when I awake, it keeps me minutely informed of movements on the Frontier. That badge was reconstructed from molecules of ash recovered at the site, and I also have images of you and yours taken during the attack, and beamed down from the satellite. I needn’t tell you what would happen should this information be sent to not only this village, but also every place the lowly human race calls home.”

Having heard that much, Rei-Ginsei hurled a shrike-blade.

It struck an invisible barrier in front of the fearsome blackmailer’s heart and imbedded itself in the floor. In truth, it was then that Rei-Ginsei gave up.

“There is the girl who eludes me to consider as well, “ the voice continued. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she were to pay a call on the sheriff tomorrow, and I assure you she would tell him all about you and your cohorts. I suppose the reason you’ve taken up lodging here in town alone is to kill the girl before she can do so, but as long as she has that man by her side, you’ll not have an easy time of it. After all, your foe is a dhampir—he has the blood of my kind in him. No matter which course you choose, naught save doom awaits your group.”

“Then why would you tell me this? What would you have us do?”

The reason Rei-Ginsei’s tone was surprisingly calm was because the intruder had been right on all points but one, and he’d decided that putting up any more of a struggle would be futile.

“I thought I might lend you some assistance,” the voice said—a remark that was quite unexpected. “So long as the stripling that’s frustrating my efforts is slain, and the girl comes into my possession, I have no interest in what happens in the lowly world of mankind.”

“But how?”

A vicious, vulgar light shone in Rei-Ginsei’s eyes. He realized he might have a chance now to slay the young punk—-his opponent back in the fog. That was the one point on which the

Count had been mistaken. He hadn’t left his three henchmen camped in the woods and come into town alone to keep the girl from talking. Well, that had been part of the plan, but his true aim was much more personal. He’d had the little bird where he could rip her wings off, tear her legs off, and wring her dainty neck, and his foe had taken her right out from under his nose. Worse yet, he’d known the humiliation of being paralyzed by a ghastly aura that kept him from lifting a finger against his foe, and he’d had the invincible shrike-blade he prided himself on knocked from the air with a single blow. He’d gone into town to see to it his foe paid for all these things. It was malice. Just as full of hatred and longing for vengeance as he was, his henchmen agreed to his plan. He returned to town alone to be less conspicuous as he looked for the girl and his mysterious foe.

However, wait as he might at the entrance to town, there was no sign of his prey. In asking around, he only managed to learn what the girl’s name was and where she lived. Normally he would’ve gone right out there and attacked her, but the proven strength of this other enemy—who no one in town had been able to identify—was enough to throw cold water on the wildfire that was his malice. He’d left town again briefly to meet with his cohorts and order them to keep an eye on Doris’ farm. Then he went back into the village to gather as much information as possible on his enemy for his own murderous purposes. And, while he hadn’t exactly gathered any information, he now had a more powerful ally than he ever could’ve imagined standing right before him.

“How shall we do it?” Rei-Ginsei asked once again.

“This is what you should do.”

Discussions between the demon in black and the gorgeous fiend went on for some time.

Presently, the visitor in black dropped something long, thin, and candle-like on the bed.

“That’s Time'Bewitching Incense. It’s a tool for turning day to night, or night to day. This is an especially potent version. Light it when you’re near him, then quickly extinguish it again. That should throw his defenses off. That’s when you kill him. However, just to keep you from getting any ideas about other uses you might put this to, it can only be used twice. You have only to give it a good shake and it should light.”

“Please, wait a moment,” Rei-Ginsei cried out, hoping to stop the departing figure. “I have one additional favor to ask of you.” “A favor?” The shadowy figure sounded both puzzled and angered.

“Yes, sir.” With a nod and a smile, Rei-Ginsei made his outlandish request. “I ask that you make me one of the Nobility. Oh, you needn’t be so angry about it. Please, simply hear me out.

I have to wonder why you bothered selecting me as your partner in this. If this incense alone is enough to do the trick, there must be any number of humans you could have entrusted this to. We live in times where parents will kill their own child for a gold coin and a new spear. And yet, the very fact that you went to all the trouble of coming to see me is proof enough that you need someone of my skill in order to kill the dhampir. I know a thing or two about dhampirs myself. I know they tend to be the very worst sort of enemy you could ever make. And there’s something so powerful, so terrifying about the one we’re dealing with now, it cuts me to the quick. That is no ordinary dhampir. With all due respect, it’s not enough to merely have you overlook my group’s misdeeds. I do not ask the same favor for all four of my party—I alone would like to rise to the hallowed ranks of the Nobility.”

