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Cover art by Yoshitaka Amano English translation by Kevin Leahy Book design by Heidi Fainza

a division of Dark Horse Comics 10956 SE Main Street Milwaukie, OR 97222 darkhorse.com

Mysterious journey to the North sea / written by Hideyuki Kikuchi ; illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano ; English translation by Kevin Leahy, p. cm. — (Vampire Hunter D; v. 7)

“Originally published in Japan in 1988 by Asahi Sonoroma Co.”—Vol. 1, t.p. verso.

CHAPTER 1

After midnight, the wind grew stronger. The clouds rumbled as they rolled along. In accordance with the moon’s dips undercover, the night alternated between glowing with white light and sinking into pitch blackness. Somewhere out there, something howled. It was a cry unlike any she’d ever heard, and it made the girl by the window grow stiff.

“Nothing to be scared about,” said the master of the lodging house, wiping his mouth after another in a long line of cheap drinks. The unlabeled bottle of what seemed to be home brew was nearly empty of liquid, but filled instead by a dark green surprise: a frog. In these parts, various species of back-leaping frogs were used to bring a full-bodied taste to liquor. But even though this lodging house was near the northernmost extreme of the Frontier, it was still difficult for travelers to ignore the local practice. “That right there’s the sound of beast weeds blooming. We don’t get many dangerous critters in these parts.”

Perhaps put at ease by this, the young woman turned from the window and smiled. It was a lonely little smile that suited the seedy lodging house, although the sixteen- or seventeen-year-old brimmed with a beauty that saved her from seeming too gloomy. Even the

dreariness of her shirt and slacks, waterproofed with animal fat, were unable to counter the charm lent to her by the silver comb fastened in her red hair.

Out of the collection of five rest houses that made up the unbelievably small community, this was by far the most squalid. There was no one in the brick hall save the innkeeper and three patrons, including the girl. Add two more people, and the room would’ve been completely packed.

“How far you going anyway, miss?” the innkeeper asked as he turned his liquor bottle upside-down and shook it.

“Now, I don’t know where you hail from, but it’s a hell of a thing for a lady like you to choose this of all roads. If you were to take the main road instead, you’d get there a whole lot sooner.”

“It’d be a whole lot more dangerous, too. Wouldn’t it?” the girl said, covering the leather pouch attached to her belt with the palm of her hand. “The road from the Belhistan region to Cronenberg, in particular, is swarming with monsters. I’d rather not run into any mecha beasts or mazers or any of those types, thank you.” Though her tone was colored with loathing, there was no fear in it.

While the back roads that branched off from the main thoroughfares had fewer actual monsters, they were beset by natural disasters such as landslides, quicksand, and impasses, as well as plenty of human monsters—thieves and bandits of all sorts. Traveling alone—-especially for a young girl—wasn’t something to be undertaken unless you were quite fearless and well trained in the use of weapons. And though the girl’s facial features still shone with the innocence of youth, one could catch a glimpse of a resolute will in them as well.

“Well, if you’ve come this far, there’s just a bit further to go—you should be there by tomorrow evening. Get yourself a good night’s rest. Fortunately, summer’s almost here. The road’s pretty rocky, but I suppose the season will make it a touch nicer.”

At the innkeeper’s appropriately slurred words, the girl got a faraway look in her eye. “Yes, summer,” she muttered. “At last.”

At that moment, someone beside the reinforced lacquer door said in a hoarse voice, “Florence.”

“Yes, I thought as much,” the voice said with apparent satisfaction. The girl noticed then that the speaker sat with the electric lantern on his tilting wooden table turned off, melding with the darkness. Despite the fact they were in a house that was all closed up, the man wore a wide-brimmed hat, as well as a woolen cloak. Although the gray hair and beard that hid nearly all of his face testified to his age, the eyes with which he watched the girl brimmed with an uncommon vitality.

“There’s no reason to pull such a face,” the old man told her. “It’s a simple deduction, actually. You have the smell of salt and fish about you, and the comb in your hair is made from the bones of a lion fish, is it not? That’s a local specialty. If you grew up in Florence, I’d warrant you have all the pluck you’d need to travel on your own. If you’ll pardon my asking, just what manner of business sends you to Cronenberg?”

The old man’s eyes gave off a light that seemed to draw her in, and the girl had to turn away.

“Aw, look what you went and did. Now the little lady’s all pissed off,” the final voice in the room said, rising from another window directly across from the girl. The speaker was a young man, and he’d been the very last to come down from the rooms upstairs. Though his look of fearless determination fit his muscular physique, the pale line running diagonally across his right cheek couldn’t help but lend another impression—a less than reputable one.

All present took in the young man’s face, but their eyes quickly shifted to his hands. Perhaps the sight of them had stimulated their hearing, for they now heard the sound of the little things sparkling between the fingers of his meaty palms. Squinting her eyes, the girl realized that it was a pair of thin metal rings.

“Care to give it a try?” the man asked, grinning as he held out his right hand to her. The rings were shaking. To the man by the door he said, “You don’t ask anyone where they’re from or where they’re headed—that’s the rule of the road. For starters, you haven’t even given us your name. I guess as people grow older, they get all inquisitive and such, do they?”

I suppose it was impolite of me not to introduce myself. You may call me Professor Krolock. It’s not an official title, mind you.”

“I’m Toto. Anyway—how about a little wager, missy?” the young man suggested. “It’s a simple game, really. All you need to do is separate these two rings. Like so.”

Reaching for the loose end with his other hand, the man—Toto— pulled in either direction. The rings came apart without any resistance at all, but no matter how closely Wu-Lin scrutinized where she thought she’d seen them disconnect, she couldn’t find any opening or break. Toto quickly put his hands together again, and the rings were back the way they’d been.

“You get three minutes. The bet is for one gold kraken coin.” Wu-Lin’s eyes bulged in their sockets. “Those are worth five times their face value on the Frontier,” she said in disbelief. “There’s no way I’d be carrying that sort of money.”

“Good enough. For something else then,” Toto said, his smile strangely affable. “What that pretty little hand of yours has been safeguarding the last few minutes.”

Startled, Wu-Lin twisted her body to put her waist out of Toto’s view, but at the same time two more pairs of eyes concentrated on her from another direction. They were focused on her pouch.

“You’re looking awfully pale—must be rather important to you. If it’s not cash, I’d say they’re jewels ... or maybe a youth elixir?” And saying that, Toto suddenly got a serious look in his eye again. “Well, if it’s all that precious to you, I won’t twist your arm. Whatever money you’ve got will be fine. I’ll still put up one kraken coin. And I’m a man of my word.”

Wu-Lin’s expression shifted. Judging from her wardrobe and her current accommodations, she wasn’t exactly traveling in luxury. Kraken coins were produced in extremely limited quantities and were quite valuable. That one coin would be enough for her to hire an armed escort and pay for a carriage all the way to the Capital.

“Relax,” the young man said. “Even if I clean you out, I’ll at least buy you some breakfast tomorrow morning. Once you’ve eaten your fill, you’ll make it to Cronenberg somehow or other.”

His smiling face and equally affable objections served to firm Wu-Lin’s resolve. “I paid for my room in advance, but that only leaves me with four coppers,” the girl confessed.

“Well, that’ll do,” Toto said, the silvery rings spinning around his fingertip. “Okay, there’s mine.”

His left palm went down on the table and then came away again. The glitter of gold colored three pairs of eyes.

Taking a seat in the chair across from him, Wu-Lin lifted the lid of her pouch and thrust her right hand into it. Her left hand kept it covered so no one could see inside. The faces of the four copper coins she produced were covered with a patina.

“That’s the spirit!” Toto said. “You get exactly three minutes.” Handing the two rings to the girl, he gazed at the magnetic watch around his wrist. “Ready . . . go!”

As he gave the signal, Wu-Lin focused her entire being on the rings in her hands. On closer inspection, one did indeed have a break in it. But while it had an opening, the gap wasn’t half as wide as the other ring was thick—it was as thin as a thread. Yet, Toto had gotten them apart. Relying on her memories of what she’d seen, Wu-Lin tried every possible movement with her hands, but the rings remained hopelessly linked. “Three minutes—-time’s up!”

As Toto spoke, the girl’s shoulders—which were quite solid for someone her age—fell in disappointment. Setting the rings down on the table, she let out a deep sigh.

“I like you, missy,” the young man said. “You’re not gonna raise a stink and call me a cheat, are you?”

Toto broke into a broad grin. “Sure, why not? I’m not about to give you my coin, but you could walk away with your own. All you’d have to do is give me one itty-bitty peek at what you got in that pouch.” This seemed to be quite a generous offer, and after furrowing her brow for a moment, Wu-Lin soon nodded her agreement. She may have reasoned that because he already knew she was carrying something precious, there was really no point in hiding it. Hers was a rather decisive temperament.

“Hey, you guys better not look. This is just us gamblers squaring away a debt,” Toto coldly told the other two men as he watched Wu'Lin’s hand disappear into the pouch.

Her hand came right back out. In it was a wad of black velvet. Brusquely setting it down on the table, Wu-Lin pulled the shiny, dark cloth to either side without pretension.

“I see,” Toto said, pursing his lips. Rather than being impressed, he seemed a bit suspicious—and more than a tad disappointed.

There lay a semitransparent bead that Wu-Lin could’ve easily concealed in the palm of her hand. Essentially a sphere, it was marked in places by faint distortions. While the material from which it was crafted was unclear, judging by its dull silver glow, it didn’t appear to be any sort of jewel or other precious stone.

As he reached out with one hand, Wu-Lin quickly jerked the bead away. Carefully re-wrapping it, she said, “It’s a kind of pearl.”

“It came out of the sea, did it? So, I guess you came all this way to sell it, then. I hate to break it to you, but that thing—■”

“It’s no concern of yours,” Wu-Lin said flatly. Quickly picking up her coppers and putting them and the velvet wad into her pouch, the girl returned to her seat by the window; back to the sound of the wind, and the ever-changing hues of the darkness.

At that moment, there was a dull roar off in the distance—the thunder of hoofbeats. They were drawing closer.

The innkeeper set down the glass he was holding. “No one passes this way at this hour,” he said. His voice was stiff.

Toto stopped toying with his rings and muttered, “In the dead of night? They’d have to be funny in the head.”

No sooner had he spoken than a beastly howl drifted eerily from the opposite direction of the hoofbeats.

“They’re out?!” the innkeeper practically screamed as he got to his feet. “It’s those damn bronze hounds! They run in packs of ten or so. Can’t do squat to ’em with a sword or spear.”

“We’ve got to let whoever it is in!” Wu-Lin said, dashing toward the door, but the innkeeper raced over like the wind and grabbed her tightly.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” the innkeeper said. “It’s too late for that. If those accursed hounds get a whiff of humans, they’ll be in here, too!”

The cramped room was filled with the sort of silence that makes the flesh crawl. The sound of the hoofbeats continued to steadily grow louder, and then they seemed to pull aside in front of the door, even though the rider had surely heard the hounds.

A different sound arose from the end of the road: the clatter of countless paws scampering closer.

“We have to help that person!” Wu-Lin swung her foot forcefully, and the innkeeper grabbed his crotch. The girl ran to the door.

“Don’t do it!” Toto shouted from behind her, but even as he did, she was reaching for the doorknob.

