with a weighty and plaintive gait. Circling around behind
Tae, she put her hands on the girl’s pale shoulders. Turning to the darkened depths
of the room, she asked, “Do you know what my trade is?” Quickly realizing she wasn’t
likely to get a reply, she said, “I’m a people finder. I’ve been nicknamed Viper,
like the snake, but I’m not one of them dala-a-dozen orphan trackers they’ve got hanging
around here. I specialize in children who’ve been taken—I find
the hidden
. You know,” she said to the Hunter, “I can’t very well stand out here talking about
it. Let me come back in for a second. C’mon, stand up,” she told the Tae as she forced
her to her feet, went back into the room, and closed the door. What’s more, she then
pulled out a chair, told Tae, “Have a seat,” and settled herself in another chair,
in a display that took presumptuousness to laudable heights. And yet, the reason she
didn’t complain about D’s rudeness as he continued to just lie there was because his
ghastly aura still permeated her flesh. “This girl—” she began to explain before she
was interrupted.

The darkness was split by the voice of its master. “You mentioned the Nobility, didn’t
you?”

“Why, yes, I do believe I did,” the old woman said, fighting back her delight. “She’s
a genuine, bona fide victim of hiding by the Nobility. I nearly killed myself getting
her out of Castle Gradinia.”

.

For all the supernatural phenomena that occurred out on the Frontier, the notion of
the hidden
had an especially chilling connotation. Unlike profit-motivated kidnappings, these
could suddenly happen right out in public or under conditions where it should’ve been
impossible to just vanish. The victims could be young or old, male or female, but
in the case of young ladies it was almost certain to conjure images of a dreaded fate
that would make anyone quake with terror . . . even as it robbed them of their tears.
There were several possible causes for these disappearances, and they were sometimes
attributed to unknown creatures or to the dimen-sional rips that appeared at irregular
intervals. But in cases where members of the Nobility were suggested as the culprits,
the terror sprang not from the disappearance itself, but from the anticipated result.
What kind of fate might befall a young lady in such a situation? If they were merely
prey to satisfy their captor’s taste for blood, they might be saved. Luckier still
were those who were given positions as maidservants on the whim of the Nobility, though
this was less common. A fair number of girls were rescued under those circum-stances,
but there could be more to it than that . . .

.

“A hell of a time I had there,” Granny said, twisting her lips. “I was thinking I’d
taken out all their defensive systems, but there was still one left. Damned thing
put me to sleep until night. Well, I’d already made up my mind about what I was gonna
do, so I drove a stake through the bastard’s heart just as he was getting out of his
coffin. Still, he was thrashing around like nobody’s business, and I had to keep that
accursed stake stuck in him for a good three hours before he simmered down. After
that, I searched the place, and happened to find this girl. Not to worry, though,
I’ve checked her out, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with her. I
had her hypnotized so deeply it would’ve driven her mad to go any further. And, naturally,
she can walk around in daylight.”

“How did you find her?” D asked, his query free of inflection.

Tae shivered with fear.

The crone shrugged her shoulders and said, “There really wasn’t much to it. Once I
went down into the basement, I found a prison where they kept humans. She was locked
in there. I asked her a few things, and by the sound of it, they had her slaving away
as a maid of sorts. You can guess the rest. She was still right in the head, so she
remembered which village she hails from. The sheriff in Gradinia even had a request
from her parents to look for her. And that’s how I ended up transporting her. That’s
what I do, you know.” Granny nodded in a way that made it clear she was quite proud
of what she did, too.

“And the Noble—what was his name?”

The old woman didn’t answer that question. Although the Hunter’s tone and the direction
he faced hadn’t changed, the crone understood that this query was directed at Tae.

Tae’s body trembled, but her face remained aimed at the floor. She didn’t say a word.
It was almost as if she was erecting shields of incredible density all around herself.

The old woman, however, grew agitated and barked, “What are you doing? Hurry up and
answer the man! This could mean the difference between us getting to the town of Barnabas
safely or not!”

Tae said nothing.

“Oh, you stupid little twit!” Granny shouted, raising her right hand violently while
keeping her back as straight as an arrow. Apparently, her hunching had been part of
an act to get his sympathy, but there was no need for her to follow through with the
blow.

“Leave,” D said, making it clear that their visit had concluded.

“Wait just one second. I’m not done speaking my piece yet,” the crone cried out in
a pitiful tone. There wasn’t an iota of the bluster she’d shown the Bullow Brothers
left in her voice. The sudden and complete reversal was a nice change, though. “Like
I just explained, we’re in a situation where we’ve gotta get across the desert . .
. and we’ve got a time limit, too. If we don’t make it in four days, counting tomorrow,
we’re out of luck. See, the girl’s family is in the town of Barnabas, but on the morning
of the fifth day, they’ll be moving on to somewhere else. Given the size of the desert,
it’s gonna be a close call. If we were to go around it, it’d take us more than a week,
which is why we definitely need us some heavy-duty backup. Now, I don’t know just
what brings you to town, but if you haven’t taken care of whatever it is, I’d like
you to put it off for a while and come along with us. I don’t care whether you wanna
do it or not; I’ve already settled on you. Hell, even the girl said she likes you.
Didn’t you, sweetie?” the crone said, seeking some corroboration, but the girl remained
as stiff as a board. “See what I mean? She likes you so much that she’s at a loss
for words. Of course, that’s only natural, you being so handsome and all.” Chuckling,
she added, “This may sound strange, but if I was a tad younger myself, I don’t think
I could keep away from you, stud.”