The shadowy figure fell silent.

Anyone with a heart who heard Rei-Ginsei’s overture would’ve wanted to scream “Traitor! ”—to say nothing about what his three henchmen might have done—but then the world has never lacked for turncoats. Even as they hated and feared

them like demons from hell, deep in their heart of hearts people looked at the dreaded vampires with a covetous gaze. Power and immortality had such an alluring scent.

“What say you?” Rei-Ginsei asked, pressuring his visitor for a response.

The shadowy figure gave a nod, and Rei-Ginsei nodded in return.

“Then thy will be done.”

“See to it.”

The shadowy figure left the room. He still had another visit to pay before he returned to his castle. By the guttering lamplight, he failed to notice the other person in the hallway.

CHAPTER 6

It was early the next morning that Dan’s disappearance came to light.

Weary as she was from her deadly battle the previous night and from staying up almost all night preparing for the Count’s attack, Doris failed to notice her younger brother racing out to the prairie at the crack of dawn.

Having told D the details of her run-in with Rei-Ginsei and his gang, Doris had decided to go see the sheriff today to inform him. Though Dan had been told not to leave the farm until they were ready to go into town, the boy was just bursting at the seams with energy. Apparently he’d switched off the barrier and gone out alone with a laser rifle to hunt some mist devils.

Fog-like monsters that slipped in with the morning mist, the creatures were a nuisance on the Frontier mainly because they had a propensity for dissolving their way through crops and the hides of farm animals. They didn’t fare well against heat, however, and a blast from a laser beam was enough to destroy them. Being rather sluggish, they posed little threat to an armed boy used to dealing with them.

Hunting mist devils was really Dan’s specialty.

Soon after she awoke, Doris realized her brother wasn’t on the farm. She raced frantically to the weapon storeroom and saw that he’d taken his rifle, which let her relax for a moment. But when she ran outside to call him back in, she froze in her tracks at the entrance to the farm.

His laser rifle had been left as a paperweight on a single sheet of paper that was lying on the ground, right in front of the gate. The following words were written on the page in elegant lettering:

Your brother is coming with us. The Hunter D is to come alone at six o’clock Evening to the region of ruins where we met the other day. Our goal is simply to ascertain which Hunter has the superior skills, and nothing more. We have no need of observers, not even you, Doris. Until this test of skill has been decided, you are to mention this to no one.

If you deviate from the above conditions in the least, a sweet little eight-year-old will bum in the fires of hell.

—Rei-Ginsei.

Doris felt every ounce of strength drain from her body as she returned to the house. She was still trying to decide whether or not she should show the letter to D when D noticed all was not right with her. Trapped in the gaze of his lustrous eyes, Doris finally showed him the letter.

“Well, half of it is true, at least,” D said, as if the matter didn’t concern him in the least, though it was quite clear he was being challenged to a duel.

“Half of it?”

“If he just wanted to face off against me, all he had to do was come here and say so. Since he took Dan, he must have another aim—to separate the two of us. The Count is behind this.”

“But why would he have gone to all that trouble? It’d be a lot faster and easier if he’d said I was the one who had to come alone ...”

“One reason is because the author of this letter wants to settle a score with me. The other—”

“What would that be?”

“Using a child to get you would reflect poorly on the honor of the Nobility.”

Doris’ eyes blazed with fury. “But he really is using Dan to—” “Most likely his abduction is the only part of the plan Rei-Ginsei and his gang came up with.”

“The honor of the Nobility—don’t make me laugh! Even if it wasn’t his idea, if he approves of it it’s the same damned thing. Nobility my ass—they’re nothing but blood-sucking monsters!” After she spat the words like a gout of flame, Doris was shocked at herself. “I’m sorry, you’re not like that at all. That was a rotten thing for me to say.”

Tears quickly welled in her eyes, and Doris broke down crying on the spot. The recoil from putting all her violent emotions into words had just hit her. Her situation was grim, with one misfortune after another piling onto her as if she was possessed by some evil spirit that drew all these calamities to her. In reality, it was amazing she hadn’t surrendered to tears long before now.