A split second later, the girl turned right around with her hand still extended and dashed back across the room. Stopping in front of the counter that served as both the bar and the front desk, Wu-Lin was stock-still in amazement, but the rest of the group didn’t get to see it. For at that very instant on the other side of the door—right in front of the lodging house—two kinds of footsteps collided, and the night was filled with the howling of beasts.

Wild dogs with hides like blue steel made straight for the poor traveler and his horse. A bladed weapon swung down at the beasts, only to bounce off them in vain. Flesh-rending fangs and blood-spattered muzzles—it was a tragic scene any of them could easily imagine, but a second later it was over. The howls of the bloodthirsty beasts were suddenly cut short, and the thud of one heavy body after another hitting the street echoed out—and then, silence. No, not quite. There was only a hard, faint sound steadily fading in the distance. The sound of hoofbeats.

“Hey!” the innkeeper called out in voice that was tiny and hoarse. He could imagine what had transpired outside.

Toto roughly threw the door open. The warm nocturnal air was heavy with the scent of fragrant night grasses. The wind struck Toto in the eyes but couldn’t tarry there, and the young man caught another of the night’s scents.

The moon was out. On the road, the scenery was a stark contrast of black and white. Black seemed to be the stronger of the two.

The smell was coming from a number of pools of blood. The heads and torsos of the bronze-covered wild dogs had already ceased twitching.

“One, two, three—” Toto said, extending a finger with each number. “Exactly ten of the beasts! And all of them put down in less than two seconds—”

Leaping out into the road, Toto gazed in the direction the hoofbeats had gone. The howls of the night wind made his well-trimmed hair and the hem of his coat billow in the same direction.

“It might’ve been him . . .” the others in the doorway heard Toto mutter as he faced the darkness that swallowed the end of the road. “He can travel by night. And all alone.”

Early the next morning, Wu-Lin left the lodging house; she didn’t even bother to eat. The innkeeper and the other guests were still asleep, and the eastern sky was just beginning to shine with a watery light. Dressed in the same clothes as the night before, she was shouldering a vinyl backpack.

Three minutes’ walk brought the girl to the edge of town. Beyond the fence, a cedar so huge it would take three men to get their arms around it stretched up to the blue sky. In this region, it was customary to grow enormous trees on either side of the main road through town. It was hoped that doing so would bring the community some of the same mysterious vitality the trees possessed. Past the massive cedar, the rows of trees continued.

Opening the gate and then shutting it again behind herself, the girl was just about to walk off when someone appeared from behind the foliage.

“Good morning, young lady. Off to an early start, I see.” Placing one hand on his chest, the professor bowed elegantly.

“So are you,” Wu-Lin replied. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be out before me.”

“Actually, I couldn’t get much sleep. At any rate, if it pleases you, would you accompany me to Cronenberg?”

“Actually,” the old man said, “I am. My carriage is parked behind yonder tree.”

“You sure I wouldn’t be intruding?” Wu-Lin said, staring intently at him in his scarlet cloak.

“I might’ve suggested it back at the lodging house, but there was a certain boisterous individual around.”

“Precisely,” the old man replied, a smile forming on his lips. “Approaching you in town was going to be troublesome, so I simply waited out here. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to say I don’t care what happens to a young lady like yourself. Please, join me. All I ask in payment is that bead you have in your possession.”

“I thought as much. I guess it’s a good thing I showed it off so no one got too curious and slit my throat while I slept.” Wu-Lin asked the old man, “Do you know what it’s worth?”

“Probably better than that rabble last night,” the professor said, closing his eyes and nodding to himself. “But, as yet, I don’t have a good idea of its true value. To really ascertain as much, I’d need you to hand it over to me.”

“Sorry. I travel alone.” As if in jest, the girl bowed exactly as the professor had, and then a second later she sprinted off like the wind.

Not bothering to chase after the girl as she swiftly dwindled in the distance, the professor muttered, “Such a tempestuous child,” and thrust both hands into his cloak. What they came out with were very strange items indeed. His right hand held a quill pen, and his left hand held a brownish scrap of paper—or rather, a dried piece of animal hide.

Returning to the tree and leaning against it, he raised his right hand. Without seeming to particularly steel himself for the task, he took the sharp tip of the pen and stabbed it into his left wrist. Not even glancing at the gore that spread across his skin when he pulled it out again, he took the blood-dipped pen and began to draw something on the surface of the parchment—what looked to be a human face. After about ten seconds, the pen’s movements ceased. Running his eyes over his handiwork at length and nodding with satisfaction, the professor then embarked on an even stranger course of action. Lovingly bringing his face closer to the portrait of darkening red, he began to whisper something in a low voice.

Having already run more than a hundred yards, the girl suddenly found her feet getting heavier. A hue of bewilderment rose in her face. While she didn’t stop, she had noticed a rather odd phenomenon—her legs seemed to be gradually losing their strength, to the point where she couldn’t run any longer.

“I—-why is this happening...” With those weary words, Wu-Lin squatted down right then and there.

Less than a minute later, a wagon drawn by a pair of cyborg horses rumbled along with a sound that hardly suited a road at daybreak, stopping right behind the girl as she crouched down, cradling her knees. It went without saying that the man who sat in the driver’s seat holding a whip was Professor Krolock. The grotesque parchment was rolled up in his left hand.

From his lofty perch, the professor said, “You mustn’t keep these problems to yourself. I’ll be happy to hear them. Won’t you climb into my carriage, so the two of us might mull over your dilemma? Come.”

All exaggeration aside, the old man’s tone truly swam with affection. At the sound of his voice, Wu-Lin got up and began to walk toward the wagon without the slightest hesitation.

And then something equally bizarre occurred. The professor’s right hand abruptly shot out, and with a sharp crack from his whip, the wagon made a wide turn toward town—back the way they’d come. Odd as it may seem, the same professor who’d taken the trouble to follow Wu-Lin then cracked the whip again and, scattering fragments of the dawn’s light like so much dust and ice, started off in the opposite direction in a great hurry.

As the old man and his wagon vanished down the road, another figure stepped out from behind the trees that towered by the roadside and into view of the paralyzed Wu-Lin. He was leading a horse. His right hand was clearly toying with a pair of gold rings that kept clinking together.

Waving his left hand before the eyes of the mesmerized Wu-Lin, the mysterious young traveler-—Toto—made a wry face. “He calls himself a man of learning, and then he goes and puts some weird spell on a girl like you—that’s really tempting the wrath of heaven. That said, I must confess I’m after the same thing myself. Don’t take it too hard,” he told the girl. “Looks like I was right when I guessed that bead was really something after all. Allow me to be of some assistance.”

Wu-Lin seemed to have had the very soul drained out of her, and at this point a baby probably could’ve taken what it wanted from her. Tapping her pale cheek with his right hand as if humoring her, the man was reaching for her pouch with his left hand when something hot whizzed right by the end of his nose.

Not only could a cacophony of shouts and hoofbeats be heard coming from the direction of town, but the sharp whistles that came from the figures closing on the pair soon became steel arrows in flight.

“Just as I thought—company! And here that old innkeeper was trying to come off so friendly and all. The world’s a nasty place. Sorry, but this is where I make my exit,” Toto said.

But as the young man’s hand reached once more for the pouch, it was caught by Wu-Lin’s. Just as the shock was re-coloring Toto’s complexion, his wrist was expertly twisted back against the joint and the man was physically thrown a good ten feet down the road. And yet, the way he executed a skillful one-hundred-eighty-degree roll and landed lightly on his feet was truly an eye-opening display of acrobatics.

“Hey! Wait just a second!” Toto shouted, but just as he was about to charge back to the girl, a number of arrows flew over his head. As he hit the ground despite himself, the sound of iron-shod hooves and excited shouts reached his ears.

A shadowy form leapt over his head. Needless to say, the rider holding the reins of Toto’s cyborg horse was none other than Wu-Lin.

“Thanks for the horse. See you!” With that brief shout, the girl, who’d escaped from the professor’s spell before Toto even caught on, slammed her right heel into the mount’s flank and galloped away as fast as she could.

Riding for a full hour at breakneck speed, Wu-Lin was a few miles from an intersection with the main road in an area still lit with the cold, clear rays of dawn before she finally let her horse rest its legs. At any rate, she was probably safe for the moment. She never would’ve thought those two men would be lying in wait for her, and it’d certainly been a mistake to fall under that mysterious spell, but since she’d managed to extricate herself from the situation, none of that mattered anymore. Having acquired a horse in the bargain, it was likely she’d reach Cronenberg at just past noon instead of in the evening.

Recalling the stunned look on Toto’s face as she’d thrown him, Wu-Lin smiled innocently, but it took less than two seconds for that smile to freeze. The sound of hoofbeats was again growing nearer.

She thought it might be the “professor,” but there was no squeak of wagon wheels. What she saw were a number of horses—and racers, at that. They wouldn’t be out delivering mail at this hour. Was it the last group that’d shown up as she was leaving?

Just as Wu-Lin was about to give a kick to her mount’s flanks, something whistled through the air as it dropped toward her. Sparks shot up on the right half of the road about ten feet ahead of her, and a fierce shock wave knocked both horse and rider down on their sides. It was the work of a portable firebomb launcher. An expert could hit a target the size of a brick from over two hundred yards away, but if they were only trying to blow something up, all they had to do was increase the amount of gunpowder.

Wu-Lin immediately got up. For the time being, her foes were only trying to slow her down, and fortunately for her, they seemed to be concerned about damaging the bead and had adjusted the amount of gunpowder accordingly. As a result, the girl hadn’t been fatally wounded, or even broken a single bone.

As Wu-Lin tried to get her horse back on its feet, she coughed— the urge to vomit was building within her. In truth, she’d taken a blow to the stomach when she fell. Jamming a finger down her throat, she retched immediately. As she vomited, she realized her horse was a lost cause—its neck was twisted grotesquely. If it had been one of the models cherished by the Nobility, it would’ve continued to run even if the entire head had been torn off, but this one was intended for humans. Wiping her lips, Wu-Lin shouldered her bag and looked around. The woods were thick to either side. Behind her, the silhouettes of riders formed hazily in the white light. She couldn’t afford to hesitate.

Wu-Lin ran to the right—the woods might serve to restrict the movements of horses. The trees and bushes would probably provide her with some cover from the explosives as well.

Just when she thought she’d melted into the grove of the trees, an impact slammed into her from behind, and a sharp pain shot through her back—probably a branch or a small stone. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the ground. Putting all of her strength into her limbs, she tried to get up.

Right behind her she heard a familiar voice say, “Give up already. We’ll make it quick for you.” It was the innkeeper.

Wu-Lin got to her feet without looking in his direction. About five yards ahead of her was a thick grove. How many seconds would it take me to get there1 she wondered.

“We don’t wanna blow that doodad of yours to kingdom come, you know. So we won’t finish you with the mortar. What do you fancy, a sword or an arrow? Or would you prefer we garrote you?”

Wu-Lin started to make a break for it, and then stopped. At the same time, the laughter dwindled as well.

The newest arrival was a dashing figure. He wore a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and a black long coat that sheathed his tall form elegantly. The longsword on his back had a graceful curve to it. For a second, Wu-Lin had to wonder whether it wasn’t a moonlit night at present. But the reason she and the men behind her froze was because they unconsciously knew that an aura of extreme danger lingered around the gorgeous stranger.

