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Cover art by Yoshitaka Amano English translation by Kevin Leahy Book design by Krystal Hennes

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Twin-shadowed knight. Parts one and two / written by Hideyuki Kikuchi; illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano ; English translation by Kevin Leahy. — 1st Dark Horse Books ed.

“Originally published in japan in 1996 and 1997 by Asahi Sonorama Co.”—T.p. verso.

CHAPTER 1

A heavy wind raced by. It bore a weight because it carried the molecules of what was termed a killing lust.

Two shadowy figures squared off on a desolate patch of earth. Whenever the wind passed them, it grew furious.

The sky was as dark as the afterworld.

Suddenly, one of the shadowy figures pounced. As he rose ten feet straight up, he swung both arms down.

Two spiteful flames erupted from the black earth, shooting straight for the figure still on the ground. Like lines drawn by a talented artist, the fiery streaks came together on the figure.

Two silver flashes crossed.

If fire is a physical phenomenon, it has to have mass and substance. Thus, it is possible for a greater mass and harder substance to deflect it.

The light from the flames bouncing off the stark cutting edge became a sword rising into the air. A simple leap made the second figure a sparrow in flight.

Faster than the figure in midair could rise to greater heights, the sword came straight down on him, splitting him from the crown of his head to the base of his neck.

The wind was stained red. As it slapped bright blood against

the black earth, the two figures landed on their feet a dozen yards apart. One of them collapsed, while the other stalked across the ground.

Not even bothering to wipe his blade off, the victor returned it to the sheath on his back. There wasn’t a speck of gore on it. There was nothing special about the blade, but its speed had prevailed over the cohesive powers of the blood.

The wind had a fawning glow, for it had blown across the shadowy figure’s face. Deep, dark eyes gleaming beneath the wide-brimmed traveler’s hat, the line of a nose that was sure to send tens of millions of artists into despair, lips that quietly brimmed with a will heavier than anyone would ever know—

The figure with his head split in two had called to him. Though already a death mask, his face wore a smile.

The heavens and earth roared, and the hem of the black coat hid D’s face. As if to shield him from the words of the dead. As if to keep him from hearing.

There was a sharp slap. A hand in a black glove had knocked his coat out of the way.

“Oh ... so you intend to hear me out. . . One word will say it all. . . Of course ... for you . . . that one word . . . might send you to hell.”

The figure on the ground was an old man with white hair and a white beard. His long robe was woven from metallic threads in a wide range of hues, and its distinctive color scheme declared that even among the Nobility, he was a necromancer of some stature.

The beautiful figure stood there without saying a word, as if he’d heard these words tens of thousands of times before.

The bisected and bloodied face split apart, and the old man raised his hands to hold it together again.

“Go to . . . Muma ...” he said, his voice sounding like it came straight up from hell.

And as he finished speaking, he took his hands away, and something that might’ve been blood or brains oozed from the reopened skull.

Only the wind growled across the wilderness until a new voice was heard, saying, “Did he say, ‘Muma’?”

“Damned if I know,” the dried, cracked voice responded. “Just the babbling of some guy about to die. A little memento to mess with you.”

The voice then mixed with groans of pain. D had squeezed his left hand into a tight fist.

The fist trembled. Finger and finger pressed together, and nails broke through skin and muscle. A thin red stream had begun to drip to the ground.

“I . . . don’t . . . know . . .” the hoarse voice said, its manner changed so that it now sounded like it might throw up.

He gave his fist one more squeeze. Silence resulted. After maintaining the fearsome tension for several seconds, D opened his fingers. The blood that covered the palm of his hand was scattered by the wind.

D squinted his eyes. He had no memories of this word Muma. And yet, his body told him of subtle changes. His blood was coursing faster by a thousandth of a second. D instinctively knew when something that small had changed.

Was it in his heart or his genes? It was like he’d felt a mysterious excitement from the second he’d heard the word Muma.

Something roiled like smoke all along the horizon: a mob of countless figures shaken by the wind. Their vile forms were evident to D’s eyes alone. Arms like withered branches, fingers tapering into claws, skin that seemed born of corruption, cloudy eyes reminiscent of a dead fish, bodies covered with pustules—all of these creatures had been summoned from their graves deep in the earth by the necromancer who’d just been slain. Even D didn’t know what they actually were. Nor did he know what they were supposed to accomplish. Their overlord had just been reduced to a blood-soaked cadaver.

D gave a brief whistle. The sound of iron-shod hooves approaching rang out. Before the white cyborg horse could come to a stop, D was in the saddle. As he took up the reins, the horse went right into a gallop—in the opposite direction from the mob of misbegotten dead. And most likely toward the hell the necromancer had mentioned.

It was after midnight when the white horse and black rider blew into the village of Gilhagen like a monochrome cyclone. Street lamps glowed through the weighty darkness of the wee hours.

Atop a hill that was rather high, even for a village in the rolling terrain at the foot of a mountain, a house with roof and walls painted black squatted in the darkness. It didn’t have windows, either. It was impossible to tell if it had a door or not, but D stood in front of the house and brought his fist down just once.

A thin crack of light spread through the dark. The door that’d opened in response to that single knock couldn’t even be seen.

Standing there with a soot-stained lamp in hand was a gray-haired crone. She had a face that looked like leather pasted on a skull. The black leaf that covered her left eye must’ve served as an eye patch.

Opening a crack of a mouth, she said, “To be calling on the home of Origa, the greatest sorceress in the southern Frontier, at this hour, you must be prepared to sacrifice your life ... if not your very soul.”

“That voice ...” the crone said, blinking vigorously behind the light. “Yes, and that beautiful face ... It can’t be . . . You’re—”

“I’ve come because there’s something I’d like to ask Origa the Sorceress.”

A few minutes later, D sat at a heavy table, and the sorceress brought him a hot cup of tea. As she shot a mysterious look at a countenance so gorgeous it seemed to drink up darkness and light and even sound, she asked, “What can I do for you?”

“That’s right. Humans, horses, birds, flame beasts, shadow eaters—hell, I can slip into the memories of any supernatural creature and make ’em recall the past. But—”

Origa stopped there, the expression wiped right off her face, as if she’d just committed some unpardonable sin. A face of unearthly beauty was right before her. The woman’s next words would be a betrayal—a betrayal of a beauty that couldn’t possibly be human.

“But . . .” the old woman sputtered, trying desperately to retain her pride. “But... I won’t for you. Be on your way. I didn’t meet anyone tonight. Didn’t see anyone, no matter how gorgeous. I’ll believe that to my dying day.”

“Why are you afraid?” D asked from the other side of the little round table.

“I’m not afraid of anything, I’ll have you know.” “I don’t believe we’ve met before. Or have we—”

“Hell, I’ve never laid eyes on you before. At any rate, kindly be on your way now. Or if you won’t leave, I will!”

“I’ll pay you ten times your normal rate. And I’ll do you a favor as well.”

The laws of nature had decreed that sorcerers who could restore the memories of others couldn’t go back through their own.

The crone stopped smiling, too. Licking her puckered mouth, she said in a parched, cracked voice, “You mean to tell me . . . you could do that? No, you could ... I believe you could at that. . . you of all people. Nearly thirty bandits were cut down before my very eyes . . . back when I was five—and that’s the only thing I remember from my past.”

As the question was put to her, the crone suddenly turned her gaze to the vicinity of D’s left hip. She’d gotten the feeling the hoarse query she’d just heard had come from there.

After a bit of consideration, the crone nodded and said, “Okay, my beautiful demon. My normal fee will suffice. That. . . that and the return of my past. Not that I doubt you or anything, but would you be so kind as to show me a little proof you can really do it?” D’s left hand rose before the crone’s eyes, which were rocked by puzzlement. There was no glove on it.

When he reached across the table and touched that hand to her right temple, the crone’s body arched in her chair. Her expression changed. The fluctuations came at intervals of a fraction of a second. Anger, hatred, fear, joy, and finally sadness skimmed ruthlessly across her deeply wrinkled face, hammering her, teasing her, and then leaving.

Somewhere, the lid of a pot rattled quietly. Apparently she was boiling medicinal herbs. Before it rattled a second time, the crone sat back in her chair normally. Her whole body was suffused by a mysterious kind of peace unconnected to the relaxation of her muscles, and tears rolled from her eyes.

Blinking repeatedly to stem the flow of tears, the crone then focused her gaze on D.

“You pass muster, D,” she said in a perfectly clear tone. “I remembered all manner of things. But instead of thanking you, I’ll see to it I give you what you want for certain. Come this way.”

Rising with the lamp in one hand, the crone began to walk toward the doorway, and then stumbled. Falling to the right before she could regain her balance, she was caught by the figure in black. D.

After stepping through the doorway and walking down the dark corridor a bit, the crone opened the door at the end.

“This is called the returning flute. It has a unique construction that allows it to extract memories from the brain. To date, I’ve used it on nearly twenty thousand people and supernatural critters, and not once has it failed.”

And yet, she hadn’t wanted to use it on D. The incredible swordsman the crone had seen when she was five must’ve been him after all. But what was it she feared she might glimpse in his past?

In no time at all, the thin strains of a melody echoed from the instrument, moving to the ceiling and walls as it flowed through the room.

“First layer of the subconscious—passed,” Origa muttered in a low tone, although how she managed that with the flute still to her lips was a mystery.

The secrets of the famed flute that could restore lost memories were its inner workings, mechanisms that made the memories replay, and this tune, which was known only to the sorceress’s clan.

As if entranced by his handsome visage, the crone said, “Second layer—no, let’s just dive straight down to the mystic layer.”

There was a ghastly ring to the voice of Origa the Sorceress, like she was sick from the smell of blood.

The mystic layer—that was a mysterious zone of the human mind only those of her line could reach.

Adjusting her grip on the instrument, Origa began to pipe a short, strange rhythm wholly unlike what she’d played thus far. Accompanied by light, the arrows of sound slipped into the ears of the gorgeous Hunter—no, they battered his brain directly.

Origa’s features grew indistinct—blurred by the sweat that had covered every inch of her in a split second.

Look what kind of misery had to be endured to call back lost memories! The body of the sorceress contorted and grew dehydrated, and she might have shed as much as a tenth of her weight. In exchange for that fearsome price, the notes produced by the magic flute seemed enough to make even a rock shudder, echoing in an eerie melody like the marching tune of a demonic army, orderly and awe inspiring.