As weeping shook her pale shoulders, a cool hand came to rest on them. “We can’t have you forgetting you hired a bodyguard.”

Even with the present state of affairs, D’s voice remained soft. But within the coolly composed ring of his words, the ears of Doris’ heart clearly heard another voice propped up by unshakable assurance. And this is what it seemed to say: I promised to protect you and Dan, and you can be certain I will.

Doris raised her face.

Right before her eyes was the face of an elegant, valiant young man gazing quietly at her.

It felt as something hot fell onto her full bosom.

“Hold me,” she sobbed, throwing herself against D’s chest. “I don’t care what happens. Just hold me tight. Don’t let me go!”

Gently resting his hands on the sob-wracked shoulders of the seventeen-year-old girl, D gazed out the window at the blue expanse of sky and the prairie filling with morning’s life.

What was he thinking about? The safety of the boy, his four foes, the Count, or something else? The emotional hue that filled his eyes remained a single shade of cold, clear black. Before long, Doris pulled back from him. With a spent, sublime expression she said, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t exactly in character for me. It’s just...

I suddenly got the feeling you might stay here with me forever. But that’s not right. When your job’s done, you’ll be moving on, won’t you?”

D said nothing.

“This is almost over. Something tells me that. But what are we gonna do about Dan?”

“I’ll go, of course. I have to.”

“Can you take them?”

“I’ll bring Dan back, safe and sound.”

“Please, see that you do. I feel awful making you look out for him, but I think I’m gonna head into town to hole up. I’ll have Doc Ferringo put me up at his place. You know, he saved me the night before last. I’m sure I’ll be fine this time, too.”

Doris still didn’t know that the real reason the Count had run off was the protective charm D had placed on her neck. And most likely the reason D said nothing when the girl told him she was going to the physician’s home was because he knew he couldn’t guarantee that the charm would ward off someone with the Count’s power forever.

When the angle of the sunlight spearing through the window became sharp, the two of them got on their horses and left the farm. Regardless of what D had said, Doris’ expression remained dark.

If anyone can bring back Dan, he can—she had no trouble making herself believe this. But she remembered how powerful his enemies were. She could still hear the shrike-blade screaming up behind her in the ruins; the horrid sight of her horse falling over with all four legs cut off was burned deep into her eyelids. Now there were four such fiends out there. A dark spot of despair remained in Doris’ heart.

What’s more, even if D made it back alive, if the Count were to strike while D was gone, there was no way she could escape him this time. She’d said nothing about it to D, but she still wasn’t entirely sure going to Dr. Ferringo’s was the right thing to do.

On entering town, countless eyes focused on the pair as they rode down the main street. The looks were colored more by fear than by hate. For people on the Frontier, who lived surrounded by dark forests and monsters, a girl who’d been preyed on by a vampire and a young man with vampire blood in his veins were beyond the normal level of revulsion. Thanks to Greco, everyone had heard what had happened.

A little girl who seemed to recognize Doris said, “Oh, hi,” and started to approach, but her mother wasted no time in pulling her back.

Among the men, there were some whose faces showed the urge to kill, and they reached for swords or guns the second they saw D. Not because they’d been told what he was, but rather because of the eerie aura that hung about him. All the women, however, looked like they would swoon as they watched him go by, and given how beautiful he was, that came as little surprise.

And yet, the pair made their way down the street without a single hot-head running out to stop them, and finally they arrived at a house with the sign “Dr. Ferringo” hanging from the eaves.

Doris got down off her horse and rang the bell, and presently the woman from next door, who acted as a nurse and watched the place while Doc was out, answered. Apparently ignorant of Doris’ situation, she smiled and stated, “Doc’s been out since this morning. It seems there was someone out at Harker Lane’s house that needed urgent care and he went off to see to ’em. He left a note saying he’d be back around noon, but where he’s still not back yet, he may be dealing with something serious. You know, the lady of the house out there is apt to put anything in season into her mouth, even if it’s a numbleberry or a topsy-turvy toadstool.” Lane was a huntsman, and his home was out in the middle of the woods, two hours of hard riding from town. “I hate it when this happens. On my own I can’t do much besides treat scrapes and hand out sedatives, but since everyone always says that’s good enough I’ve been running myself ragged all morning. Why don’t you come in and wait. I’m sure Doc will be back soon, and if you’re willing, I could sure use the help.”