Wu-Lin swiftly circled around behind the figure’s back. “Help me!” she cried. “They’re bandits!”

There were half a dozen men on horseback, with the innkeeper leading the pack, and all of them wore vicious scowls. Surely their racket consisted of finding travelers with something valuable, then following them when they left and killing them. They were armed with swords and spears, but the man to the far right was the only one with disk-shaped bombs loaded into a crossbow-like launcher pointed at the ground.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” the innkeeper said to the huge fellow to his right. “Now that he’s seen our faces, it’s not like we’re about to let him live. We’ll send him to his reward along with the girl.” To the pair he added, “Just consider this your brief romance, and kiss each other goodbye!”

As she listened to his cruel words, Wu-Lin clung tightly to the back of the shadowy figure. But something suddenly became apparent. The man in black wasn’t looking at the other men. At the end of his gaze was a grove of trees and sparkling green leaves. Between him and the other men faint beams of light swayed— sunlight peeking through the trees. Wu-Lin looked up at his profile—there wasn’t a hint of sadness on his face. It put Wu-Lin’s heart at ease.

Broadswords and spears glittered in the men’s hands. With wild shouts, they charged the stranger.

Still, Wu-Lin remained entranced, enchanted by the beauty of this strange young man.

Hammering the earth beneath them, a pair of riders raced by the stranger—one on either side—and kept right on riding, with blood

streaming out behind them. From the waist up, the riders no longer existed. Before the rest of the killers realized what had happened, the upper bodies of their compatriots were lying at the shadowy figure’s feet. Bloody mists tinged the white sunlight.

When the startled man with the launcher readied his weapon, the figure kicked off the ground without a sound. The hem of his coat flickered like a dream.

Seeing what looked like the figure’s chest being penetrated by spears thrust from either side, Wu-Lin cried out. But the shadowy figure was in midair now. What the murderous implements had pierced was merely his afterimage.

A circular flash slashed through the necks of the last two men. When the figure landed on the ground again, there was one more flash of light as he flung the gore from his blade onto the green grass, and then the weapon returned to the sheath on his back. A head landed on the ground far off, and the rest of the body dropped off at the horse’s feet.

Dazed, Wu-Lin rubbed her eyes. The images she observed weren’t the least bit ghastly. The sunlit scene of carnage was like some shadow'puppet show.

It’s his fault, she thought fuzzily. He’s so beautiful; he even makes death look good.

The shadowy figure returned. His footsteps made no sound at all; he could walk across water without making a ripple. He was a young man. That was all she knew. The cool mood the tall man in black seemed to generate didn’t allow the girl to return to her senses until he was in the middle of putting a saddle onto a cyborg horse that was tethered to a tree not far away.

Wu-Lin ran over to the stranger in spite of herself and bowed. “Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

As the young man loaded what looked to be a sleeping bag behind his saddle, he asked, “Are you on foot?”

Perhaps any other information about the girl or the circumstances surrounding that deadly battle didn’t matter. They had attacked him, and he cut them down. Brutal as it was, that was a perfectly natural way to live on the Frontier.

“Um—” Wu-Lin stammered, but before she could say anything more, the man in black was on his mount. “Are you going with me?” she finally managed to say, but her words struck the stranger’s broad back as he’d already ridden a few paces.

“At least tell me your name. I’m Wu-Lin,” the girl called out, her shouts blocked by the grove.

Cronenberg was a town that stretched across the plains one hundred and twenty miles north of the center of the Frontier. This small city, with its population of thirty thousand, was a far cry from the scale of the Capital, but as a place where goods were collected from all over the Frontier it kept the roads well-repaired, and the community maintained a decent level of activity all year round. They maintained cold storage for seafood shipped from the coast, vast processing plants for livestock that grazed on the plains, drying houses for vegetables and grains—and for the rest and relaxation of those involved in the transportation of all these things and the guards that kept them safe from bandits and beasts, there were saloons and hotels, casinos, and women.

The chatter of men and women persisted all day long in the area where the drinking establishments could be found, but once dusk settled like a thin wash of ink, the multicolored lights grew brighter and the strides of people on the streets got lighter. As the number of monsters and supernatural beasts in this plains region was comparatively low, the streets were never empty from evening to the wee hours of the morning.

It was at twilight that Wu-Lin arrived at the settlement. The cyborg horse she rode was one that’d belonged to the thugs D had killed in the woods. Asking one of the guards about a certain shop as he opened the gate for her, Wu-Lin then proceeded to the center of town.

While it wasn’t especially uncommon for a woman to travel alone, it still came as little surprise that the remarkably untamed beauty of the girl’s face and body drew the eyes of men on the street.

It was in front of a tiny little shop that Wu-Lin dismounted. The sign bore the words “Cyrus’s Curio Shop” painted in letters that were now almost completely blurred. Tethering her horse’s reins to a pole outside, Wu-Lin went into the shop.

The dusty odor of old furniture reached her nose. Old-fashioned tables and chairs, paintings, sculptures, antique mirrors—the merchandise that rested in the murky light differed little from what would be found in any such shop, but that wasn’t why Wu-Lin was there. When she struck the call bell that sat on the counter in the back, a door that looked to be something of an antique itself opened, and a middle-aged man who was little more than skin and bones appeared.

“There’s something I’d like you to have a look at,” Wu-Lin said, covering her pouch with one hand.

“Well, that’s the line of work I’m in, so I guess I’ll take a gander,” the man replied in a less-than-amiable tone. “But unless it’s something really spectacular, you won’t get much for it from me. Especially not for curios—”

Dubiously eyeing the package Wu-Lin opened in her hand, the man picked up the sphere. “What is it?” he asked.

Shrugging his shoulders, the man then held the sphere up to his eye. “Where did you come by it?”

The man’s eyes shifted for a second to Wu-Lin. “From the sea?” he muttered. “You know, I can’t tell much without really looking into it. Would it be okay if I kept it?”

Taking a form imprinted with the proper information from behind the counter, the man hastily signed it and handed it to Wu-Lin.

“I haven’t decided yet,” the girl replied. “I’ll be back again at noon.”

Pointing down the street, the man said, “Take a right down at the corner and you’ll find a hotel. Quarters are cramped, but it’s cheap and the service is good.”

Making sure she’d gone, the man went into the back room and set the sphere on the desk he used for appraising antiques. Taking a seat, he didn’t use any of the electronic lenses or microscopes around him, but rather rolled the sphere around in his hand. Suddenly seeming to recall something, he looked up and smacked his fist to his forehead. Several minutes passed before the following words spilled from his lips: “So that’s it ... I remember now! I’m sure it was in that book . . . This is a Noble’s . . .”

As the blood drained from his already corpse-like countenance, the man grabbed his jacket from the back of another chair, stashed the sphere in his pocket, and headed for the door with lengthy strides. What the man didn’t notice as he reached for the doorknob was that his body had turned in entirely the opposite direction.

With the same tense expression as ever on his face, he walked toward the window on the far side of the room with a much gentler gait.

The door opened behind him. And who should step in but Toto, cautiously surveying the room as he entered. Judging from the way he quickly walked over to the man and fished the sphere out of his pocket, he must’ve seen everything the shopkeeper had done since entering the back room. Giving a light tap on the shoulder of the man who thought he was still facing the door, the mysterious young gentleman bounced the bead from his right hand and the pair of rings from his left in the palm of his hand. “Sorry,” he told the shopkeeper, “but I’ll be taking this. Kindly give my regards to the little lady. See you!”

With these words, Toto took off like a gust of wind. But even after he was gone, the owner of the curio shop just kept plodding slowly toward the window—although in his own mind, he was hurrying toward the door.

About an hour later, several men went into a saloon with the gaudiest neon sign of all the drinking establishments that lined the bustling thoroughfare. Their fierce eyes, expressions, and powerful bodies made it quite evident they were in a dangerous line of work. Heading straight to the counter in the back, one of them said something to the bartender, who then used the hand that’d been wiping out glasses to indicate a door far to the right.

“That little bastard—you’ve gotta be joking me,” spat the man who’d spoken to the bartender, curses rolling from his lips like an incantation. When he tossed his jaw in the direction of the door, the other men started across the room with a brutal wind in their wake. A pair of muscular brutes who looked like bodyguards stood by the door, one on either side, but they let the group pass without saying a word.

Just beyond the door lay a hallway with a row of garish pink doors on the green wall. Though no voices or other sounds could be heard, the men knew what was going on behind the bright-pink planks, and it seemed like they could almost see the hot, dense fog rising from each and every door. Out on the Frontier, it wasn’t at all rare for saloons to double as whorehouses.

Stopping for a second, they checked the number plate above one of the doors, and then the whole group headed down the hall to the right. The door down by the first comer was their destination.

When they were a few steps shy of their goal, they all heard a woman’s voice shout, “What are you doing?! I told you I’m not going for that, you lousy pervert!” At the same time, the door swung open from the inside. Along with the sweet smell of spices, something pale flew from the room: a half-naked woman. She clutched her clothes to the front of her body.

“You bastard!” the woman shouted. Her sensuous face twisted into a demonic visage, and she swung her right hand. Something shot back into the room; there was a dull thud and then a cry of pain.

“Take that, you fucking deviant!” the woman roared before she growled to the group, “Out of my way!”

While watching the woman stalk away indignantly, the men grinned at each other and then heard someone say, “Damn, that hurt! Where’d you run off to, bitch?!”

Spewing curses and groans all the while, a powerful form clad only in a pair of briefs appeared. His right hand was pressed against his forehead, and he had a high-heeled shoe dangling loosely from his left. A pendant of two interlocked rings swayed against his hairy, muscular chest.

“I paid you a good chunk of change. The least you could do is indulge me a little! I’ll grab your sorry ass and—” At that point, he noticed the men and said, “What the hell do you want?”

“Been a long time, hasn’t it, Toto?” the man who’d spoken with the bartender said with nostalgia . . . only his eyes weren’t smiling.

Staring intently at his face, Toto broke into a nostalgic grin, too. “Well, spank my ass if it ain’t Peres! This is some coincidence. You still doing the roving bodyguard routine?”

“Looks like neither of us has changed,” Peres replied. “When I heard about what happened at the antique store, I knew it was you. Seems you’re as good as ever with that trick of yours.”

Toto was playing down his abilities as he reached for his chest, but his pendant jolted away right before his hand.

Staring thoughtfully at the rings he’d torn free, Peres forcefully suggested, “Let’s talk inside.”

Still rubbing the back of his neck, Toto replied, “First, I have to get that bitch and—”

But as he attempted to go out into the hall, there was a dull thud against his solar plexus. Doubling over with a groan, he was roughly shoved back inside by the man who’d just punched him.

As he fell in the center of the medium-sized room, Toto groaned, “What the hell... was that about?” His Adam’s apple bobbed madly as he tried to take a breath.

“Check his clothes,” Peres ordered one of his compatriots as he bent over Toto.

The room had no decorations, save a bed and an end table— Toto’s clothes had been strewn on top of the table. Above the wall that the bed was attached to, a glass window reflected the neon lights outside.

“You stuck your nose in a hell of a place this time,” Peres said in a sinister tone. His eyes were laughing. “Though I don’t figure you ever dreamed things would go like this. Without me around, Mr. Gilligan wouldn’t have ever known about you, or the fact that you like this place more than three hots and a cot. Too bad, eh?” “Who the hell is that¹.” Toto asked in a tone that was somehow calm. Apparently his pain had subsided.