At that moment, the first thing that could be called emotion suddenly raced across the face of the sleeping D. His right hand reached for the sword by his side.

The woman’s screams, exploding from the little black house, were swallowed by a far deeper darkness. The sounds dragged long, long tails after them—then vanished unexpectedly.

Past noon on the following day—when the Hunter in black was more than 120 miles from the village—a villager who called on the home of Origa the Sorceress was left standing frozen and speechless upon discovering the crone’s body in pieces in the blood'Spattered room.

Surprisingly, there were many types of travelers that one could expect to see on the highway. Medicine peddlers dressed in white with drug cases of the same hue slung from their shoulders and tricolored pennants of red, white, and blue flying high off the poles on their backs. Contract fighters in old-fashioned armored cars that had heavy machine guns and the barrels of rivet guns protruding from them and the words Warriors Available written in large letters on their sides. Traveling performers who did flips on top of carriages, disgorging flowers from their mouths, then striking them down with knives or gouts of flame. And so on, and so forth. And the eyes of all of them bulged in their sockets.

What some saw from the front and others from the rear was a cyborg horse galloping at terrific speed. But even those who recognized it as a horse still didn’t believe it. Cyborg horses couldn’t keep that kind of pace, and what was more, as it was passing them, a number of people saw a figure of unearthly beauty . . . and to some it looked as if said figure was actually running right alongside the horse. Whatever the case, by the time they could focus their eyes, both the cyborg horse and the human figure were dwindling in the distance.

Not even the bands of warriors astride their vaunted steeds or the riders of the Pony Express—who were said to have the fastest horses on the road—felt like challenging that pair, who had literally galloped along as if possessed by the dark lord of the winds.

It was D. However, the gorgeous young man had never raced like this in the past. Whenever he commanded his mount to run at full speed, the cyborg horse entered a mad gallop, as if in the grip of some unearthly spell. As a result, his horse moved as swiftly as a swallow in flight. But it couldn’t continue like that forever. If he saw that his cyborg horse had grown exhausted, D dismounted and ran alongside it to lighten its load. Needless to say, those times were few. His horse slowed down a bit, but keeping pace with a wildly galloping horse was something no human—or even Noble, for that matter—could do.

Near the towns and villages, there were rest stops along the highway where travelers might obtain cyborg horses or energy bikes. The proprietor of the shop D entered glanced at the cyborg horse that’d collapsed after it galloped in, but by the time he realized it had died of excessive exhaustion, D had already selected a new mount, left a pile of coins that would also cover the burial costs of the old horse, and then disappeared into the distance in a cloud of dust.

In the past three days, he’d ridden twelve hundred miles without a moment’s rest, and he was on his third cyborg horse. He truly was riding at an insane pace. D’s unearthly aura took hold of the steed. But what was the purpose of that aura, and at what was it directed? Where was he going? And what was waiting there?

Wherever this young man went, people always met their fate. But whose might it be this time? Would it be D’s?

In the village of Sedoc—or to be precise, on the outskirts of the village—an incredible change took place on the twenty-sixth day

a pilgrimage from the east were staying at Sedoc House, the village inn, when all twenty of them suddenly suffered heart attacks in the night and died. After the sheriff’s department wrote up a perfunctory report, they were carted off to the morgue.

In the middle of the night, the janitor from the morgue rode to the sheriff’s office with bizarre news. One after another, the corpses in the morgue had gotten up, smashed through a stone wall, and begun to march off in single file toward “the red wasteland” on the village outskirts, by his account.

The sheriff railed about how they’d been bitten by a Noble and grilled the janitor on what the hell he’d been doing, but the poor janitor insisted there was absolutely no way a Noble could’ve gotten near them.

At any rate, talk soon turned to forming a search team and rounding up the corpses, but just then, the caretaker from a cemetery near the sheriff’s office bolted in with a face as pale as a dead man’s. He told them that every corpse in the entire cemetery had risen from its grave. After clawing up through ten feet of heavy dirt, they reached the surface and started walking.

An urgent appeal went out, and more than thirty men responded immediately, taking up their inevitable task as residents of the Frontier. They came with sharpened stakes and spears and bows in hand, quickly proceeding toward the outskirts of the village.

They were a third of the way to their destination when the massive earthquake struck. Heaven and earth rumbled. The ground undulated like waves across fabric, rapidly pitching from side to side. You could say it was a miracle that no one in the search party was harmed. Not even the horses had been able to flee, and they’d fallen to the ground and rolled around on their sides for what’d seemed like an eternity, though it was later learned that the trembling of the earth hadn’t lasted five seconds.

Still, the sheriff and a number of other brave souls were to be lauded for the way they decided to press on less than five minutes after the great quake had passed. Driving their cyborg horses as fast as they could, they arrived at the edge of a red plain where the composition of the soil made it look like blood, and were struck by a terror that effaced all other thoughts of strangeness as they froze on their mounts—or rather, with their mounts.

What they saw was an outer ring that seemed to go on forever, dropping at a sharp angle into a great mortar-shaped depression. From the standpoint of natural phenomena, such an occurrence wasn’t inconceivable. What terrified the group was that along that vast brink—later the hole would be found to be a mile and a quarter in diameter'—there was a mob of shadowy figures. Some clad in rags, others fairly well dressed, and still others nearly completely naked, they stood peering down at the bottom of that subsidence without moving a muscle, irrespective of age or sex. There was nothing about them that had the slightest semblance of human life—they had eyes as cloudy as those of dead fish, sunken cheeks with bones laid bare, and pale shapes wriggling in holes through their chests and bellies that could only be maggots.

“No,” the caretaker said in a flat tone. “That’s not right. They aren’t just from our village cemetery. There are too many of them.”

At that point the sheriff sensed the presence of countless people behind him and heard their footsteps.

Behind them, dead beyond numbering were coming down the highway. And although the sheriff and his men didn’t notice it, they must’ve traveled quite some distance, since each was stark white with dust from the ankles down.

Ignoring the sheriff’s muttered remarks, the walking dead marched on, trudging right past the living. And then, as if they’d been given a push from behind, all the dead who stood at the brink of the mortarlike depression leapt in at once. The row behind them followed suit, as did the one after that, and another, and another.

Their brains assailed by rank horror and the foul stench, the entire search party passed out. They were brought back to the village by the remaining members of their group.

And for two full days after that, the sheriff watched the procession of the dead to their mass grave.

Were there really that many bodies buried around the area? How much longer would this go on?

These concerns ate at every brain, leaving the townsfolk on the edge of madness. The next thing they knew, the procession of the dead had ended, but the villagers were left in a state of shock, roaming the streets like the newly dead.

A young man in black with heavenly beauty and an exhausted horse came into town with the wind whirling in his wake. Halting his horse in front of Sedoc House, the rider grabbed one of the unsteady villagers and asked, “What happened?”

The young man’s tone and his handsome features returned the stupefied villager to his senses. He told the young man everything he knew, from start to finish.

“Am I too late?” D muttered in a tone devoid of emotion—a voice of iron—and he prepared to get back on his horse.

“Wait!” someone called out to him. Though it was low, the voice had a faint tinge of something to it.

As the gorgeous rider and his mount tore up the ground, the voice called out once more.

The girl introduced herself as Mia. She said she was the daughter of a fortuneteller who lived about sixty miles to the north. Her smock and the skirt she wore below it were both embroidered with a mysterious crest representing where she came from, and her numerous necklaces and bracelets were set with stones with a deep luster that seemed to hold a dark history. She knew D’s name because when her mother predicted a strange occurrence in this region, she’d told the girl that would be the name of the man who’d race there from afar.

“From what Mother says, the key to solving this mystery is held by a man who comes from far away,” Mia said in a hard tone. “This case is something no one can handle. No one except the man named D. D—if that’s the name that you go by—what in the world are you?”

“A little,” Mia replied, her voice betraying restrained pride and self-confidence.

“No, not even Mother knows that. But it’s not because she’s not powerful enough to see it. Something interfered.” After a short pause, the girl continued. “As far as what happened, I asked the villagers before you got here. Mother had pointed to a spot on the map and said that an incredibly evil power was at work. It was the same area where there was that massive subsidence. That’s probably the center of it.”

“It probably would’ve been better if your mother came.” “I think so too,” Mia conceded, not seeming the least bit angry. “But unfortunately, she can’t do that. Right after predicting this incident, Mother coughed up blood and collapsed. She’s probably passed away by now.”

“Mother’s orders were explicit,” Mia replied, with her eyes focused straight ahead.

Her age had to be sixteen or seventeen. Some childlike innocence still remained on her face, but a strength of will that hardly suited her had also spread across it.

“She doesn’t view this incident as merely another catastrophe. Mother said it’s a major event that could have repercussions on a global scale. Ordinarily, she’d have gone herself. Even though going might not accomplish anything, as someone with the power to catch a glimpse of people’s future—society’s future—she has to try and do whatever she can. But since she couldn’t possibly move, she told me to go.”

A mother who sent her own daughter into an incident that might shake the very world.

A split second before her face hit his back, Mia swiftly turned it away, so that only her right cheek took the impact. She could feel the swell of his muscles through the fabric. For just a second, she grew dizzy.

Taking away the hands she’d wrapped around his waist, Mia put them on the saddle’s cantle and braced her body. Before D could dismount, she flew into action.

Not bothering to call out to the girl who’d hit the ground before him, D began to walk.

Their entire conversation up to this point had taken place on the back of his horse.

His left arm rose naturally, and from the vicinity of his wrist a hoarse voice most humans couldn’t hear squeaked, “She’s a hell of a girl. For one thing, you’ve got a little slip of a lass like her racing into a place like this. For another, she didn’t even bother to wait for you to offer her a hand getting down from the horse. She’s been schooled in how to live on her own. If you ever take a wife, one like that’ll—”

As he walked quietly but gravely, ahead of him yawned the great subsidence that’d swallowed so many dead.

“This place is incredible, isn’t it?” Mia remarked pensively as she peered down from D’s right side.

Compared to the diameter of the depression, its depth wasn’t great at all—only about a thousand feet. Blending with the sloping sides, the bottom was a chaotic mix of boulders and sand, with the red soil filling in the spaces between them.

“It’s like a sea of blood,” Mia remarked as she rubbed her cheek with her right hand.