Uncertain about what to do, Doris looked to D. Sitting on his horse, he gave her the slightest nod.

She decided. Giving a bow to the housewife—who was watching D with starry eyes—Doris said, “It looks like I’ll be in your hair until Doc gets back then.” She sounded a little tense, but that was unavoidable. While she thought D would come with her, as soon as he saw she’d made up her mind, he started to ride off slowly.

“Dear me, isn’t he with you?” the woman asked Doris excitedly. She didn’t even try to hide her disappointment. At that point, before Doris could get angry at the thought of a woman of the nurse’s age getting all worked up about D, she was sharing the woman’s confusion.

“Hold on. Where are you headed?”

“Just taking a look around the perimeter.”

“It’s still midday. There’s not going to be anything out. Stay with me.”

“I’ll be back soon.”

D let his horse go on without once looking back.

After they’d gone a ways he took a left turn. In a needling tone, a voice asked, “Why don’t you stick close to her? You mean to tell me you’re so worried about that little tike you can’t sit still? Or is just that you can’t stand to see the suffering on his sister’s face? Dhampir or not, seems you’re still a little wet behind the ears. Heh heh heh. Or could it be you’re in love with the girl?”

“Is that what you think?”

Just whom was D talking to?

The road ahead was a dusty path that continued on between walls of earth and stone. Aside from the lethargic, vexing rays of the sun as it moved past noon, there was no sign of anyone around. And yet, there was still that voice.

“No chance. You’re not that kind of softy. After all, you’ve got his blood in your veins. It’s perfect, the way you told them to call you D.”

“Silence!”

Judging by the way the man in question had roared in reaction to his name, it seemed the voice had touched on a rather sensitive point.

An instant later his tone became soft once again. “You’ve been full of complaints lately. Would you like to split with me?” “Oh no!” the voice exclaimed, sounding a touch threatened. But then, as if to avoid showing any weakness, it replied, “It’s not like I’m with you because I like it. Well, you know how it goes— give-and-take makes the world go round. Not to change the subject, but why didn’t you tell the girl about the mark you put on her neck? Out of loyalty to your father? Just a word from you would’ve put her at ease, I bet. It must be tough having the blood of the Nobility in you.”

The voice sounded sincere enough, but the fact that its heart held an entirely different sentiment was made apparent by a burst of derisive laughter.

Still, one couldn’t help but wonder if the young man had completely lost his mind to continue a dialogue with an imaginary companion as he sat there on his horse. But because the tone, quality, and everything else about the two voices were

completely different, the weird scene only seemed possible through some truly ingenious ventriloquism.

D’s eyes sparkled brilliantly, but soon reclaimed their usual, quiet darkness, and the conversation came to an end. Shortly thereafter he took a left at the next corner, came to a similar corner, and once again turned the same way. Eventually, he returned to the front of the physician’s home.

“Any strange characters out there?” the voice once again echoed from nowhere in particular.

“None.”

Given the way he’d answered, it seemed he had in fact gone off to check the surrounding area for any hint of anything out of the ordinary.

However, he showed no sign of dismounting as he lifted his beautiful visage and grimaced at the sun listing westward from the center of the sky.

“Is that all I can do?” he muttered. Perhaps some vision of the grisly battle to come flitted through his mind; for an instant, a certain expression rose on his oh-so-proper countenance, and then it was gone.

A few horses hitched up across the street suddenly grew agitated, and people walking by shielded their eyes from the dust kicked up by an unpleasantly warm wind blowing by without warning.

The momentary expression on D’s face was the same one the Midwich Medusas had seen in the subterranean waterway— the face of a blood-crazed vampire.

Gazing for a brief moment at the closed door to the doctor’s home, D reined his horse around and headed out of town. The ruins were two hours away.

CiT T ere he comes. You should see him on top of the hill any JLjL minute,” Gimlet said, returning with the wind in his wake. When Rei-Ginsei heard this news he pulled himself up off

the stone sculpture he’d been leaning against. Gimlet was their lookout.

“Alone, I take it?”

“Yessir. Just like you told him.”

Rei-Ginsei nodded, then addressed the other two henchmen who’d been standing there for some time like guardian demons at a temple gate, with their eyes running out across the prairie.

“Everyone is set, I see. Engage him just as we’ve planned.”

“Yessir.”