“Why, he’s the big boss who runs everything here in town. That was a serious mistake, making a move on a curio shop he’s connected to. I hear there’s something unbelievable all tied into this. The boss went completely nuts and had us grab not just you, but the girl who brought it here to have it looked at. Hey, now,” Peres cautioned Toto, “don’t try and slip away. I know all your tricks. I know how tough you are, too, but these guys do this for a living. You don’t want them taking you apart alive, I bet.”

“It’s not here,” said the man searching through Toto’s clothes. “Where’d you stash it? Your hotel?”

“All right, then. We’ll all go get it. But I’m warning you—if I find out you’re jerking us off to buy some time .. .” Peres said, lifting the corner of his coat. A sheath with a broadsword hung against his leg. They were convenient items, and depending on what your needs were, they could be used for anything from butchering a fire dragon to skinning a man alive.

“Give him back his clothes,” Peres told his compatriot, adding, “But only after you’ve torn all the pockets out.”

A few seconds later Toto’s garments were thrown back to him, and he quickly put them on. “What happened to the girl?” he asked.

“Yeah. I know what a scumbag you are and how you like to get your kicks. You don’t exactly take it easy on women or children, do you?”

“You’ll just have to wait till we’re in Mr. Gilligan’s basement to see about that, I guess.”

“You little bastard!” the other men snarled, although the reason they all charged Toto immediately must’ve been because they knew he was unarmed. Perhaps that was all they had in mind as they attacked.

Peres watched in a daze as his compatriots completely ignored their forward momentum and sharply turned around a mere foot shy of Toto.

“Where the hell did you have ’em?!” he shouted as his right hand raced to his broadsword, but his eyes then went wide with a second surprise.

The flash of silver that shot forth with Toto’s words answered both of Peres’s questions simultaneously.

Hacking half-way through the man’s neck with his own blade, Toto spit something out of his mouth for the other man to see just as his old acquaintance fell to the floor gushing blood: a pair of metal rings.

“Never showed you that before, did I? Don’t go thinking things never change,” Toto lectured Peres, whose head flopped to one side. He then dashed over to the window, threw it open, and leapt out.

He landed on the street along the left side of the saloon—the moon was now out. Crouching down, he ran. To the rear there was a cluster of eateries. Avoiding them, he quickly turned right instead. The alley was murky. If he kept going straight, he’d come out at the grain storehouses.

As he put his strength into his legs, a crisp sound reverberated behind him. Whistling. Toto became a statue—it had that sort of ring to it. Nevertheless, Toto managed to slowly turn around.

At the entrance to the alley he’d just gone into, a figure in blue stood illuminated by the moonlight. He was tall and wore a cape. A sword hung from his left hip, and the handle and sheath were both covered with exquisitely intricate carvings. Both hands wore leather gloves, and they hung naturally by his sides. And yet, it was perfectly clear that they would flash into action in response to any slight movement. Occasionally you encountered people like this. Perhaps he was one of the men after Toto, waiting outside as a precaution?

“What do you want with me?” Toto called out, his tone surprisingly calm. Surely he hadn’t exactly led a normal, peaceful existence, either. “Are you with them?”

“Come with me,” a gorgeous voice said. It was as clear and fresh as the moonlight.

“Because you’re the suspicious character I saw break open a window and run away. I’m taking you to the sheriff’s office.”

“Spare me. C’mon, pal. From the look of you, you’re not more than a step or two out of my world yourself. As a favor to another guy, just let me go, okay?”

A certain feeling suddenly filled Toto’s heart. It was that sort of melody. And the instant it completely filled his ears, a flash of white mowed through Toto’s abdomen, and his body was blasted by a lust for killing.

Toto somehow managed to jump. However, as he hung in the air, blood spread from him like smoke. When he landed fifteen feet away, a grotesque mass of intestines spilled from his belly with a gush of blackish blood.

Toto couldn’t believe it. The distance between him and the man with the drawn blade in his right hand had to have been fifteen feet at the very least. Now, there was less than six feet between them. How had his opponent closed the other nine feet?

Something hot welled up within him, and no longer able to bear it, he coughed. More than just gore splashed out in the alley. Even covered with dark blood, the sphere retained its dull shine as it bounced once on the ground and then gingerly rolled across the alley.

Just behind the bead, Toto finally noticed the other alley to his right that lay wide open. However, that new path wasn’t to be his escape route. Pinning him to the ground with the sheer ferocity of his will to kill, the gorgeous man calmly drew closer with his naked blade. There was no doubt in Toto’s mind that any movement now would only invite a deadly blow. With desperate eyes, he gazed down at the puddle of blood at his feet—the pair of interlocked rings was in there somewhere. He heard whistling. When it stopped, the moment of fate would come. The melody flowed on—then faded away. The blood seemed to drain from every inch of Toto. And then ... nothing.

Toto looked up at his foe, but his opponent wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was concentrated on another alley.

Following the other man’s eyes, Toto found it was now his turn to be astonished. There before him was a man’s face so gorgeous it could make even someone caught in hellish agony lose himself. He saw something darker than any ordinary darkness—a darkness given human form that hovered at the entrance to the alley. A vision of beauty. That was the only way he could describe it. The face beneath the traveler’s hat melded with the darkness, but had he been able to actually see it, the sight might’ve left him breathless with sheer envy. Perhaps it was some spell that the night put on him that caused these two gorgeous men to appear before him in that narrow alleyway.

The second figure bent over and picked up the bead. He left himself so wide open to attack that it looked like a mere child could cut him down. Gazing at the bead, he asked, “Is this yours?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say,” Toto replied. And as he spoke, he took the intestines lying in the road and began stuffing them back into his abdominal cavity. “See, someone gave it to me. You know, I hate to do this, but I have a favor to ask of you. I have to be running along now, but I was hoping you could help out the bead’s owner. And I’ll let you keep that as payment. Seems it’s really worth a hell of a lot. Although I do have to warn you, I’ll be along later to take it back. You’ll find her in the basement of a scumbag by the name of Gilligan. I’m counting on you, pal.”

With these words, Toto leapt away to the rear. While it wasn’t clear exactly what the secret of his physiology was, his strength was unbelievable. The whistling figure didn’t follow him.

“What will you do?” he said. It sounded as if the moon had asked the question.

The whistling figure continued, “You’re even better looking than I am—never met a man like that before. What’s more, I believe I

know your name. Vampire Hunter D. I may as well introduce myself. The name is Glen. I’m a seeker of knowledge.”

Glen looked up at the sky. Dark clouds were blindfolding the moon. They then cleared, but there was no sign of D.

Wu-Lin slowly realized what was happening to her—staying at the hotel the curio dealer had told her about had proved to be her undoing. Ordinarily, she’d have made a conscious effort to avoid such a place. But she was exhausted at the time, and also greatly relieved to have entrusted the bead to someone else. Checking into the cheapest room they had, she’d quickly taken a bath, and then stood before the mirror.

No one had ever told her she was pretty before. Personally, she thought her face and body were quite plain. She didn’t ordinarily wear makeup, either. Life on the northern coast really didn’t allow for such things. Her fingers grazed her own face. It’s so rough, she thought. The wind off the sea was cold, and it carried grains of salt that bit into her skin like tiny shards of glass. And though she might try to fend it off, the wind always kept lashing away at her with those frosty particles whenever it blew. Somewhere along the line she’d forgotten all about wiping the salt off. She opened both hands, and with the fingers of her left she brushed the palm of her right. So tough. It felt like the whole thing was made up of nothing but calluses. Even the tips of the fingers she touched to it were hardened.

At around the age of three she’d started gathering shellfish. When she’d touched the razor-like shells, a sharp pain had shot through her as her tender young flesh was split with consummate ease. When she burst into tears, her mother had taken her hands and held them in the briny sea, saying, “This is just how your sister and I always took care of it.” In no time, the mollusks gave way to fish, and shells were replaced by scales as sharp as knives. As always, the blood gushed from her, and Wu-Lin stuck her hands into the salty sea without hesitation.

Sixteen years had passed. But today was the first time Wu-Lin had ever been ashamed of her sun-baked skin and rough hands— this morning, to be more precise. In the sun-dappled woods, a young man in black had danced with a bloody breeze. So beautiful it gave her goose bumps, his staggeringly sad visage had stirred something in her chest. He’d said his name was D.

Going over to the bed, Wu-Lin pulled out the backpack she’d hidden beneath it. Opening a leather flap, she inspected her clothes. All she had was another blouse and a change of underwear. The top was clean, but it had been patched in spots. Though sturdy, its color had faded. After putting on the fresh blouse and a pair of pants, she stood before the mirror.

Why didn’t I bring a skirt? she thought. Ac least that would’ve hidden these fat legs of mine. The one with the white flower print would make me look a little prettier.

But whom would she want to look so nice for? A gorgeous young man who wavered on the thin line between life and death with his emotionless swordplay. D.

Wu-Lin again rubbed her cheeks. Just then, she heard a sound at the door. The instant she turned to see a human shape, something warm slammed into her solar plexus and her consciousness sank into darkness. The next thing she knew, she was somewhere else entirely. With stone walls on all sides, the room seemed to be a basement of some sort—the ceiling was lit by electric lights. Her surroundings were painfully clear, and fear gushed from every pore on her. Wu-Lin was chained hand and foot to the stone wall. All along the wall hung those who’d suffered similar fates, now skeletons clad only in rags. Even more lay on the floor below the chains.

Wu-Lin let out a scream. And another, and another. Her every struggle sent her shackles biting into her wrists and ankles, where they tore ruthlessly at her flesh. She didn’t even notice the sound of a door opening somewhere.

Before Wu-Lin knew it, there was someone standing right before her—three people, actually. The ones to either side were clearly bodyguards by the look of them, but their boss in the middle was somewhat odd. His seven-hundred-pound frame was surrounded by a steel cage. Clothed in the largest three-piece suit imaginable, he lay on his side against the floor of the cage that held him a good three feet off the ground. He was like a slug that’d sprouted arms and legs. His face looked pushed in, and his pitifully sparse hair was parted to one side. With no neck to speak of, his head seemed to be melded right into his torso. The black stub stuck between his thick lips must’ve been a cigar. His eyes were thin as a thread, and his nostrils and mouth spread wide to either side. In fact, he was so hideously misshapen, he looked like a human that’d been given a frog’s head.

It had finally dawned on Wu-Lin that the cage around him—steel rings running horizontally and vertically-—was not actually intended as a prison, but rather served to support his body. Each of the rings was jointed, and they twisted subtly to prop up the listing seven-hundred-pound frame. What’s more, the part of the device that made contact with the floor seemed to be some sort of walker.

“Nice to meet you, miss,” the clothed blob of flesh said. His voice was so shrill and nauseating it made the girl want to plug her ears. “I’m Gilligan. And I happen to have the pleasure of running this town. I had you brought here because there are a few little things I’d like to ask you about.”

“There, there. If you’ll talk to me, we can do that soon enough. I suppose you’d like to know why I’d subject a pretty young lady like yourself to this sort of treatment. Well, it’s because this way will get you to tell me the whole truth faster.”

“For starters, I’d like to know a little something about the bead you brought to the curio shop. Where and how did you happen to get it?”

Wu'Lin’s eyes went wide with astonishment. Speared now by a far greater sense of hopelessness about her fate, the girl slumped against her chains. “You mean to tell me the guy that runs that shop . .