Mia looked at D’s hip out of the corner of her eye, and then stared at his face. Perhaps aware of the rosy glow suffusing her cheeks, she swiftly averted her gaze, saying, “You do a weird little voice, don’t you? Are you teasing me?”

“No, I’m serious,” Mia continued. ‘And I’ll thank you to answer me.”

Piqued at being ignored, Mia undertook a reckless course of action. With unexpected speed she came up behind D and told him, “You’re rude!”

She’d just aimed a kick at his ass. But it met with nothing but the empty space over the pit.

As she reflexively put her strength into the leg that still supported her, the supposedly firm ground gave way.

The second she heard her own cry above her and felt the sensation of falling, her body suddenly stopped dead. Realizing that D’s left hand had caught her by the collar, she madly reached around with her hands to latch on to him. Just as it dawned on her that she was floating through the air, her feet came down on solid ground. And no sooner had a feeling of relief flooded through her than the hand came away from her collar and Mia staggered.

As her eyes stared fixedly at D, they began to hold hints of a bottomless terror and rage—and a gleam of admiration.

The voice that posed that question was tinged with trust—and even a bit of affection.

Once again there was no reply. But even though he didn’t answer, no anger bubbled up in the girl.

“Yeah,” she said, feeling silly for getting so excited because he’d turned the conversation to her.

“The dead left every graveyard in the region to throw themselves from here. There would’ve been thousands of them. Why do you think that was?”

The next thing Mia knew, she had one hand to her chest. Her heart was racing. She had to do something to slow it down.

Pressing a finger gently to one part of the heart—the left ventricle—she made her breathing as shallow as possible. Her heartbeat returned to normal immediately. But then, she was a strong-willed and courageous individual to begin with.

The hoarse response definitely sounded like it’d come from the vicinity of D’s left hand.

This time the reply came in a rusty, masculine tone—D’s voice. So, was that other one just her ears playing tricks on her?

“Last time, corpses sufficed, but next time it’ll probably be living people jumping in.”

“Thousands of them . . .” Mia muttered, her remark a question at the same time.

Mia couldn’t help forgetting her present terror and peering down past the brink of the hole. But as she quickly recalled it again, she backed away, and then stared at D.

Not answering her, D stood there like an exquisite statue, but then he told her, “Go home.”

And then, without further ado, he dove head first from the rim of the hole into its interior.

“D!” Mia called out in spite of herself, and she was paused at the very brink of the hole, ready to go after him, when something white got in her eyes.

It looked like the white pillars of smoke rising from the brink of the depression numbered in the hundreds. All those geysers of gas couldn’t have suddenly erupted from the ground in unison. They’d been triggered mechanically. And the one who’d set them off was—

Still unsure just what was in the gas, Mia took a deep breath and raced back to the rim of the hole. She turned her gaze downward.

He’d probably been crushed. Why was she so determined to find this young man? Because his actions were so extreme. Like what he’d done just now. She couldn’t help thinking that whatever he really was, it was tremendously unsettling and of great importance— just as he’d appeared in the fortunetelling. And the last thing that occurred to Mia was something the girl tried vehemently to ignore so it wouldn’t rise to the fore of her consciousness. Because he’s gorgeous. More than anyone has a right to be.

Mia couldn’t see D anywhere, and she had to back away again. The gas had grown thicker and jetted out even harder. Luckily for her, it was only intended as a smoke screen.

She couldn’t go after him. Should she wait, or should she go back to the village?

That decision wasn’t Mia’s to make. From behind her came the thunder of approaching hooves. There were also the echoes of what sounded like a motor.

The figures she could see down at the far end of the highway halted before her less than ten seconds later. It was the same group of village peacekeepers who’d discovered the depression. And they’d brought a rare item with them.

The source of the motor sounds was an armored car. With iron plates riveted to a car chassis, the strangely rough-looking vehicle was apparently an antiquated model, with the edges of some plates starting to pull free, and both the sturdy turret and the forty-millimeter cannon that jutted a foot and a half from it were flecked with rust. The scorches and countless bullet marks that covered its armor plates were undoubtedly shining proof it had been fighting off aggressors, in the form of bandits and supernatural creatures, for decades. And it looked as if it was still more than capable of serving as the little village’s guardian angel.

Mia’s eyes were drawn to the wagon that rode alongside it. She could read the words High Explosives branded onto the sides of the wooden boxes piled high on it. Some kinds of munitions were

often obtained from military installations and battlefields where the Nobility had fought their own kind, and it wasn’t particularly unusual for towns and villages to have them on hand. Weapons that were especially easy to use, such as rifles and various kinds of grenades, could make an impressive show of force when the situation called for it. To the north of the village were wild plains and the ruins of what had once apparently been a testing ground for the Nobility, and no one normally dared set foot there.

The sheriff got down off his horse. As he moved toward Mia, he called over to the group forming around the wagon, “Get yourselves some explosives and line up along the drop-off. We’ll be pitching them in soon.”

“Wait just a minute,” Mia called out as she dashed over to the sheriff instead of waiting for him to come to her. “What do you think you’re doing? If you throw a bunch of bombs into this weird hole, there’s no way of knowing what kind of reaction you’ll get. Plus, someone just fell in there.”

Actually, Mia didn’t know for a fact that D was a Vampire Hunter. But his good looks, the way he carried himself, and the way he called to mind ice and steel made her say it on impulse.

“Why’d he fall in the hole? No, before we get to that—who are you, anyway?” the sheriff asked, knitting his thick eyebrows suspiciously.

“Mia, isn’t it? You’re the daughter of a fortuneteller who lives up north. I had her tell my fortune before,” called out a young man who’d been staring at the girl all along from the driver’s seat of the wagon. He wore a heavy wool shirt and had a red scarf wound about his neck. And as befitted someone so dapper, he was a good deal more attractive than the rest of the men.

“This fortuneteller up north—would that be Noa Simon? I’ve heard the name before. Seems quite a few people are in her debt,” the sheriff remarked, and, seeing a smile break on the lawman’s face, Mia was somewhat relieved. “This Hunter you mentioned, is he some friend of yours? What in the blazes brings him here?”

In fact, everyone froze right where they were. Though white smoke poured over the brink of the great subsidence, covering everything up to three feet from the ground, they could make out a human shape emerging from the pit. The hem of a coat swayed around the knees of the powerfully built form. Mia alone could tell whose silhouette it was by the longsword on its back.

As Mia reflexively started to step forward, someone behind her grabbed her right arm.

“You think after falling in there it’d be that easy to get back up again?”

Pushing Mia out of the way, the young man put his hand to his waist. He had a gunpowder pistol in a special holster. After drawing it, he called out to the shadowy figure in the fog, “Hey, I’m from the village!”

At the same time, the color of the silhouette darkened-—and a heartbeat later, it slipped out of the fog to stand face to face with the young man.

A rumble went through the crowd—murmured exclamations of rapture. The villagers had seen the face of the shadowy figure.

Those clothes, and, more than anything, that inimitable beauty—it was D beyond a doubt. Mia felt relieved. The fortuneteller’s daughter didn’t notice that her joy over the safety of a young man she didn’t even know had given way to feverish excitement.

“Hey, you ...” one of the young men called out to him, taking a step closer.

The scene that unfolded a second later was an enormous and terrifying betrayal of everyone’s expectations. A streak of light flowed out. Where it started and where it ended, none could say. It simply flowed.

“What the—” the young man cried, and judging by the way he jumped back, he alone must’ve discerned the path of that light. Or perhaps he merely acted on reflex.

Jogging back, the young man halted in front of Mia. When Mia saw that his eyes were filled with tears, she was a bit surprised.

“I . . . I’m Zoah,” he said somewhat uncomfortably. “Remember that. . . Zoah. Okay?”

Feeling something she couldn’t fight, Mia nodded. “And I’m—” she was saying when the young man put both hands on top of his head as if to hold it down. A thin red line zipped across the base of his neck.

A single tear fell from the young man’s eye. A smile formed on his lips, and then he reeled backward.

Once his head had fallen behind him, bright blood shot into the air from the stark stump of his neck, and the occasional gusts of wind carried it toward D as if at his bidding, covering every inch of him. Soaked in blood—an exquisite figure in vermilion.

But even that sight held Mia spellbound and drew sounds of admiration from the men—in truth, groans of pleasure. However, that only lasted a few heartbeats before the men returned to their senses and the sheriff rapped on the turret of the armored car, shouting, “Prepare to fire! Draw a bead on that bastard!”

Wait, Mia thought, but she couldn’t move. The ghastly demise of the young man who’d introduced himself as Zoah had had an explosive impact on her brain, crushing all other thoughts.

That streak of light had undoubtedly cut through Zoah’s neck. However, instead of being slain on the spot, he’d lived long enough to give Mia his name, knowing all the while he would die. Were there even words to describe such a bizarre and superhuman feat? But all that aside, why would D do such a horrible thing? The question numbed Mia’s mind. The handsome features now being dyed crimson by the vivid rain of blood had a cold beauty that dulled the very sunlight. He could murder his own parents—she just knew it. Knew it all too well. But even knowing that, in her heart Mia had still held a fiery little ember of conviction that he would never slaughter an innocent person so horribly.

Mia’s mind was pulled back to reality by the harsh music of a motor and gears. The armored car’s turret was turning toward D. The barrel of its cannon took unerring aim right at his face—dead center on his handsome visage. The marksman inside the turret was coolly taking aim through a little glass sighting window set in the armor plate. Crosshairs had been etched on the glass—and they came to a halt right between the eyes of their target.

Now! The index and middle fingers of his right hand pulled hard on the trigger. The rusty trigger was just about to pass the point of no return.

The gunner’s field of view stained crimson. Or, to be more precise, the glass window did.

He’d seen D’s upper body lean far back, and then snap forward again. But there was no way he could’ve imagined the blood that soaked every inch of D flying back at the armored car. It came with such speed, such force. The iron-plated vehicle shook when it struck.

However, its cannon belched fire. The forty-millimeter shell was true to its aim—then it flew wildly off course and made impact. Not with D’s face, but with the ground at his feet. Sparks and black smoke mixed with a roar.

Mia stood entranced by the crimson D until the impact bowled her and the men over.

D was in the air. The bloody torrent had rocked the cannon just before it fired, and at the same time he had sailed into the sky. He drifted down and landed on the front of the armored vehicle, as if thirty-odd feet hadn’t separated them in the first place. Without a second wasted, a silvery flash whisked through the turret. The armor plating could easily withstand forty-millimeter shells, but D’s blade stabbed through it like it was paper, piercing the throat of the gunner within.