“There, there, my child. He and I have a little arrangement. Once or twice a year some clown will bring in something quite valuable without having the slightest clue about what they have. The deal is that the shopkeeper lets me know about it, and I buy said item for a reasonable price.”

“I don’t happen to have it at the moment—you see, it was stolen,” Gilligan said, raising a horrendously short and fat hand to scratch his head. The plump appendage had the form of a child’s but was three times the size of an adult’s. As he moved, the ring that supported his arm creaked. He had only to put the slightest pressure on a joint, and the rings would then move his limb in that same direction. Without that bizarre contraption, he most likely wouldn’t be able to so much as lift a finger. Moreover, it was perfectly clear that if gravity were allowed to have its way with that great mound of flesh and fat, a horrifying death would await the man as all his internal organs were crushed by his own weight.

Seeing the urgency in Wu-Lin’s expression, Gilligan laughed raspily. Even his own bodyguards looked unsettled by the sound of it. “Relax. We know who the thief was and where he is, and some of my people are on their way to collect the item. They should be back presently with both it and the culprit. But while I’m waiting, I need you to tell me a few things.”

“You expect me to believe that some clueless little girl is running around with something like that?! ”

Wu-Lin gnawed her lip. Her lovely countenance was imbued with a look of firm resistance.

Wu-Lin’s expression wavered for a moment and then quickly returned to normal. But not quickly enough.

“See, I was certain you knew something about it. Well, now, this is starting to get amusing.” Moving both hands with what seemed to be a great effort, the human slug clapped them together before his own chest. In addition to the grinding gears of the joints, a revolting sound like a shellfish being cracked open shook the air.

“There’s no point in asking me anything about it, you know. There’s nothing I can tell you.”

Watching with a sort of lust in his eyes as Wu-Lin turned her face away from him, Gilligan said, “Good enough. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m afraid you have me all wrong, Miss. I’m not asking you to tell me anything you don’t want to. To the contrary— it’s all the more enjoyable if you won’t tell me.”

Wu-Lin’s eyes went wide. There was a cruelty to the words of this mysterious man that shook her to the core. “What are you going to do?” she asked, the question pushed out by her fear.

“Are you in such a hurry to learn your fate?” Gilligan asked, holding the cigar out in front of himself with one hand. Clanking all the while, the legs went into action, carrying him to a spot on the floor less than three feet from Wu-Lin before they stopped. “Okay. I’ll show you then.”

Gilligan flicked the cigar with his fingers. Wu-Lin gasped, although it was almost a laugh. It wasn’t a cigar. The jet black stub twisted and unfolded, forming a longer creature that began creeping toward her feet. Like an inchworm, it folded and straightened its body, and on its head it had a pair of strangely oversized simple eyes and a thorn-like proboscis for a mouth.

“That nasty little insect is what’s known as a ‘chatterbug.’ When one bites you, you can’t help but tell the truth,” Gilligan said, licking his lips.

“No, not that!” Wu-Lin cried, writhing. Countless beads of sweat streamed down her face, neck, and back. A single droplet from her wildly shaking face fell on the insect’s head, causing the unearthly creature to rear back in surprise. But in the blink of an eye it started forward again. It reached her feet, and then it climbed up on her shoe. She tried to kick it off, but only ended up making the shackles gouge deeper into the meat of her leg.

It reached her blouse and kept climbing. The girl’s face was reflected in the insect’s dim black eyes all the while. And its sharp proboscis chirped incessantly.

“Don’t!” Wu-Lin screamed, thrashing her head back and forth like a woman possessed.

As the creature came to her full bosom—the slightest pale swell of which was visible in the cleavage of her clean blouse—it shuddered with delight and then crept in.

With a rusty squeal a door opened somewhere. The strange old man in the wide-brimmed hat and tattered cloak who walked over to Wu-Lin without making a sound was none other than Professor Krolock. Gazing long and hard at the young woman with her knees on the floor and both arms dangling from the chains in some horrible parody of a cheer, the old man said, “Simply awful.” But his voice didn’t hold an ounce of emotion. “When I heard those curs boasting about how good the girl they’d caught looked, I thought it might be you and had to come see. Sure enough, I was right. Bit by a ‘chatterbug,’ were you? But I’ll be—you still draw breath! I suppose I should put you at peace.”

The old man’s right hand vanished into his cloak, and when it appeared again, it clutched a quill pen. It was an ordinary pen, but the tip was razor sharp. The quill was from a supernatural creature called a messiah bird. That fowl sang only once in a decade, and only three times total in its lifetime—and those that heard its song were guaranteed to meet with misfortune.

Perhaps the girl sensed the professor’s presence, because Wu-Lin’s limp body once again showed signs of life. Her face rose. “Help ... me . . . ,” she said.

At the same time, what looked like a black spring came out of her cleavage and made a powerful bound for the professor’s throat. The quill pen jabbed right through it.

Skewered in midair, the bug continued to struggle for a while, but then quickly settled down. Shaking it off so that it fell at his feet, the professor wasted no time in crushing it, and then placed his left hand on Wu-Lin’s neck. Due perhaps to the insect’s poison, the girl’s face was so horribly swollen her own parents wouldn’t have recognized her immediately. Quickly donning a puzzled expression, the professor remarked, “How unusual. Such tenacity. Speak, child. I shall hang on your every word.”

“Understood,” the professor said with a grave nod. Behind his paternal demeanor dwelt a fearful shadow. “I shall get it back. Count on that. It shouldn’t prove terribly difficult,” he snickered.

Wu-Lin’s expression rapidly drained away. Swollen to twice their normal size, her lips framed one final and almost inaudible remark.

Gently shutting the girl’s eyelids after her head lolled to the side, the professor intoned what sounded like a spell, and then turned his back on her. Shocked, he froze in his tracks. The old man gazed absentmindedly at the tall form that stood before him. It wasn’t the bloody blade in the figure’s right hand that kept the professor riveted, but rather his positively dazzling beauty.

“You! How long have you been there?!” the professor asked, a ring of admiration in his voice. “I can’t believe you could be there without me noticing you. Never mind the fact that there were supposed to be lookouts posted up top. And tough ones, at that—strong enough to tear apart winged dragons with their bare hands.”

The old man’s gaze went to the ceiling, then instantly dropped again to the young man’s sword.

“Oh, I see—they were no match for you after all, were they? What brings you here, then? Are you somehow connected to this girl? I’ll have you know, I was only here to see to her in her last moments. I never harmed a hair on her head!”

Not speaking a word, the shadowy figure made his way to Wu-Lin’s corpse. Stopping, he extended his left hand and pushed back the hair that’d fallen across the girl’s brow. Perhaps that was the young man’s way of honoring her.

It was D. The Hunter extended his still-closed left hand, and when he opened it before Wu-Lin’s face and the professor spied the bead resting in his palm, the old man coughed loudly. As the professor effortlessly reached for the prize, D’s five fingers closed.

“Pardon me. You may not have heard her, but the girl asked me to do something for her. She said to find the bead for her. That’s no lie.”

“Where’s the girl’s sister?” D inquired softly. Apparently he had caught a few of the girl’s final words.

Coughing, the professor replied, “As I just finished saying, I’ll gladly bring it to her.” The old man spoke with perfect composure, extending his hand as he did so.

“Where have you hidden it, you scoundrel?!” the professor cried out in amazement. And then, in a strangely calm tone he added, “I see. Regardless of how you might’ve come to know about this girl, I applaud your sincerity in bringing back the bead. It would seem that the person she asked me to get it back from wasn’t you. However, the bead couldn’t possibly be of any significance to you. Why don’t you simply name your price, and I’ll purchase it. Then

I can deliver it to her sister. Once there, I’ll receive my remuneration, and everything will be wrapped up tidily. What say you?” “Where’s the girl’s sister?” D repeated.

“When you checked the girl for vital signs, she was already dead. Yet she managed to convey her wishes. And you weren’t the only one to hear them.”

“Oh. In other words, you hypothesize she’d have no problem with you delivering the bead, then?”

The professor tried to back away but couldn’t. It was the ghastly aura emanating from this young man alone that chilled him to the very bone.

“I ... I don’t know. Surely you could see that,” the professor replied. He couldn’t help but answer. “The girl didn’t say at all.” “You knew the girl,” D said, his sword rising smoothly. “This is the last time I’ll ask you this. Where was she from?”

“Do you intend to . . . cut me down?” the professor asked. His gaze seemed to be hopelessly drawn to the tip of the blade poised right between his eyes. “Would you cut me down . . . me, an innocent man?”

“Florence,” the professor said in a hoarse voice. Shortly after that, as he thudded to his knees on the floor, he heard the sound of a door closing up above.

The professor was not quick to rise, but rather produced a handkerchief from inside his cloak and mopped the sweat from his brow. But no matter how he wiped at it, the sweat just kept pouring from him.

“I fear I must revise my earlier statement,” the old man said, his words hugging the ground. ‘“It shouldn’t prove terribly difficult...’ That’s a fine joke now. However, now that I’ve seen his face ...” The professor held a piece of rolled-up vellum. Spreading the thin animal hide on the floor with trembling hands, he knelt on the edges to hold it down while his right hand went into action. His fingers clasped the quill pen. Soon enough his right hand ceased trembling and he ran the pen over the vellum—the very pen that dripped with his own blood. While the eerie deed itself was similar to what’d he’d done to Wu-Lin on that early morn, the strokes of his pen were so much swifter now that the two cases couldn’t be compared.

Just how much time drifted by in that basement where the shadow of death hung, no one could say.

“Finished,” the professor declared. “I wouldn’t call it perfect— though it should prove moderately useful.”

Satisfaction and fatigue now sharing space on his countenance, the old man looked at the thin hide spread before him bearing D’s features etched in minute detail.

Exiting a basement in the shopping district, Gilligan quickly headed for home. Just as he’d expected, the girl had told him everything she knew before dying an agonizing death. Her pained, fever-induced throes had left him satisfied, and he was of a mind to head off to one of the whorehouses he operated, but there was something he had to take care of before he did so.

Entering the gorgeous estate that stood at the southern tip of town, he didn’t go to the main house, but rather to a fairly large outbuilding constructed to one side of the acre-and-a-half garden. As he did so, a number of dark, beastly forms moved toward him through the trees, but upon recognizing him as their master they soon disappeared again. Skillfully making his way across the stepping stones, he arrived at a wooden door studded with hobnails and pressed against it lightly. As it creaked open, Gilligan disappointedly clucked, “Some folks can’t do anything right.” But he seemed to reconsider that remark as he grinned broadly and headed inside.

A sweet scent tickled his nose almost instantly. The fragrance was a blend of perfume and aphrodisiacs. It was such a heavy aroma that one whiff would be enough to make any ordinary person’s head reel.

Beyond the door lay a vast hall, and in the far wall there were a number of doors. Not approaching any of them, Gilligan spoke instead from the very center of the hall. His voice, which wasn’t particularly loud or intimidating, sounded almost mechanical. Perhaps it was meant to let everyone know the information he was about to divulge was of grave import. “It’s me—Gilligan. Are you there, Egbert? Gyohki? Samon? Shin? Twin?”

The first voice was heavy, the second was a woman’s, the third had a youthful vigor to it, and the one that followed it was hoarse. However, it was by no means certain that the order in which they’d replied matched that in which they’d been called. Each voice sounded as if it came from all of the doors, while conversely each had a mysterious ring to it that made the listener wonder if they’d heard it correctly. Particularly strange was the last of the replies. It was unmistakably the snarl of a beast.

As if he hadn’t even noticed, Gilligan said, “A terrible situation has developed,” as he turned his face alone to each of the doors. “A little lady came to an antique shop that’s under my purview, and she had a certain bead doodad that she wished to have appraised. The item in question was absolutely unbelievable. Why, even the antique dealer himself didn’t know what he was really dealing with. But he’s quite a bookworm. As luck would have it, he’d looked through some incredibly old documents that helped him out. There was only a single line about it in there, and this is what it said—” Taking a breath, Gilligan told them what it was.

No one spoke behind the closed doors, but the shock waves certainly echoed back.

“Now, this doesn’t mean anything to you,” Gilligan said, his words charged with a certain vehemence. “But it’ll prove useful to me. More than you could ever imagine.”

Somewhere, one of them laughed. Mockingly. “Sure enough. That’d suit your tastes to a tee. But do me a favor and make sure I never have to see that look on your face again. It makes my stomach turn.”

“So, what are you suggesting we do?” another voice asked. The voice was that of the woman, and was so seductive it could make people quiver.

“The little lady came by the bead in the village of Florence, and you’re going to go up there and find me a new bead because some dirty thief stole the other bead from me. At the moment, I’ve sent someone to catch him as quickly as possible. But to be perfectly frank, I have my doubts about whether they’ll get it back.”

It seemed that the human slug named Gilligan actually had an excellent grasp of the situation. For just a short time earlier, a quiet but deadly three-sided conflict had played out in the streets of the entertainment district.

“Oh,” the hoarse voice said, his interjection carrying a lengthy tail. “So, the thief is a power to be dealt with, then?”

“One of my bodyguards just happened to know him. Apparently he has some strange trick he can do. He’s pretty famous in the northwest corner of the Frontier—a man by the name of Toto.”

“I see,” the youthful voice said with admiration. “I’ve heard of him, too. He’s got a nickname, right? ‘Backwards Toto,’ if I recall. Apparently there’s never been anything he went after that he didn’t end up getting.”

“One more thing—the reason I’ve gone to all the trouble of getting famed Frontier enforcers like yourselves instead of using my own people is because the Nobility are obviously involved in this. I assume you’re all familiar with the history of Florence.”

“You mean the Florence Nobility?” the hoarse voice muttered. “Hell, that was a good thousand years ago.”

Gilligan nodded. There was the sound of meshing gears from the loop of steel that restrained his jaw. “Precisely. Life there isn’t much different now from in any other northern fishing town. But from what the girl told me, the village elders seem to be in an uproar, and there’s talk about Nobles coming out of the sea again this summer.” “Nobles that come from the sea?” the woman said, her voice like the tinkling of a bell. “That’s patently absurd,” she laughed. “We don’t yet know the Nobility’s greatest weaknesses. However, any child could tell you water poses a serious threat to them.”

“We can’t necessarily say that applies to every last one of them, you know,” said the owner of the grave voice. “If you’ll consider the history of the area for a moment, you’ll see what I mean. There are bizarre legends connected to the place. Perhaps the tales that have been handed down during the past millennia have finally come true.” “The little lady didn’t even know what the bead was worth. Why, she just took something lying around the house and came here to get a little money for it, never understanding what it really was. How unfortunate for her,” Gilligan chortled. “It would seem her grandfather back home might’ve known something, but apparently he never told the rest of the family about it. Perhaps the quickest way to find out where the bead came from or how to get another one would be to ask him.”

“Fine. After all, locking horns with the Nobility sounds like fun. But what kind of compensation are we talking about for the danger we’ll be facing? We’re not all into the same twisted shit you are, you know.”

To the youthful voice’s query, Gilligan calmly replied, “I’ll turn over all of my land and my entire fortune to whoever brings me

back that bead. As you can see, I had the paperwork drawn up on my way back here. Whosoever brings back the bead should go see the lawyer named Fearing and he’ll do the rest for you.”

“What happens if two of us bring it back?” the feminine voice asked. Her tone was forebodingly deep.

“If there’re two of you, each gets half. Three, and you split it three ways,” Gilligan said, seeming to egg his guests on.

Not only did the zeal in the voices of the other five rise a notch in response, but they also took on a cruel and calculating ring. “Who else knows about the bead?” a dignified voice inquired. “Just the girl’s older sister—a woman by the name of SuTn. There were two others, but one of them got taken out while he was chasing after the thing, and the other would seem to be a guest of mine, oddly enough. Come to mention it, he should be at ‘The Ox’ now.”

“I can’t rightly say. I suppose that’ll be up to him. An old friend of mine introduced me to him, but he’s not exactly like normal folks. It’s Professor Krolock.”

“‘Backwards Toto’ and ‘Professor Krolock’? Man, that’s even more fun than the Nobility!” the youthful voice exclaimed in a tone laden with excitement and tension.

“Actually, there’s someone else, too,” Gilligan said in a solemn tone as a troubled look swept over his barely human countenance.

“So there’s another person after the bead. Why not come right out and say who it is? Are you afraid you’ll scare us or something?” “Pretty much,” Gilligan said with a nod. His whole body stiffened, and with a mechanical clanking he backed away a few steps—he’d just been subjected to emanations of powerful hatred.

When you became a person of some stature in a community, you had to play host to famous warriors, bodyguards, and Hunters

and see to it they weren’t left wanting where drinking, gambling, and whoring were concerned. The skill level of the enforcers said person could gather when he found himself in a jam not only reflected on his status, but could also mean the difference between life and death. However, the more renowned his visitors were for their abilities, the more intense their dispositions tended to be. Relying on such characters was like clinging to a ticking time bomb.

The palpable sense of hatred rapidly faded. Chilling laughter then flowed from all of the doors.

“You surely did. C’mon, Mr. Gilligan. Stop playing games and tell us who it is already.”

“Very well,” Gilligan said, his whole body seeming to quiver with joy. “The Vampire Hunter D.”

At that moment, he could sense nothing from any of the others. It was as if they’d all been struck dead.

After a brief pause, Gilligan added, “Does that sound interesting or what?” His voice trembled as he put the question to them.

“Intriguing,” said the fifth voice. But that was the door where only beastly growls had been heard earlier. Perhaps whoever was behind the door controlled demonic creatures.

“Now, that’s what I like to hear,” Gilligan said, his tone returning to normal. “Rest assured, he only helped out the girl. As for the bead, he doesn’t even know it exists. What’s more, he’s a heartless type who doesn’t undertake anything unless he’s been employed, and even then he only works to dispose of the Nobility. There’s not a chance in a million of him sticking his nose into this, I tell you. So relax. You’ll set out tomorrow. I’ll arrange to cover your traveling expenses tonight, too.”

“Do it now,” the youthful voice said. “You think any of us are gonna hang around until tomorrow? No one here’s thinking about anything except how to beat the rest to the punch. I’m leaving right away.”

Gilligan’s features twisted, and his face collapsed into a grin. If there was ever a smile the world didn’t want to see, it was his.

“You’re all I thought you’d be. Here’s your money,” Gilligan said, taking some golden cards from one of his pockets and dropping them on the floor. “In the Northern Frontier, you can use these cards at any store. Or if the conditions are less than optimal, you can turn them in for money at a bank somewhere. I’m counting on you.”

And saying that, Gilligan turned his back to them. The instant he closed the front door to the building he sensed movements behind him, but he headed toward the main house without saying a word.

The stillness of the wee hours had descended upon the lavish estate. The household staff was asleep. With a grating sound echoing behind him, Gilligan advanced to the end of the hall and climbed the staircase. His bedroom was on the second floor, thus he went up a second flight of stairs. None of his staff or his henchmen had permission to go up there. The top of the staircase was blocked by a steel door. Taking out a key, he unlocked it.

Once inside, he switched on the lights and looked around at the room that surrounded him. Somehow, it was reminiscent of a factory. There was so much engineering equipment and material like plastic and steel that there wasn’t even room to walk around. And in the center of that mess rested a black lump. As Gilligan gazed at it, his eyes seemed to fill with a deep emotion.

“Ah, at last,” the human slug said in a feverish tone. “Finally, my dreams will be realized. Then I can bid farewell to this squalid business and the lowly human company. And leave with you.”

There was a table off to one side that had a bottle of liquor and some glasses. As Gilligan poured himself one drink after another, his eyes drifted back and forth between the black object and the ceiling. The room’s ceiling was dome-shaped. A single line curved all the way across the center of it.

After completely emptying the bottle, Gilligan left his “factory.” Going down the first flight of stairs, he was about to keep walking, but instead stopped right where he was. A black shadow stood at the end of the corridor.

The thought that it might be a burglar popped into Gilligan’s head, but the heavy man quickly froze with astonishment.

The reason the intruder had looked like a shadow was because of his black raiment. And the face above that dark clothing was resplendent in its beauty.

“You ...” he mumbled, forgetting what he wanted to ask. “You’re D, I take it?”

“And you’re the one who had the bug bite that girl Wu-Lin?” His voice, like his face, was gorgeous.

And yet Gilligan couldn’t so much as lift a finger. Out of fear. Only his tongue could move.

“How did you know ... to look here? And right after I left the girl. . . And I had watchdogs in the garden ...” the slug-like man babbled, blinking his eyes. He was trying to get the cold sweat out of them.

A second later, D was right in front of him. Gilligan didn’t even know when the Hunter’d had time to move. It was almost as if the stillness of night was loath to trouble the gorgeous young man about minor matters such as distance.

“Don’t tell me . . . You know, don’t you . . . about the bead?” Of course, he was basically admitting that he’d used poison to draw the information out of Wu-Lin.

“Too bad,” Gilligan said, stroking the bar by the base of his neck. “This baby is made of Zeramium steel. Had it custom built way

back in the Capital. Shoot, it’d take a laser an hour to cut into it a fraction of an inch.”

The wind brushed by his neck. There was a loud clang at his feet. It was the sound of the bar that’d shielded his chin falling to the floor.

“Don’t think that it stopped me,” D said softly. “When someone gets bitten by a ‘chatterbug,’ they go through more than thirty minutes of agony before they die.”

Once again the Hunter’s sword made a horizontal slash, and Gilligan followed it intently until it returned to its sheath. His field of view then shook. Head reeling wildly and crimson splashing into his eyes, he saw the figure in the black coat leaving again.

Gilligan was rooted where he stood until the young man went down the staircase and disappeared. All the while, his head and torso were only connected by a single flap of skin—and blood was pumping from the wound like water from a fountain. Both arms clicked as they moved. Taking hold of the head as it drooped against the right side of his body, his arms lifted it clumsily. Even after the two pieces were lined up, bright blood continued to gush from the slice that remained between them.

“Damn it. . . that hurts . . . ,” the head said. But it was turned toward the back. “Damn ... That’s not right... Ow ... Shit, that hurts...”

His hands rotated his head a hundred and eighty degrees. This time it was a little left of being on center.

“Well. . . Good enough, I guess . . . Ow . . . But it’ll take more than this ... to kill me.”

Now in a state that would’ve long since killed an ordinary human, Gilligan slowly changed direction and once again began climbing the stairs. Surely it was the work of the machinery amplifying his dying strength, but the fact that he even managed to open the door and get into the room bordered on miraculous.