Pulling his blade back out, D looked down at Mia on the ground and grinned. Ah! He was like youth incarnate, gleaming with his own beauty and cruelty.

Leaping easily through the air, D landed about fifteen feet from the group. Not a single drop of blood clung to his sword.

The figures around Mia stalked forward. They were villagers. Each gripped a stake or spear in his hands. Full of fighting spirit— or so they looked, their expressions vacant as if some other force had possessed them.

“Don’t go near him!” Mia cried, but that only served as a kind of cue to them.

Advancing a few steps, the villagers let out a cry that wasn’t quite a word and charged at D en masse. Light streaked between them, becoming vermilion spray a second later. The lifeblood that then shot up from the decapitated men looked like the kind of entertainment one might find at a banquet in hell. There was a succession of dull thuds all around D—the sound of the severed heads landing. Stabbing one of them with his sword, D flung it toward Mia.

It fell about three feet shy of her. Mia looked down and gasped when it rolled to her feet. It was Zoah’s head.

Unable to look at it, Mia raised her face frantically. D was right in front of her. She couldn’t say a word.

Between the speechless Mia and the Vampire Hunter, Zoah’s head rose. D had skewered it with his sword.

“From the look on his face, I doubt you could say he’s resting in peace. Why don’t you give him a kiss?”

How cruel! But as he thrust the horrible head in the girl’s pale face, a hint of surprise crept into D’s expression.

He’d intended to make Mia kiss the severed head. Mia recoiled, yet she was unafraid as the severed head seemed to sink into her face. The second the man’s and the woman’s faces seemed to overlap, Mia’s body had passed through D’s and come to stand behind him.

Looking over his shoulder in astonishment, D swung his sword down behind him. Mia was well within reach of his blade. And the instant the sword became a streak of light that split her body like a piece of firewood, she gave off an iridescent gleam and vanished.

Wasn’t that also Mia by the back of the vehicle, steadying herself with one hand on its body while she pressed the other to her chest?

“A diversion, eh? Not bad for a punk kid,” D remarked, coolly stepping forward. Astonishingly enough, the sword in his right hand still had Zoah’s head on it.

With this beautiful fiend closing on her, Mia couldn’t move. She couldn’t recall ever having a decoy spell she’d put her heart and soul into broken that way. She’d learned from her mother that a spell could be broken only by another spell—and she had absolute confidence that things always followed that natural law. And yet, here it’d been broken by an ordinary swordsman and his blade. More than the physical trauma of having her illusion destroyed, it was despair that caused Mia to freeze up.

“Now, why are you trying to fight it?” D asked, his query every bit as still and cold as a winter night.

Just then, the heavens and earth rumbled. Caught off guard, D staggered, while Mia was thrown more than six feet to one side. As the ground suddenly quaked like it’d been transformed into muddy slop, the iron vehicle and the corpses danced a crazed jig across it.

Trying desperately to maintain his balance all the while, D prepared to dash toward the brink of the subsidence.

“Looks like I might’ve underestimated him,” he muttered, although whom that comment was intended for was anybody’s guess.

Suddenly, his shoulder split as if it’d met with some unseen blade. A bloody mist shot out.

It was a cyborg horse. However, even cyborg horses came in varying qualities. The one that now stood perfectly poised in the distance, ignoring the noisy quaking of the earth, had a magnificent frame, lustrous coat, and fine musculature—everything about it attested to its being a model of the very highest quality and ability. Such a mount wasn’t easy to obtain out on the Frontier.

And D’s eyes were riveted to the blue figure astride that steed. He wore an indigo robe, and his lengthy hair, which hung like threads from the top of his head down to his waist in such a way that even his face was obscured, also had a somewhat chilling and mysterious indigo hue.

“Who are you?” D asked as he continued to defy the motion of the restless earth.

“I disposed of Origa,” the figure in blue told D, remaining completely motionless as he addressed the jostled swordsman. “Next, I’ll take care of you.”

Origa was the sorceress D had called on to solve the riddle of Muma. She’d been hacked to pieces the night D met with her, and it seemed that it’d been the work of this rider in blue.

Though he was confronted by an opponent skilled enough to remain utterly motionless through this savage quaking, and despite the fact that the flow of bright blood from his right shoulder was unabated, he didn’t seem at all surprised.

The hair of the figure in blue streamed off to one side like a swarm of countless insects. And yet, his face wasn’t visible.

What had D learned, and how did the man in blue know about it? And why had he slain Origa?

The black horse and blue rider approached. Although the animal was most definitely treading across the ground, its gait didn’t seem the least bit affected by the quaking that continued even now.

The instant the horse and rider sauntered within reach of his sword, D made a horizontal swipe with his blade without saying a word. He intended to sever the horse’s front legs, and as his foe was thrown from the tumbling animal, a second stroke would catch him without a moment’s delay.

The blade sliced. The black horse tumbled forward. Just as expected. And the rider in blue went flying. Just as expected. Reversing direction, D’s blade handily bisected his opponent’s torso.

At that instant the whole world was sealed away in blue. Out of the carved body of the man, a bluish hue sailed into the air. No, not merely a hue, but hair. Just how much hair did that rider in blue have inside his body? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, no, easily a million strands flew everywhere, and every last one of them stabbed into the ground or the rocks or even the armored car.

D managed to deflect each and every one in the first wave. However, the blue needles assailed him without end. One pierced his left shoulder. He deflected dozens more without pausing to extract that one, then another slipped through and stabbed into his solar plexus, and when he not surprisingly reeled from that for a second, another needle got him through the right eye, coming all the way out through the back of his head.

Another storm of blue was about to assail his reeling, staggering form, but then white smoke surged over him from one side like a wave. Smoke—smoke roiling up from the bottom of the subsidence. While the wind had indeed shifted in that direction, the way it moved to obscure him like a bodyguard made it seem as if it were imbued with a desire to protect him.

And within that cloud, what kind of explosion of thought and deed took place? The roiling of the white smoke grew ever more turbulent, swirling, painting everything with a solid and disturbing hue of white as it began to roll thickly over the road.

Mia was in the village hospital. Though she was weary to the marrow of her bones, the events of midday were branded into her brain, refusing to leave her or even wane, so while she wanted to sleep, a sort of insomnia now troubled her. All she could remember was that D had been forcing her to kiss a severed head when the earth had quaked—and that was it. Her body was thrown against the ground once or twice, and the next thing she knew, she was receiving treatment from a new scouting party that’d come from the village. Based on what one member had told her, all that’d been left at the scene was the tipped-over armored car and the sheriff—who’d lost both legs when they were pinned under the vehicle. The remains of Zoah and all the other villagers had vanished completely.

Though the villagers wanted to get the story from Mia, she kept silent. She’d decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the entire matter to the sheriff’s department. Simply keeping a dazed look on her face was sufficient to fool the villagers. As Mia kept up the act, countless questions sprang into her head and then faded again, and try as she might, she couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer to a single one of them before she sank wearily into a despairing conclusion.

Getting out of bed, Mia went over to the window. She could see the courtyard. White blossoms swayed in the flower beds. These were plants that bloomed by the light of the moon.

The moon hung in the middle of the sky. Its surface was like a silver platter, and onto it a gorgeous visage burned itself, sharper than the rest of its glow.

“D ...” she murmured sadly, although Mia herself wasn’t aware of the sadness. She’d witnessed his cruelty with her own two eyes. It’d been directed at her. She’d tasted terror and anger and hate. And yet his strikingly handsome face continued to hold the nubile fortuneteller captive.

“Damn, this is no good,” Mia told herself sternly. “What did I come here to do, anyway? After leaving my mother for dead ...”

The intense battle between will and emotion lasted only a second. Her chest, well developed for her age, rose and fell heavily as she let out a morose sigh.

“Come tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal,” Mia told herself. “Tomorrow.”

But there was no evidence to support that claim, and she had no confidence in it.

Mia focused her gaze intently on the crystal-clear night as if seeking salvation. The darkness grew thicker. A cloud had hidden the moon, and there was no other light. The moon quickly reclaimed its starring role. But that wasn’t what made the girl feel that the stillness had grown ever deeper.

A figure astride a white horse was in one corner of the garden. The moonlight cast sinful shadows on a face so handsome she had to wonder if the moon existed solely to praise him. D.

Fear bubbled up within her. Doubts eddied. Anger rose. Forgetting all that, Mia opened the windowpane.

The white horse and rider approached. There wasn’t a sound. Although the path through the courtyard was paved with bricks, the hooves of the horse D controlled remained silent.

“You’re okay...” Mia muttered to the handsome face that stopped not three feet from her.

Though she had intended to ask D what had happened after he’d flown down into the subsidence, she remained oblivious to the fact she hadn’t finished her question.

Still on horseback, D leaned toward her. No sooner had she noticed him placing one hand on the sill than a wind gusted in so quickly Mia didn’t have time to get out of the way, and then the Vampire Hunter stood in her room.

“I’d like to ask you something,” D said in the voice of the night. Before she even responded, D extended his right hand. Mia felt her back grow warm.

“What . . . what is it?” Embarrassment flooded through her. As if to push it away, she asked once more, “What is it?” She realized she’d forgotten to close the window.

It took her a while to understand the question. “Up top? Don’t joke around about that. That was you, wasn’t it?”

As the girl barely managed to choke back a hail of invective, D quietly gazed at her face, finally asking, “What did I do?”

Mia’s eyes were drawn to the vicinity of D’s left hip, and the girl showed some bewilderment before she looked at the Hunter’s face again.

“I only came back up just now. Up top, there was the smell of blood. Was that my doing?”

After a short time, Mia nodded. “You mean, that wasn’t you?” Nothing from the Hunter.

“As soon as I reached the bottom, I lost consciousness. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Mia found it incredibly difficult to believe that this gorgeous Hunter could lose consciousness even for the briefest of times. Managing to fight through her surprise, she said, “Okay, I’ll tell you all about it, then. In return, you have to tell me what happened underground.”

In keeping with the darkness, his words were low and grave, but even as she felt their inescapable pressure, Mia shot back, “That’s not fair. While you were gone, I went through hell. I’ll have you know, you—”

Mia broke off as it dawned on her that the person who’d put her through hell was the same person who stood before her, and she was left speechless. Judging from that, it would seem that up until now, she hadn’t considered that D to be the same as this one.