“Almost there ... Just a little more . . . Shit. .. I’ll be damned if I’ll die here after coming this far . . . Damn, it hurts . . . Hurts like hell... I don’t ever want it to hurt like this again . . . Shit. . . D, you bastard . . . Just you wait. . .”

And then, with his head held securely the whole time, the town’s kingpin rattled mechanically toward a black object, strange cries of pain ringing from him all the way.

Several minutes later there was the unpleasant sputter of a motor, and the line across the ceiling began to grow thicker. The black line let in the pale glow of dawn, and before long the purple clouds of daybreak, and the whole heavens where they billowed lay revealed.

There was nothing save a single lamp to light the wooden shack. Windows rimmed with the remains of shattered glass let the icy wind blow in mercilessly, sharp as a sword and cold as the breath of the frost demons that inhabited the northern sea. The dozen or more people seated inside on the wooden benches were left shivering. One side of the shack was wide open, and across from it lay sea and sky as dull and gray as lead. Coming across a limitless expanse of cold water, the wind was naturally freezing, and the old-fashioned oil heater set in the middle of the shack served little purpose. Impressive as its size was, its performance was pitiful.

If you approached the entrance and looked far off into the distance—about seven miles across from the shack—the silhouette of land loomed blackly like the back of some behemoth. Hook-beaked sea birds swooped down, trying to smash through the crests of the mighty breakers. In order to pierce the armored exterior of the shellfish they relished, the birds were able to increase the molecular density of their beaks and teeth, but for that short time their mass also increased. Because of this, any birds that didn’t manage to burst through the waves at high speed and crack open the shellfish would soon find themselves unable to pull out of their dive.

The shadowy form on the opposite shore stretched on forever to either side, and the water between them seemed like an ocean between two islands, but it was actually a canal, and the two pieces of land were siblings that came together again several hundred miles away. Both those who wished to cross over to the opposite side of this vast channel and those headed much further inland came to this little harbor and boarded the regularly scheduled ferry. It was a large ship that could accommodate two hundred passengers or more. For people seeking to avoid the decrepit overland routes and the various supernatural beasts and creatures that prowled them, this one modern convenience proved indispensable. Its only drawback was that weather and waves could stop service indefinitely, causing delays of days or weeks while they waited for the weather to clear again. But usually the captain’s skill and guts were enough to get them through. The ferry made the round trip six times a day.

The ship the people now awaited was the first of the afternoon and the third of the day. More than a dozen passengers were waiting, and true to Frontier tradition, most of them were farmers or merchants. The exceptions were a group of women who looked like part of the “gay trade,” a priest, and several men with swords and spears who were apparently roving warriors.

Particularly conspicuous in this group was a tall young man leaning back against one wall. He seemed to be carefully contemplating something, and his alarmingly good looks as he held that pensive pose caught the eyes of the rest of the passengers. And yet, the women there, who were well-skilled at getting close to men, didn’t do anything. Not only could they not approach him, but they couldn’t even speak to him. The scent of danger that radiated along with his beauty seemed to set off some instinctive sense humans had about matters of life and death. As if intentionally disregarding him, a farming couple with a child threw themselves into small talk with a traveling merchant, the warriors had a few drinks together, and the hut in general was filled with a fair bit of hubbub.

Suddenly catching sight of a dark shape, the ticket vendor at the dock across from the shack shouted, “Here she comes!”

Inside the shack, where the air had been so cold it’d seemed more like winter than just before summer, the mood lightened instantly. “Right on schedule.”

“The village of Lugosi—got some medicine to sell there, you know.” A small blob of color wove through all of the chattering passengers. It was a young child, the son of the farming couple. Five or six years of age, his somewhat plump form quickly cut across the hut, discarded the candy wrapper he had in his hand in a trash barrel by the door, and then dashed right back again.

But just then, a powerful voice as loud as thunder roared, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” and the little boy sprawled across the floor.

Simultaneously, the eyes of the startled folks turned and focused on the three brutes who had risen angrily from the bench by the door. Everyone knew that this couldn’t be good. Armed with swords and spears, the men looked to be warriors. Though that trade generally consisted of wandering the Frontier and lending their skills to the war on monstrous creatures for a price, it attracted more than its share of uncouth characters. Well aware that the slightest problem might be a chance for them to cash in on their expertise, such people had no qualms about stirring up trouble themselves or threatening and blackmailing others when low on funds.

“Little bastard! You kicked my damn sword!” shouted a glowering individual who was by far the hairiest of the trio. Because he also happened to have a wool coat on, he actually looked more like a demonic beast than someone who might dispose of such creatures. The other two warriors were quick to add their indignation. “He’s got no manners at all!”

One was a bald man clad in battered armor. The other wore slacks and a flimsy shirt that left his overdeveloped musculature quite evident. A single glance was enough to confirm them both as the worst kind of thugs that could ever be found.

“Darn it, Calvin!” the boy’s mother cried out in a tight voice as she ran to him, while the boy’s father walked over to the men.

“Please accept our apologies,” the farmer said. “He is just a child, after all.”

“I ain’t accepting shit!” the furry warrior growled as he slapped the hilt of his sword with one hand. “This here’s the tool of my trade. You know, even the least little nick to it might cost me my life someday. Then what would you have to say? You trying to tell me my life don’t mean a damn thing to you or something?”

The rest of the crowd glared at the warrior reproachfully, but when his cohorts looked around, the others all turned their eyes to the floor.

“Here—I hope this will set things right again.” Pulling a cloth pouch from his pocket, the boy’s father forced a few coins into the man’s hand.

Glancing at the money, the man bellowed, “You gotta be kidding me!” and swung his hairy arm through the air. The coins clattered noisily across the stone floor, and the air seemed to freeze solid. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s someone who thinks that money solves everything. I’m gonna teach you and your brat some manners!”

The warrior’s hairy paw caught the father by the front of his shirt. The father tried to say something, but couldn’t.

Suddenly, there was a swift movement through the otherwise frozen world. The boy had just tugged at the waist of a handsome young man who was leaning back against the wall. “Mister—help me!” the child sobbed, perhaps sensing with youthful intuition that this young man would be up to the task.

“You gonna do something about this?” asked the man wearing the armor plate. His tone was a good deal more threatening than that of his hairy companion. He was probably the leader of the trio. “Make no mistake; we ain’t having a beauty contest here. You’d do well to keep your trap shut.”

“Good advice,” was all the young man said. He didn’t look at the trio. But it wasn’t because he was afraid to meet their eyes—and everyone there could tell as much. “This doesn’t concern me. Neither this child’s request nor your threats have any bearing on me. However—” the youth said, slowly turning his gorgeous and pale visage toward the other men, “never address me again.”

His words were soft. They didn’t carry the tone of a command. He was merely conveying his wishes.

The men grew stiff. The hairy one’s cheek started to twitch, and the man in armor swallowed hard.

While it wasn’t clear whether or not he’d seen the results of his glare and his brief remarks, the young man turned back the way he’d been facing.

Suddenly, the bald warrior raised his right hand—in it, he held a long spear. Throwing it at this range, he couldn’t miss. If anyone had noticed it, it was hurled with such speed there was nothing they could do about it.

But then the spear stopped in midair. With a firm crack like a rawhide whip had wrapped around it, the weapon was caught right near the middle of the shaft by a pale hand that shot out from the left side.

The hand was that of a woman. Easily adjusting her grip on the weapon she’d seized with unbelievable skill, then rising with determination, the woman had a large frame that ran a tad to the heavy side. She had to be around twenty years old. With an average face that wouldn’t have made her stand out in a crowd, she’d actually stood right next to the merchant group without any of those talkative fellows ever noticing her, and the three toughs were frankly surprised to find she’d been sitting there. However, as she held the lengthy spear in one hand and glared at the three of them, her eyes and her expression were infused with a solemn air that made it clear she wouldn’t let this outrageous action stand. Needless to say, this determination came with the kind of skill it took to pluck a whizzing spear out of the air.

“Stop it. This is no way for a grown man to behave. Why don’t you think for a moment about where we are? Just what would you do if this spear had hit someone else, huh?!” the woman said, both her words and bearing unbelievably brisk and spirited as they overwhelmed the trio of warriors.

Finally, the hairy one snorted, “You bitch ...” His eyes had a dangerous look in them.

Now free of the hairy fist, the boy’s father hastened back to his wife and child.

“Oh, so now you’re gonna pick on a girl, are you?” the woman said in a gentle tone as she coolly returned the glares the vicious eyes had trained on her.

The hairy warrior’s left hand buzzed into action—he’d just undone the latch on his long sword. Now there was nothing left to do but draw.

“Please, stop it already,” someone said. It was a priest in an old brick-red cassock. But in this case “priest” didn’t mean the leader of the sort of strange new religions popping up like mad in the Capital and its surrounding areas. The kind of holy men that traveled the harsh Frontier were apostles of primitive faiths that held the very foundations of humanity’s vital energies. Due to the fact that he was bound to have some incredible skills or spells at his disposal, this was the man of whom the trio of thugs had been wariest. On closer inspection, the old priest’s graying hair was thinning, and his eyes and skin both lacked vitality. Thinking that the holy man would soon back down if threatened, the warriors had gone into action, but when the priest stood up, he actually proved a disturbing sight.

“What the hell do you want?! Keep out of this!” the bald warrior shouted back at the holy man.

“Stop it. If you’re set on continuing this, you should have no problem doing so once we’ve all reached our destination. If blood’s to be spilled, spilling it now with this journey ahead will only lead to remorse. You should at least hold off until we get to where we want to go,” the old priest added.

“That’s right. You don’t choose a place like this to go stirring up trouble.”

Things had gone so far that the warriors couldn’t just drop the matter, and yet they couldn’t very well cut down everyone who stood against them, either. The thugs exchanged bloodshot glances.

The reprieve everyone had been waiting for came in the form of the ticket seller’s voice as he cried out, “Okay, get in line. Line it up now. The ship’s here.”

“Say, mister—you were pretty great,” said a bar girl who approached from the forward seats, her words causing the young man to look up ever so slightly.

They were toward the back of the ship. Under the black vinyl canopy there were ten rows of benches on either side, with each seating four passengers. Beyond the little window of semi-translucent plastic, the dull gray sea was baring its foamy teeth. It was fairly rough.

Less than ten minutes had passed since the ferry had left the dock. Its speed was twelve knots, or almost fifteen miles per hour. Originally procured from the Capital, the ship’s gasoline-powered engine was huge but rather antiquated.

“Those three talked tough, but one look from you had them shaking in their boots. Not bad for someone as young as you. You must’ve come through a few tight jams with that sword of yours,” the woman said, turning her feverish gaze to the lavishly decorated blade cradled in his powerful arms. “Still, you’d do well to watch yourself. I’m sure they haven’t forgotten about you. And I don’t suppose you’ll be safe even in here. But I sure wouldn’t step outside if I were you,” the woman said, her tone growing heated. “So, what’s your name anyhow? If we’re headed the same way once we reach shore, I was thinking maybe ...”

This sudden remark from him caught the woman off-guard. “Um, sure,” she stammered, nodding reflexively.

“You told me I shouldn’t go outside, but there’s someone on the stern that interests me—the man who jumped on just as the ferry was pulling away. Would you be so kind as to see what sort of fellow he is?”