Her nerves already stretched to the breaking point, Mia didn’t even seem to notice it.

It’s not fair, Mia thought to herself, but she couldn’t fight him any longer.

There was nothing coercive about him. Well, actually there was, but in his soft query there was just the faintest bit of something terribly urgent—it had a ring of sadness to it wholly unsuited to a young man who seemed to be made of ice and steel.

“Fine,” Mia sighed, dropping her shoulders. She gestured to the chair next to her. “Have a seat. I’ll tell you everything.”

“I see,” D told her, rising unaffectedly and heading for the window. “Wait!”

Mia’s face was turned down, and she stared at her knees. “Is that all?” she said.

“You heard my tale, and now you’re just going to go? Without thanking me in any way?”

Squeezing his left hand into a tight fist, D said, “You have my thanks.” Then he prepared to turn away again.

However, the most astonished of all was Mia herself. Even she didn’t know why she’d said such a thing. Something warm had stirred in her chest and, unable to stand it, she expelled it from her mouth, where it became those preposterous words. What’s more, it was the middle of the night, and she was alone in a hospital room with a young man of unearthly beauty. Conveniently enough, there was a bed right there, too. Mia didn’t know what a proper expression of gratitude would be. But her heart was on fire.

D’s hand reached for her knee. Feeling like her heart might stop, she closed her eyes. The hand quickly came away.

“I meant—” the girl sputtered, beginning to rise in spite of herself. The gold coins tinkled merrily against the floor.

A black-gloved hand came to rest on her shoulder. Although that should’ve been what she wanted, Mia froze in place, and she couldn’t even speak. There was a chance this young man was a cold and merciless murderer. What was she doing with him?

His hand came away again quickly. Thick, heavy, and cold it was—and yet, a quiet warmth unlike anything before seeped into Mia’s heart. A chill struck her face.

For a long time, the young fortuneteller didn’t move from the edge of the bed. Then, finally, she stood up and quietly shut the window.

The next morning, Mia awoke at dawn’s first light. The hospital still slumbered peacefully. Gathering her things—which consisted of what she’d had on her when she was carried there—she left her hospital room without anyone around to challenge her. Walking to the stables on the edge of town, she bought a small cyborg horse and threw a simple saddle on its back. To any who saw her, she might’ve looked awfully tense.

“Where are you off to so early in the morning?” asked the old man who ran the stables. “You’re that fortunetelling girl they brought back to the hospital yesterday, ain’t you?”

It was a tiny village. Information was transmitted through it with the speed of a computer.

“That was a quick recovery. I get the feeling there’s gonna be bad trouble. You’d best get out of here right away. Yesterday, the kinfolk of those who went missing were raising a ruckus about wanting a word with you.”

It wasn’t out of the village she rode, but rather right through the middle of it. Though she passed a number of villagers who were apparently headed out to the fields, she galloped by them without taking notice.

Less than ten minutes later, she was at the western edge of the village. She’d cut across the entire community. The great subsidence

lay to the north of the village. In a spot that seemed unrelated to the pit, Mia dismounted.

A desolate plain spread before her. As the soil on this side of the village was fairly acid, it wasn’t suited to farming. And though it was a plain, here and there massive boulders lay on the ground or jutted from the earth as if to add ghastliness to the existing desolation.

When viewed from above, the spot where Mia dismounted was near a rock that was essentially in the center of a group of boulders. Mia tied the reins lightly around a nearby outcropping of rock, and then began to climb that boulder. Due to the fact that since childhood she’d spent day and night practicing fortunetelling and related spells under her mother’s tutelage, it was safe to say that outdoor activities weren’t exactly her strongest suit. Her hands got scraped and her breathing grew ragged. By the time she’d reached the summit of forty-five or fifty feet, her shoulders heaved with every breath.

Still struggling to catch her breath, she had both determination and fear in her eyes as she peered down. The eyes of any human but Mia would’ve seen only a vast wasteland, but beneath the black earth, she could see a single red line. A thick one. By her estimate from her present position, it had to be more than three feet wide. Mia pictured a massive and endless serpent gouging its way through the earth.

A disappointed sigh escaped her, but the next thing Mia knew, she was tightening her grip on the shoulder strap of her backpack. That and her own judgment were all she had to rely on. As she stared a bit harder, Mia planted the soles of both shoes firmly against the rock’s surface. The power of the rocks that stood in this region flowed into her body—-and through her optic nerves.

Somewhere on the red line. She needed it to be there, somewhere. Her gaze needled its way along the great serpent stretching through the depths of the earth. The red blurred.

Using a trick of her eyes to burn the location into her retinas, Mia began to climb down from the rock. On her horse, she reached her destination in under five minutes.

Her heart pounded madly. This was the first big job for her without any assistance from her mother. And now she had to destroy the energy pipe running through the ground. It was down about thirty feet deep. Who could’ve imagined that a conduit for enough energy to destroy a quarter of the Frontier would be buried so close to the surface? Although she had no idea how many decades or centuries it’d been down there, she was amazed that it still survived. Now she was about to destroy it.

She hesitated for only an instant. Setting down her backpack, Mia pulled an egg-shaped lump of metal from it. Tugging on its red tip, she extended its telescopic, directional antenna. As she reached for the timer, her finger trembled. She switched it on. A red light began to flash. There would be no turning back now. It was simply a matter of getting as far away as possible within the next ten minutes. Through the antenna, the explosive force of the atomic charge would be channeled down some thirty feet underground—more than enough to destroy the energy conduit. But God only knew what that energy would do when it spilled out. There was a chance Mia might go down in history as the grim reaper responsible for killing every living creature in the region.

“Mom—here I go!” she said to herself, driving the atomic charge into the ground. Since the explosion would be underground, fifty yards away would’ve been safe, but there was no way of knowing how devastating the energy inside the pipe would be when it was unleashed. She’d have to get three-quarters of a mile away.

Looking for her mount, Mia turned and was stunned to see D right in front of her. A short distance away was a chestnut cyborg horse, so he must’ve come without Mia noticing him. As strange as it was that she hadn’t heard even a footstep, she didn’t find it strange at all where this young man was concerned.

“Are you—D?” Mia asked, though it sounded to her like the words were a million miles away.

“No,” she replied. As D approached, she told him, “I just set an atomic charge. The timer can’t be disarmed. Get out of here.” “What an interesting thing to do.”

“Yeah. I have to exorcise this demon that’ll spread over this village—no, the whole Frontier region.”

“I was—” he began to say and then turned around, having sensed Mia’s murderous intent. Before D could even finish turning, Mia planted the dagger in her right hand in his heart with perfect precision.

The next move came from Mia. Letting go of the dagger she’d stuck in him, she backed away a step or two.

“You’re a murderer! But thanks to you, I know the D I met last night was the real one. There really are two of you after all.” Rasping, D asked, “How . . . did you know?”

“I see,” he said, his voice carrying strength. Before Mia even had time to be shocked, D reached his left hand for the hilt of the dagger jutting from his chest and pulled it out without any trouble. “Care to try that again? Or should I skin you alive here and now and let the atomic flames cook you?”

A faint pain shot through the base of Mia’s throat, calling attention to the fact that D had drawn his longsword and pressed it against her.

“With that model, we should have ten minutes till it explodes. Time enough for a little chat. So, I went to see you last night, did I?”

Mia furrowed her brow. She got the feeling that D knew more than he let on. Because he had a different horse, she’d thought he had to be a different person, but could it be that she was mistaken? “And what did I talk with you about, then?”

“I went into the garden and slipped into your room through the window-—right? And as I was leaving, I put my hand on your shoulder. Do you remember that?”

For Mia, it felt as if all the blood were draining from her body. So, this D was the same as the one the night before after all.

“Let’s suppose for a minute that I just bought a change of horses. What did we talk about?”

Gazing steadily into Mia’s eyes, D said, “Okay, next matter. Why did you come out here?”

“My mother appeared to me and told me what to do. What I was supposed to do out here. Hey,” Mia continued, her strength roused once more.

D’s lips twisted into a grin. “You’ll find out in hell. In no time there’ll be more people than you can count joining you there. You’ll have to ask one of them.”

His tone was that of a judge delivering his verdict, and it made Mia close her eyes. She felt ready to meet her maker. Various thoughts came and went in her mind. Her mother had visited her in her dream—she was probably dead now, wasn’t she? Once Mia was dead, too, who’d tell fortunes for those in the nearby village? Was old Kevin’s granddaughter going to marry the younger Sawyer brother? Or would it be the postmaster’s blockhead of a son?

Blistering heat came to her throat—then vanished unexpectedly. More than that pain, it was the lurid and malicious aura that’d buffeted her for some time that left Mia reeling. As her consciousness was slipping away, she heard someone say, “So, I finally meet up with myself.”

Her eyes snapped open again. The sight that greeted them was something Mia never could’ve pictured, but at the same time exactly what she expected.

CHAPTER 3

Wide-brimmed traveler’s hat, inky black long coat, sword across the back—-and more than anything, those handsome features. No matter how she looked at them, both of them were D. However, the atmosphere that surrounded each was as different as shadow and light. Though the D with a longsword in hand had a viciousness that would crumble stone and steel, the aura drifting from the D who stood empty handed was the pure ghastliness of one prepared to battle to the death.

The two beautiful figures suddenly blurred. Mia had shed a tear.

Great, there really are two Ds. That other one—that bastard— wasn’t him. And she wept with joy at the thought of that.

“Are you going to draw, D?” the other D asked, lowering his blade. “As I’m sure you probably know, our capabilities are perfectly matched like no two others in all the world. But I’m at a distinct advantage having drawn first.”

One D referred to the other as D, but the other one didn’t reply. The speaker’s gorgeous form was pierced by an egregious, overwhelming killing lust.

“I could kill you now,” he continued, “but that wouldn’t be much fun. It’d be a waste. For me to disappear would be a great loss to the world. Join forces with me, D.”

“D is your name,” the other D said, speaking for the first time. The voice and tone were exactly the same—but somehow entirely different. “If you want to make this world your own, go ahead and do so. I only want to know where he has gone.”

“So, you came in search of some clue to that? You don’t have any interest in me at all then?” he laughed. “The other me is even scarier than I thought. I can well imagine how incredible the long years have been. However, fear not—they are at an end. I will ask you one last time: are you willing to join forces with me?”

The world froze. Time itself stopped, and in a space where the very color seemed to drain from the planet, the youth uttered a single word in a rusty yet inhumanly beautiful voice: “No.”

The air whistled, and one D’s sword stretched toward the chest of the other. It was so sharp and moved with such speed it would’ve seemed inescapable to anyone who saw it.

As D had thrust his blade, Mia had slammed into him. Instinctively D shoved her away and swung his blade around again, but it no longer moved with the same speed it had at first. A ching! rang out with a flash of light. D staggered backward-—the resistance he’d met had been totally unexpected. Even without the original force behind his blade, he couldn’t believe the other D could draw and parry his blade in a single movement.

Still poised for action as he leapt backward, D made a swipe with his right hand. The head of the girl who’d slammed into him went flying, and then popped like a soap bubble. However, it was fair to say that his action had been a grave mistake.

The D that he’d crossed blades with hadn’t stood around waiting. As he leapt in pursuit of the first D, the speed and distance of his jump were exactly equal—a perfect match. On D’s landing, a merciless slash from the high position came straight down on his head—and there was a horrific thud.

An explosion of gore was the only way to describe the way red was unleashed on the world, and the thud came from the man’s right arm, which had been severed at the shoulder. Still gripping its sword, the limb twitched feverishly but quickly turned a lifeless hue.

If what this D had said about them being “perfectly matched” was true, he might’ve died right then and there. Although he made another bound in an attempt to escape, his leap was clumsy, while the other D leapt gracefully.

However, at that point dust kicked up from the ground between the two of them, and the heavy crack of what seemed to be old-fashioned rifles resounded from the direction of the village. D and D turned that way simultaneously and saw horses and riders approaching. Though several of the riders held rifles at the ready, there was no telling which of them had fired.

His face pale, the D that’d lost an arm let out a low chuckle. “These clowns probably think they’re seeing things. Guess I’ll have to bring them back to their senses. So long, for the time being.”

One D fleeing, the other D in pursuit—and a number of bullets ripped through the body of each. True to their dhampir nature, they were jolted ever so slightly but didn’t fall.

The fleeing D turned to the one in pursuit and told him, “There’s less than two minutes left, you know.”

The remaining D appeared to hesitate just for a heartbeat, and then turned quickly to face Mia and the approaching villagers— and the atomic charge. As he walked toward them, he staggered a bit. Three red spots marked his chest and shoulder area. The slugs from the rifles were intended to take down armored beasts weighing nearly a ton. They were enough to instantly kill any ordinary human three times over.

Their mounts kicking up dust as they closed in, the marksmen held their rifles at the ready. A new volley of gunfire was already prepared for this gorgeous target.

“Stop!” someone shouted just then, rushing out between them. It was Mia. She was alive. The figure that had been cut down moments earlier was only an illusion. “This isn’t who you think it is. Stop it!”

In the meantime, D swiftly closed on the atomic charge. As he bent down over it, bullets kicked up dust all around him. Not seeming the least bit concerned, D pulled up the atomic charge. He placed the palm of his left hand against the top of it. Scalding plasma enveloped his body. There was a flash that seemed liable to sear the optic nerves, but Mia’s eyes shut automatically against it. The world was stained blue.

Startled, the horses in the fore of the advancing group halted. How long was it before shadows formed again in a world that’d been robbed of them? Suddenly, the blue glow was swallowed by the sunlight.

Putting the atomic charge—which had already finished discharging its energy—down at his feet, D stood there silently.

Seeing from his preternaturally beautiful appearance and the raucous orgy of light they’d just witnessed that this was no ordinary person they were dealing with, his pursuers and their steeds froze in their tracks. However, a hoarse shout of “There’s the girl!” gave way to cries of encouragement and lashes to their mounts as the riders once more galloped closer. They halted at a spot more than thirty feet from D, and not one of them showed any signs of dismounting. The few riders who’d broken off must’ve gone after the D who’d fled.

“The sheriff saw a certain man slaughter all those villagers. Seems it was a guy so good looking there’d be no mistaking him for anyone else in the world,” said the portly old man with gray hair who was apparently their leader. On his chest was a sheriff’s star.

Staring intently at D, he shook his head from side to side, saying, “Damn, you’d even make a man like me funny in the head. What’s your name, young fella? Oh, that’s right—I’m Old Jal, third person to hold the post of sheriff in this town.”

In the span of a second, the color drained from the old man’s face. As he looked ready to keel over backward, two men hastened to support him, one on either side.

“I’m okay. Let go of me,” Old Jal said, shaking his head from side to side. Pulling free of the men and returning to his original position, he continued, “The moment I saw your face, I suspected it might be you—never thought I’d actually meet you, though.” The words came out of him like a groan, and his face was slick with cold sweat.

“As sheriff, I’m giving you an order. Get out of town immediately. If not, we’ll deal with you right here.”

He raised his right hand. Once, he must’ve been a true force to reckon with, because the marksmen showed not a mote of uncertainty as they raised their weapons in unison. Then, they immediately became flustered, also in unison. For D had looked at the men.

D glanced at Mia, who was crouched down and covering her eyes. “Her eyes were damaged by the flames from that atomic charge,” he said. “She needs treatment.”

“I’d have taken her to a doctor even without you telling me to. You know, there are some families that are having a hard time accepting the sheriff’s story. After she bolted from the hospital this morning, she passed one of those folks on the road. That’s how we knew where to find her.”

D’s earlier remark about the group not figuring had left Old Jal stupefied at how that voice and face had differed as much as heaven and hell. Finally managing to quell his inner turbulence, the man replied, “That was my call. I figured she might’ve run off to the freak that butchered all those villagers. And it looks like I was right on the money.”

At that point D squatted down beside Mia and gently brushed her hand aside, laying his left hand over her eyes in its place.

“Sure, so long as he swore he’d never come near our village again. Vampire Hunter D—that’s a name more feared than the Red Death.”

At that gloomy female voice, the men turned as one and looked at the ground between them and D—at Mia. As the girl got back up, her eyes had a soft glow.

“Vampire Hunters are real heroes, battling the Nobility to defend us. And out of them all, one man’s name stands out as having the greatest character, skill, and looks in all their history—and that name is D. Shame on you for calling him fearful.”

“There aren’t any Nobility around our village!” a rider to the back shouted out in a voice that was close to a scream. “Yet here we have a Vampire Hunter. What the hell’s he doing here?”

“Actually . . .” Mia began, but she was at a loss for a reply. In villages where peace prevailed, townspeople were loath to mention the Nobility or anyone connected to them in any way. Especially Vampire Hunters.

“You’re right,” D said, taking over for Mia. “My work is finished here. I’ll leave now.”

“Not yet you don’t!” someone bellowed in anger from the last rank of riders. “The way the sheriff tells it, this has to be the son of a bitch that killed my boy. There’s no way I’m just gonna sit here and let him go, Old Jal!”

The men turned in unison to look at the wrinkled face of the old man. The marksmen, however, never took their eyes off D. The eyes of every man there carried expectations of the slaughter to come.

Though those looks played across the old man’s face like flames, it remained as steady as bedrock. “Swear to me you’ll never come back,” he said to D.

The air solidified. Deep in their inner ears, every one of them heard a harsh metallic sound. Perhaps it was some sort of warning sign set off by their brains. Danger! This young man is simply too gorgeous. The marksmen’s fingers had the triggers back as far as they could possibly go without firing. And those fingers trembled. In their heart of hearts, each of them screamed, Hurry up and decide already! We’re gonna have no choice but to fire!

A shriveled voice drifted out across the wintry wastes. “Go.” Rifle barrels dropped as if they’d been snapped off. The marksmen felt relieved.

“I’m warning you,” the old man said, trying desperately to sound as resolute as possible. “The next time we see the two of you anywhere near our village, we’ll fire on you without a minute’s hesitation. Don’t you forget that.”

Shooting a glance at Mia, who stood stock still, D said, “She doesn’t have any connection to me.”

“She don’t have any connection to our village, either,” Old Jal declared. “Both of you go on and get now. Luckily, your horses are still fine. And you’d do well to never come near our village again.” Turning his back on them without a word, D walked over to where his horse was tethered to some rocks a short distance away.

“Sheriff, please hear me out,” Mia cried to the lawman. She sounded like she’d been backed into a comer. “At present, something incredibly bad is about to happen to the world. Nothing at all is clear about precisely what it is, but it’s going to happen just the same. And right here is where it’ll start.”

A gunshot rang out, and at the same time, a puff of dust went up, making Mia take a step back. One of the marksmen had fired a shot.

Mia gave in. Gnawing her lip, she headed for the cyborg horse. Suddenly, she heard approaching hoofbeats to her rear. Turning, she tried to get away, but it was too late. The second she groaned from the shock of a thick arm wrapping around her waist, Mia was pulled off her feet and up onto the back of a horse.

“Hunter, turn and face me!” bellowed the rider behind Mia, resting a compact crossbow on one shoulder while, with his other hand, he gripped the reins and held a combat knife to the girl’s jugular vein.

“The matter of you killing my boy still ain’t settled. Don’t you move—you do, and I’ll kill the girl,” the powerfully built farmer shouted.

As those cries bombarded him, D straddled his horse, and then turned to face Gully the farmer. It looked as if he didn’t have the slightest regard for Mia’s safety. But then, that went without saying. He was D.

Before his cry had ended, Gully felt a sharp pain in both his left and right wrists. He looked down at them. Pieces of unfinished wood jutted from both. Rough wooden needles from D.

Screaming like a wild animal all the while, Gully raised both hands. Twisting around in the saddle, he tumbled right off his horse. And hitting the ground, he rolled from side to side.

A black lust for killing prickled through the bodies of the marksmen and they raised their barrels.

The shriek of agony came simultaneously with one of the marksmen toppling backward on his mount. A red stain seeped through his left hand when he pressed it to the opposite shoulder, and his rifle fell to the ground trailing purplish smoke.

What’d happened? Overcome now by shock and awe, the remaining marksmen froze in place, horses and all. A sword glittered in D’s right hand, and he held it level right in front of his chest. Actually, they knew the answer. They simply didn’t want to believe it.

How could he possibly deflect that deadly bullet and send it right back at the shooter? Before they could even question the rationality of it, the men’s blood froze in the face of undeniable facts. Attacking him again would be impossible now.