Fishing the coin out with great haste and staring at it in amazement, the bar girl then gave a nod of obvious delight and headed off to the stern of the ship.

At just that moment, cries of fright rang out from the front of the seating section. It sounded like the boy and his parents. The cries of the child resounded particularly loudly, and the father’s shout of “What are you doing?” soon became a shriek of pain.

The heavy footsteps that closed on the young man were those of two of the warriors.

“Care to come with us for a little bit?” the hairy thug said, tossing his jaw toward the ferry’s stern.

Looking up at the man in armor right beside him, the young man asked, “Where’s the third guy?”

“Sheesh. That’s the least of your concerns, bub,” the man in the armor spat.

The child seemed utterly terrified as he stared up at his pair of captors with a vacant gaze.

“If you’re worried about this brat, you’ll give us some of your time. Step outside and just see for yourself.”

As she sensed someone drawing closer, the woman spun around reflexively. Even after she saw that it was the bald warrior, no fear or surprise crept into her expression. “What do you want?” she asked. Her tone was the epitome of calm.

“You caused me a hell of a lot of embarrassment,” the bald man growled, the head of his spear gleaming just before his face. It was the only light on this gloomy day. Aside from the lead-gray sky and sea and the white wake of the ferry, there was only a mass of black cloud that seemed to follow the ship at the mercy of the wind.

“That’s funny,” the woman said, a smile surfacing on her lips. “The end of your spear is shining. As bad as the weather is, I guess there’s a ray of light out there somewhere. The sun is shining. You know, where I come from, the winter’s long and summer’s over before you know it,” the woman continued somewhat nostalgically, and the second she finished, a flash of white light shot at her chest.

As the woman sprang to the right with a speed that was staggering given her general build, the head of the spear twirled around after her, leaving a glittering trail. But the spearhead met only thin air.

The bald warrior’s eyes were wide with surprise, but it was still remarkable that he only halted for a heartbeat before stabbing straight ahead again with his spear.

“What the hell?!” the man gasped, this time driven to comment by his astonishment.

The head of his spear had stopped an inch shy of the woman’s ample bosom, caught in her hands. It was sandwiched between her joined palms.

“Ouf!” the man grunted as his muscles bulged. Shoulders and chest, arms and legs—they all seemed swollen to nearly twice their normal size. But the tip of the spear didn’t budge. It wouldn’t tremble in the slightest, as if it were lodged into one of the iron trees of Lamarck.

“You like that?” the woman said, her smile looking a bit pained. “Not the greatest trick in the world, but it’d be more than enough to snap the head off this. Isn’t this one of the precious tools of your trade?”

The bald man didn’t answer. His face swelled in a heartbeat, and vermilion flooded into his cheeks. It was almost as if all of the blood in his body had rushed into his head. The man then let out a long grunt.

Incredibly enough, the man lifted his seven-foot-long spear high over his head with a grown woman still clinging to the end of it.

“Don’t let go if you don’t want to,” the bald warrior told her. “Go ahead and break the end off. I’m just gonna dunk you in the water anyway. The cold’ll be enough to stop your heart for sure. Feel like letting go? You do that and I’ll impale you in midair!”

And then, after a cruel reprieve of a few seconds, the man prepared to spin his spear around.

At that very moment, the woman he held up in the air sprang higher. The spear was still for a moment as the warrior tried to compensate for the sudden loss of the woman’s weight, and in that brief moment her pale hand chopped at the weapon’s shaft. Watching out of the corner of her eye as the spear tip flipped end-over-end to knife gently into the water, the woman landed spectacularly on the cramped deck. Exhaling lightly, she stuck both hands out in front of her body. Her left leg was bent somewhat to support her weight, while her right foot was one step forward and balanced on its toes, like a cat. Given this woman’s skill, she could probably do whatever she wanted to with that right leg now that it didn’t have to hold her up.

“Not too shabby,” the bald man said as he delivered a loud slap to his own face. “You surprise me. But if I can’t spear you, how ’bout I just use the pole?”

To evade that thrust of ungodly speed, the woman twisted her body and leapt back.

“Take that! And that! And that!” the man shouted with thrust after thrust, never letting the woman get very far away.

After a second leap and a third, the woman reached the stern. A horse snorted. Not all of the travelers had been on foot. Though she tried to circle around them, she couldn’t—the rounded end of the weapon had a force far beyond the earlier strikes when it stopped about a foot and a half shy of the woman’s face. Almost as if pierced by the tenacity and bloodlust pouring from her opponent, the woman’s face was soon covered with beads of sweat.

“Looks like we both mean business,” the bald warrior said, revealing his yellowed teeth. Just then, his eyes slipped a bit off of her and focused on something else—a gorgeous figure who had just appeared next to the woman from the rear door to the ship’s cabin. “What the hell do you want?!” the man growled in a low voice.

The slight alterations to his tone and the glint in his eyes made the woman turn to look, too.

“You gonna try and stop me?” the bald man asked, having somewhat rekindled his murderous intent.

There was no reply. But in lieu of one, a strangely indescribable miasma spread around them like thick honey, making the man back away instinctively. Dripping with the same cold sweat as the woman, the thug found his eyes filled by the sight of the young man, and his graceful good looks seemed to drive the warrior’s thoughts toward a philosophical abyss.

“Well, well. Are we gonna do this?” the armored warrior said, his right hand reaching for the grip of his sword.

The furry warrior looked down at the kid scornfully, and then shifted his eyes to the young man before him. “Aren’t you gonna do anything, pretty boy? You’re a lot colder than I thought.”

The young man didn’t answer him. Even as his field of view was occupied by the innocent face of the boy wriggling against those hairy arms, neither his eyes nor his gorgeous face betrayed the slightest glimmer of human emotion.

Both parents sounded like they were on the brink of tears. But another voice came on top of their pleas. “I specifically told you not to pick a fight with me.”

“When you get to the next world, be sure to tell the gatekeeper exactly how I killed you,” said the other warrior.

The hirsute warrior shook his head. “No, he ain’t in the way at all. At least, not for me.”

“Have it your way then,” the young man said, his right hand reaching for his own longsword. While his opponents were thugs, it was also clear they must’ve lived through countless battles. The fact that he was willing to not only make enemies of the two of them but also to let them draw first had to be due to more than mere self-confidence. “You don’t have to let him go if you don’t want to. But don’t let my blade get away from you, either.”

What the young man had stated was really quite obvious. No one could defend himself from an enemy’s blade without seeing it, and the pair of thugs weren’t taking their eyes off the end of his sword.

His longsword came down with a swoosh! The movement looked gentle enough, but slashed fiercely through the air. Just as it was about to reach the planks of the deck, the blade stopped. The two warriors stood staring at it.

There was a whistle. Following the very same path, the young man’s blade began to rise. And then—

Watching, the thugs raised their swords again, too. They raised them high. As if following the lead of the young man, who was poised with his blade high over his head, they both took the very same stance. The gesture was in perfect synchronization. The only difference was they didn’t take the same step forward that the young man had.

The young man’s sword dropped coolly. The blades that the two thugs brought down at exactly the same time met nothing but thin air, and bright blood shot up from the head of the hairy warrior like a pillar of smoke. Without a sound, he dropped backward.

“Mommy!” the boy shouted, breaking free from the hairy arm and dashing away. The tiny figure bumped into the young man’s leg.

A horizontal slash buzzed through the air toward the young man’s cheek. It was the armored warrior’s second attack. Oddly enough, his first blow had come from above—just like that of his furry compatriot.

Pale sparks flew off the blade harshly. The young man had parried the blow with his peerless skill.

“Shit!” the man in armor shouted as he pulled his blade back again, but he then made a strange move. Holding his blade at eye-level, he moved both hands to the right as quickly as he could and kicked off the ship’s deck in a mighty bound. A second later, his chest was pierced cleanly by a thrust from the blade the young man held exactly the same way. Falling face'first without a sound, by the time the body finally thudded against the deck, the young man’s blade was back in the scabbard at his waist.

As the young man’s hand came away from his weapon’s hilt, the boy shouted with joy, “You did it, mister! You did it!” His previous fears were now completely forgotten as he rushed over to the young man from behind. Blushing, the boy leapt for the young man’s back.

The back of the young man he was about to cling to was no longer there, and after the boy flipped head over heels and hit the floor, his right arm was missing from the shoulder-down.

Strangely enough, the boy immediately leapt up again. Pressing down on his shoulder as blood gushed from it, he was rapidly losing the color from his face, where not a fragment of his earlier innocence remained. Filled with the sly villainy of an old man, his eyes were trained on his own right arm, which had fallen at the young man’s feet—an arm that held a sharp needle in its plump little hand.

“A poison needle, eh?” the young man muttered. “You may have thought you had me fooled, but I’m sorry to disappoint you. Still, it’s a strange sort of talent you have—the parents and the bar girl aren’t real people. Of course, these thugs aren’t either. State your name!”

There was a sword dripping with blood stuck right under the boy’s nose, but he only laughed in a low voice. It wasn’t the voice of a child. Rather, it was the tone of a man untold centuries old and heavy with wrinkles. “How long have you known?” he asked.

“From the very beginning, when the farmer pulled out his money back at the landing. The coins were fine, but the bills mixed in with them were blank slips of paper. Next, there was the bar girl. At a distance she would’ve passed, but she got too close. You probably wanted her to get in good with me in case these two thugs screwed up, but you were sloppy. That was the first time I ever touched a woman’s hand and couldn’t feel a pulse,” said the young man.

The boy—who was most likely a bizarre old man in flesh and spirit and every other regard aside from that youthful visage—listened without saying a word. But at this point, he leaned back and laughed out loud. “Oh, so that’s what happened? Up against someone like you, I should’ve had every possible angle covered. I see my preparations were inadequate. But I should expect no less from the

Vampire Hunter D. Well, at least I did away with that impudent little wench while I was here.”

“You’re in for a disappointment there,” a mirthful voice laughed from the stern.

The woman was standing there. Behind her well-rounded figure was the most gorgeous young man in black.

“You mean—you?!” the boy screamed, his words directed not at the woman, but rather at this new, beautiful figure.

“My name is Glen,” the first young man said, as if nothing at all had transpired. “Over there’s the man you’re looking for. So damn handsome, I can’t even begin to compare. What, would you prefer it was his blade that dispatched you to the next world?”

“Oh, so that’s what happened. It’s just been one screwup after another today,” the boy said, laughing loudly once again. His face was pale, but nothing could extinguish the malevolent flames that burned in his eyes. “I figured there was no sense running myself ragged getting out here, so I came on my own. But then when I saw a guy at the harbor that was just far too good-looking, well, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Well, if you’ve come this far, D, we must be headed to the same place.”

Lips that made women and men alike swoon moved as D said, “You work for Gilligan?”

“I suppose I do, at that. I’m not surprised you’ve heard as much. ‘Shin the Manipulator’ is the name. Just so I don’t give the rest of them an edge on me, I suppose I should tell you there’re four others headed for the village. They’re all enforcers hand-picked by Gilligan, and each and every one of them has some sort of weird ability. But interestingly enough, none of us knows what any of the others looks like. I’ll give you their names, though. There’s Egbert, Samon, the ‘dawn demon’ Gyohki, and Twin. And I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate it if you could knock some of them off before the next time we meet. Of course, they might just take your life first, which would also work for me.”