Perhaps gleaning this, the gorgeous Hunter returned his sword to its sheath and quietly turned his back to them. Before long, the hoofbeats of his white steed were heard, but not one of the men made a move to stop him.

Though D heard the sound of hoofbeats behind him, he didn’t turn to look. He was on the highway that ran west out of the village. The sounds quickly pulled up alongside him.

“You’re a meanie, not even turning around,” Mia said as she worked the reins.

D advanced without replying to her. Mia understood that he probably had no further use for the village or her. But if that was the case, what was he after?

“Um, there’s something I’d like you to do for me,” Mia said, leaning her body out in D’s direction. “I want you to go back to the village with me. Please.”

“I realize you’re not interested in anything but yourself. But hear me out anyway. A major crisis is about to strike this village, just as I told the others. If nothing is done to avert it, it’ll be the start of a disaster that will change the whole world as we know it. I came here because my mother told me about it. I might not be able to change things, but I still can’t just sit back and do nothing. D, if anyone could do something, it’s you. You could alter our destiny. That much I know. That’s why I’m begging you. Please, stay here in the village.”

Mia’s eyes went round. The question had come in D’s voice. She didn’t notice that he had his left hand balled into a tight fist.

“They ran you out of town, too. You even got taken hostage. It shouldn’t matter at all to you what happens to their village.”

“The same thought occurred to me. But I can’t let this happen. I—I’m a fortuneteller’s daughter. I’m responsible for the futures I’ve seen.”

“The people in the village would tell you they don’t need your concern, right?”

Mia twisted around. Back down the road, the shadowy form of riders wavered like a heat shimmer. There were around ten of them.

They were probably the families of the deceased. And it looked like they’d had all they could stand.

Looking from him to their pursuers and back again, Mia could eventually make out the shapes of horses and riders that caught up to them then rode past to form up lines about fifteen feet ahead. All of them were formidable in stature. Muscular or lean, graying or bald, there were all types, but they were united by the looks of fiery animosity they turned on the pair. The spears, swords, and bows they gripped shone in the sunlight.

“We lost our son yesterday,” said a giant of a man armed with a bow and arrow. “I can’t just let the matter sit. We haven’t even found our boy’s remains. So you’re gonna have to tell us again exactly what happened.”

“I was with them. With your sons—I’ll tell you about it,” Mia interjected.

“We’ll hear what you have to say later. From what the sheriff said in the hospital, this guy was the killer. Yet Old Jal let him go without doing a thing. And that don’t sit quite right with us, you see.”

“So you’re going to take matters into your own hands? Don’t. Even off at a distance, you must’ve seen the other guy who looked exactly like him. A couple of people went off after him—off that way. He’s the one responsible!”

Judging from the way the men exchanged glances, a number of them seemed to know what she was talking about. However, it didn’t last long, and the looks that were once more trained on the pair didn’t soften in the least.

“I know,” the bald farmer said, fighting desperately to keep his emotions under control. “And that’s why we didn’t want to pull

an ambush. We’ve seen how good he is, but we still don’t feel like being underhanded. Because that’s not the way we raised our boys, either. That’s why we’ll come at you one at a time. If you kill us all, you can go wherever you like.”

After silently gazing at the imposing figure for so long, D remarked casually, “Come at me in force.”

The world froze. Even Mia’s eyes snapped open wide, and the girl was left unable to speak.

“Don’t do this, D!” Mia shouted frantically as she followed after him. Not that she was concerned about his safety. No matter how skilled these powerful men might imagine themselves, there was no way they could defeat D with mere swords and spears. And yet, she wasn’t worried for the villagers’ sake either. She simply didn’t want D to become a true butcher.

Three. The world was lost beneath angry shouts and gleaming light. Silvery flashes closed in on D from all directions.

In the direction in which the light had flowed, another sound reverberated from the ground—the sound of swords and spears, bows and arrows sticking into the earth. Each and every man on horseback cradled his right hand and moaned. Their wrists were dislocated. More than the pain of their injuries, it was the knowledge that they’d all been dealt with by a single stroke from the young man before them that made the men stiffen.

D moved forward. The ranks broke—not because the men told their mounts to do so, but rather because the horses themselves cleared a path out of sheer terror. D walked away, and Mia followed after him.

Once their shapes had disappeared down the road, the bald man finally muttered, “The damn freak is . . .” But he caught himself, adding, “No, that’s not what he is.”

“Yeah,” another replied. “He got us all riled up and knocked us silly to take a load off our shoulders. That ain’t the sort of thing no murderer would do. We were in the wrong.”

“You know, he’s probably a lot better man than we thought.” When the men looked down the road, it was like they were looking at a whole different person, but by that point there was no longer any sign of D and Mia.

An orderly and shimmering stripe across the black earth—that’s what the Noble Road was, and no sooner had they got on it than D, who didn’t seem to be listening no matter how Mia tried to reason with him, suddenly looked up at the sky and said, “Sure is strong, isn’t it?”

Mia herself had gotten pretty annoyed and hadn’t spoken to him for quite some time, but she was sweating so badly she’d answered him without even thinking.

From time to time, the scenery ahead of them wavered as heat shimmers rose from the ground.

“Why don’t we take a little break?” Mia asked. “It seems like the sun is out of whack or something. I can’t take much more of this.” “Hold on for another thousand yards or so. There’s a resting place up ahead.”

“You mean a dark abode?” Mia said, scanning the glittering road before them.

Constructed of hexagonal pieces that could’ve been either stone or metal, the road was a good thirty feet wide, and it twisted and turned its way toward the oddly shaped rocks that were visible in the distance. Designed by the Nobility, after thousands of years this road didn’t show even modest signs of wear as it raced off across the earth, to the bottom of the sea, and up into the sky.

The “dark abode” was the resting house D had mentioned. Even the Nobility had been powerless to stop the cosmic movements of the earth and sun. And with the coming of morning, even the Nobility’s roads would be bathed in sunlight. Of course, by day they would take refuge in coffins safe within their carriages, but considering the potential danger if they were by some chance exposed to the rays of the sun, they had constructed emergency shelters every score or so of miles along the road. These were known as “resting places.” In size they ranged from tiny ones that would accommodate only a pair of Nobles up to huge ones that could shelter a hundred people, but the dark abode Mia had mentioned referred to a structure designed to protect ten to twenty people from the deadly rays. Concomitant with the Nobility’s millennia of decline, many of these had been weathered into ruin, taken out of service, or destroyed at the hands of mankind, but a large number of them still dotted the shimmering road, providing a place where the surviving Nobles or people who’d lost their way might find a brief respite from the travails of their journey. That not only Mia but also D would want to take a break was a natural-enough assumption given the nature of the blood that flowed through him. D was probably suffering far more than Mia at present.

“This is really strange,” Mia said after about five minutes had passed, looking over at D beside her. Every time her lips moved, beads of sweat went flying. “The sun’s just too hot. There’s no way this is—

Heat shimmers rose from the ground to obscure him. Even distorted like that, he was still gorgeous.

There it is, Mia thought fuzzily. Her heat-wracked body had been drained of emotion. Her skin ached as if it were on fire. Her field of view was bleached white. The sunlight was becoming a scorching implement of death.

Their horses side by side, they reached the dome. As the girl joyfully slipped out of the saddle, she looked at D. His gorgeous form was in the process of slowly failing over.

While Mia raced over to where he’d fallen to the ground, she could feel her own consciousness slipping away. Collapsing on top of D, the fortuneteller’s daughter fainted. Sunlight ruthlessly roasted her body.

A powerful chill spread from Mia’s forehead, and she opened her eyes. D’s left hand was resting on her brow.

“Right now, you’re in a better condition to do something than me. Open the door.”

“Okay,” Mia said, nodding as she got up and turned around— only to be dumbfounded.

She couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds. But even if she’d been out for an hour, it would’ve been impossible for such a thing to happen. The austere gray structure had vanished completely, and a valley strung with oddly shaped rocks filled Mia’s view.

“Hallucinating?” Mia rubbed her eyes, but the new scenery showed no signs of changing.

“If any creature but a Noble . . . comes near it . . . the defense systems come into play . . . The valley is an illusion.”

When D fell, it had recognized that Mia was a mere human. “The dome is . . . right there. Try to touch it.”

An incredulous look on her face, Mia extended her right hand. She didn’t feel anything. The area was just empty space. Her senses told her so.

At the sound of a hoarse voice completely unlike D’s, Mia looked in surprise in the direction from which it’d come, but D’s left hand simply lay on the ground.

“There’s no way a human could get one of the Nobility’s buildings open, D!”

The voice seemed to be trying to rouse the Hunter, and it sounded for all the world as if it came from the palm of his left hand.

Before a powerful curiosity about confirming this could burst free, D ordered her, “Take my left hand off at the wrist.”

“What?” Mia exclaimed, her eyes bugging quite understandably. However, before her surprise could become a refusal, D said, “If we don’t do something . . . both of us will bake out here. Unbutton my coat.” His tone was overpowering and would brook no insubordination. And though that was part of the reason Mia complied, she was also listening to the words ringing in her ears.

“Both of us will bake out here.” That can’t happen. I won’t let it. Have to do something. Must save D.

Once she’d undone the buttons, he told her, “My sword’s to your left. Use that.”

A glistening black hilt protruded from a well-worn scabbard. The hilt had a carving of coiled ivy wrapped around it. As she pulled it free, the steely blade let her know it had the weight of a man’s weapon. How did the gorgeous youth swing such a hefty blade?

D’s eyes were closed. She was staring at him in spite of herself when a voice said, “He’s gone comatose. Hurry up and make that cut!”

“I’m his left hand. Now getting cracking. If you don’t, he and you are both gonna die. Well, technically it’s more accurate to say one of you will be destroyed'—”

“Oh, I see the look 011 your face has changed. Ready to get to it, are you? Yeah, that’s right; raise his sword just like that. Damn you, your legs are going all rubbery! Can’t you stand up straight? Put more back into it! Yeah, that’s more like it. Raise it—now!”

Though she tried to pry her hands free of the sword, her fingers remained wrapped around it like a bit of ornamentation affixed to the hilt. The feeling of severing a human hand for the first time had left Mia in a state of shock.

Something tugged powerfully at her ankle. Her eyes dropped in alarm, and then she shrieked. The fingers around her ankle and the hand connected to them were all part of the limb she’d just lopped off D.

“I could go myself, but it’d be a hell of a lot quicker to have a real live human carry me over. Come on! Pick me up and bring me exactly where I tell you.”

“We could do without all the sulking. Do you have any idea what your job here is?”

A second later, an electric shock shot from Mia’s ankle through her whole body, making her jump.

“ ‘Left Hand’ will do. Sass me again and I’ll raise the voltage next time.”

In an exaggerated, contorted action, Mia picked up the left hand. If she hadn’t formed a vision of D in her mind, she never would’ve been able to do it.

“So, what am I supposed to do with this thing?” she asked while averting her gaze. Not a single drop of blood spilled from the gaping wound on the wrist.

“So, what should I do, O high and mighty Left Hand, sir?” “Don’t get smart with me. Okay, lift me up ever so gently and carry me over to where I say. Do that, and everything will go smooth as silk.”

“Ah, ha, ha,” the left hand laughed with apparent surprise. Mia tried to hide her disgust as she lifted the limb.

Her body was bleached white. The sunlight had grown blisteringly hot. Mia closed her eyes. While her body might be able to endure the light, her optic nerves were another matter.

“That bastard’s even begun to control the sun, has he? I don’t think we’ll be able to let that slide. Hurry up, Mia baby!” “What’s this baby crap?” she snapped back, but she knew she had no choice but to do as the hand said. “What should I do now?”

“Take five normal-sized paces straight ahead. Next, take another two and a half to the right. Then raise me up to eye level.”

“Ooookay,” she replied snidely, and then she moved to the spot as directed. Sweat poured from her, and the refreshing chill within her was dying. Her legs began to buckle.

“Don’t move, damn you! This calls for an incredibly delicate touch,” the left hand shouted.

This is grim, she thought. I think we’re done for. Even my brain is sweltering.

No sooner did she start to open her eyes than sweat coursed into them. Her bangs drooped down over her eyes. As she gave her head a desperate shake, her eyes caught the exquisite face of the man lying on the ground.

From nowhere at all, strength welled up in her. Strength intended not for her own salvation, but to save another.

“You did great, Mia,” a hoarse but satisfied voice remarked, but the second it entered Mia’s ears, she dropped to the ground.

Descending marble stairs, Mia came to a bath surrounded by bizarre stones. It was a natural hot spring that’d been modified for the Nobility’s exclusive use. Dropping the towel that’d covered her from the chest to the crotch, she showered, and then got into the water. It seemed to purify her sweat-soaked body. Letting out a deep breath, she looked all around as steam rose like clouds from the rocks beneath the domed ceiling.

Who would’ve thought this was the interior of an impregnable dome capable of withstanding a direct hit from a nuclear weapon?

More than thirty minutes had passed since Mia regained consciousness. According to the left hand, it’d gone inside and got D some of the Nobility’s metabolism-stabilizing drugs, and the Hunter had brought Mia in. Although she didn’t find it particularly strange that the limb had become part of D again somewhere along the line, she was delighted by the hitherto unheard calmness in its voice as it drew her attention to a map of the dome projected into thin air and suggested, “Why don’t you have a hot soak?”

She melted away into a peaceful state of mind. But from deep in her heart, an anxiety rose that threatened to crush her sense of satisfaction and harmony. The other D—who or what was he? And what was this unprecedented crisis her mother was predicting that would change the whole world? What was she supposed to do, anyway? And how about D?

It came to her in a flash. The dashing Hunter was clearly the only person alive who could avert the disaster in that vision. However, from what Mia had seen, he was ready to depart this area, leaving her with his frosty rejection and indifference as her only mementos. And once he’d abandoned her, what could she do on her own?

A feeling of loneliness more painful than anyone should recall closed tightly around her heart.

“Mom, I’m scared,” Mia said, cradling herself in the hot water. But its warmth felt as empty as an illusion. “I’m not like you, Mom. What am I supposed to do? I can’t do anything!”

Her body trembled a bit. That hadn’t happened in years. Tears slipped from beneath her closed lids and rolled down her cheeks.

Just then, she sensed someone standing over her. Arriving without warning, they had appeared all of a sudden. And this told her who it had to be.

“D?” she called out, only then sliding down in the warm water up to her chin. “I could just die! What are you doing in here?”

The one she sensed didn’t reply. Wondering if he was looking at her, Mia felt as if her body was withering with shame. But at the same time, something about this—just the tiniest bit—made her heart race.

The second Mia realized that remark wasn’t aimed at her, her body no longer felt the warmth of the hot spring. A human shape rose from the bath ten feet ahead of her. Though droplets rained from him, they did nothing to hide his face or form. It was D. But which one?

The D in the bath grinned mischievously. The water came up to his waist. From the elbow down, both his arms were underwater.

“Are you going to leave or not, D?” he asked. After a short time, he continued, “Not going to answer? It seems I’m not too talkative. To be perfectly honest, I would prefer that you weren’t around. However, considering that I’d have no way of knowing when you might come back, it would seem best to dispose of you right now.”

The D in the bath swiftly sank down. The water came up to his chest, and then a second later, fearful objects assailed the D on dry land. Mia’s eyes snapped open painfully wide, because said objects were human heads. Apparently freshly severed, each sported a gory neck wound.

“These are the villagers that let you go earlier,” D declared. “The useless buffoons. But at least now there’s a use for them. They were actually grateful to you. Seeing them like this now, don’t you feel anything?”

A white streak scorched through the air. A severed head shook. A wooden needle had just pierced it right between the eyes. The D on dry land had hurled it, while the one in the bath had used the villager’s head to shield himself. Sending up a spray, his body sank beneath the surface of the bath.

“Move, and the girl dies,” said a voice that came from the water. “My blade is resting between her legs. Is the other me willing to strike if it’d mean a lovely young girl would get slashed in two?”

As Mia felt terror sink its talons into her heart, her senses focused on her groin. She couldn’t feel a blade. However, she found it impossible to believe that this man with the appearance of D would be lying. And the source of her true terror was the thought that the D behind her would strike at his foe without any concern for her life.

Mom, Mia thought, closing her eyes and bracing herself for the agony that was sure to be visited on her. She felt lightheaded. Did it last for an instant, or was it an eternity?

“Come out of there,” D told her, sounding as if nothing at all had transpired.

Violent emotions tore through Mia’s heart like a sudden gale. Just now, she’d been ready for him to cut her down. And along with her fear and resignation, there was the thought that if it were him doing it, it wouldn’t be all that bad. And yet, how could he still be so cold to her? How could he not know how she felt?

Mia turned around. She intended to have a word with D. However, the gorgeous young man was nowhere to be seen in the steaming white bath.

When Mia had dressed and gone back to the parlor, D was standing by the window and staring out. In his black raiment, even as he took such a perfectly common pose, he looked horribly isolated from everything that surrounded him. It was probably the way he’d always lived—perhaps from the very second he was bom. What kind of people had this young man had for parents? Inside, Mia quaked with an unusual curiosity.

D, she was about to call out to him when the figure in black turned in her direction. Instinctively Mia halted, unable to move.

When she heard the left hand say that, the tension left her. The machinations of the other D had inspired that much fear in her.

Mia gazed at D in amazement. A single remark from the young man carried much more weight than what the left hand said.

“We didn’t notice him slipping in here. The same would probably go for him leaving.”

“Imagine someone coming and going in the Dark Abode without you noticing! I find that hard to believe.”

“What are you?” she said, only realizing that the question was pointless after she’d asked it.

“I’m going to take a rest; then I’ll be leaving. You can do as you like.” “Do you really have to go?”

“Those people were murdered—by someone who looks just like you. He’s trying to keep you in the area. At this rate, there could be a lot more deaths.”

“He’s waiting until you can’t stand it anymore. One after another he’ll kill anyone connected to you, waiting until you come to him.” “You’re reading too much into this.”

“If that’s the case, then he’s making a mistake. I’m leaving.” “Even knowing that death and destruction and slaughter will cover the earth? Even knowing that the only one who can possibly stop it is you?”

“If you won’t leave, I will,” D said, picking up the saddle that was sitting on the table and turning for the door.

“That’s Mr. Left Hand to you,” a hoarse voice said from the vicinity of D’s hip as the Hunter walked away.

“Isn’t there any way to keep him from going? It’s like he doesn’t even know how important he is.”

“Will you make it worth our while?” the left hand inquired, his voice suddenly dwindling.

“Very well. Do you have money? He’s a Hunter. Arrrgh!” A cry of pain was heard from the Hunter’s tightly balled fist.

D was about to go through the door, but the Left Hand’s words had been enough for Mia.

“Wait. I want to hire you!” she said to him, her words nearly an angry bellow.

He was a Vampire Hunter—there was no point in his staying anywhere where he couldn’t put his abilities to good use. So Mia broke off there.

D was about to go. To Mia, all eternity seemed to lie between them. Just then, a certain thought flashed through her brain, but it was unclear whether it could be termed a revelation or a plot.

“D,” she called out to him, the expression on her face so hard and intense she seemed like a completely different person. “You said he’s you, right? In which case, he’s also a dhampir—he has Noble blood running through him.”

On the other side of the door, D’s form came to a sudden stop, as if he’d turned into a statue.

“I hear there’s nothing the Nobility love more than the blood of a young girl—a virgin. If that’s so, how about this, D?”

Suddenly raising her left hand, Mia flashed her clenched right hand across the opposite wrist. It was wrapped about the knife she carried for self-defense. Fresh blood dripped noisily to the floor.

“Genuine virgin’s blood. Oh, doesn’t that do anything for you, D? Please, say something.”

Mia had cut the artery. If she didn’t stop bleeding, she’d be dead of blood loss in under a minute.

D turned around. High on that figure the hue of darkness, a pair of lights burned. Like blood-colored rubies, they were filled with a stark and brutal hunger. D’s eyes.

“I’m sorry. That was a horrible, stupid thing to do. But I had no choice. D, those eyes are proof of your lineage. Proof of the Noble blood that flows in your veins. Hear my request, D. I want the other you to die—by your hand.”

As soon as she finished saying that, Mia collapsed on the spot. Although this was due in part to a precipitous loss of blood, it was also because she’d eked out every ounce of desperate energy to make that outrageous request. Looking like a white blossom that’d fallen to the ground, she had a red stain spreading from her with a heavy scent.