Nodding as Golem and Chullah bowed in unison, Rei-Ginsei walked to the horse hitched up behind him. The place the four of them had chosen for this showdown was the same bowl-like depression where Witch had been killed. Challenging D to a grudge match in the same location where D’s aura had battered them and kept them paralyzed was just the sort of thing this vindictive ruffian would do, but consideration had also been given to how useful this location would be for restricting their opponent’s movements when they fought him four against one.

Rei-Ginsei squatted next to Dan, who lay behind a rock, gagged and bound hand and foot, and pulled down the cloth covering the boy’s mouth. Called a gag rag, the cloth was a favorite of criminals. The fabric was woven from special fibers that could absorb all sound, and its usefulness to kidnappers made it worth its weight in gold.

Still, there was no call for the cruelty displayed by keeping a boy barely eight years old gagged ever since the morning.

“Look, your savior is coming. I put this plan together yesterday after hearing about you and your sister, and I must confess it seems to be going beautifully.”

Just as Rei-Ginsei finished speaking, the furious gaze that had been concentrated on him was colored by relief and confidence. Dan looked toward the hills.

Twisting his lips a bit, Rei-Ginsei sneered, “How sad.

Neither of you is fated to leave here alive.”

“Ha, you guys are the one who won’t make it out of here alive.” Worried and hungry and looking gaunt, Dan still managed to fling the reply with all his might. He hadn’t been given so much as a drop of water since he’d been captured. “You have no idea how tough oP D is!”

His words were strong, but they were also a childish bluff. He’d never even seen D fight.

Dan thought Rei-Ginsei might fly into a rage, but, to the contrary, Rei-Ginsei only smirked and turned his gaze to his three henchmen standing in the center of the depression. “You may be right. That would certainly mean less work for me.”

Dan’s eyes opened wide, as if he must have heard that wrong. But it was true. This gorgeous fiend fully intended to bury his three underlings here along with D. At first he’d only intended to take care of D and Doris, who’d seen his face, but after receiving the Count’s oath to turn him into one of the Nobility, Rei-Ginsei’s plans had taken a complete turn. The power and immortality of a Noble would be his—he would no longer be a filthy brigand wandering the wilderness.

So, in accordance with the Count’s plan, he left Doris for the Noble to handle, while he decided to add three more people to the pair the Count wanted him to kill. In his estimation, if he allowed his henchmen to live, he would come to regret it later.

If D should dispatch them all here, so much the better. But if luck is not with me and some survive, I shall kill them myself,

A solitary rider popped up over the hilltop. He didn’t reduce his speed, but galloped toward them at full tilt.

“Well, time to make yourself useful.” Grabbing hold of the leather straps that hung around the boy’s back, Rei-Ginsei carried Dan over to his horse with one hand, like he was a piece of baggage. The shrike-blades on his hip rubbed together, making a harsh, grating noise. Groping in his saddlebag with his free hand, he pulled out the Time-Bewitching Incense. “That’s strange,” he said, tilting his head to the side.

“Boss!”

At Chullah’s tense cry, Rei-Ginsei whirled around, still gripping the candle.

“D,” Dan called out, his shout flying off on the wind.

Rei'Ginsei’s sworn enemy had already dismounted and now stood at the bottom of the earthen depression with an elegantly curved longsword across his back.

“Dear Lord ...”

The beauty of his foe left Rei-Ginsei shocked ... and envious.

“I wish I could tell you what an honor it is to have one of my blades knocked down by a man of your kind, but I won’t. The fact that you’re a miserable cross between a human and a Noble takes the charm out of it.”

To Rei'Ginsei’s frigid smile and scornful greeting, D softly replied, “And you must be the bastard son of the Devil and a hellhound.”

Rei'Ginsei’s entire face grew dark. As if his blood had turned to poison.

“Let the boy go.”

In lieu of a reply, Rei-Ginsei gave Dan’s leather bonds a twist with one hand. An agonized cry split the boy’s young lips.

“Ow! D, it really hurts!”

Though they looked like ordinary leather straps, they must have been tied with some fiendish skill, because they started pressing deep into Dan’s shoulders and arms.

“These bonds are rather special,” Rei-Ginsei said, twisting his lips into a grin and making a small circle with his thumb and forefinger. “Apply force from the right direction and they pull up tight like this. I figure for a child of eight, it should take twenty minutes or so for them to sink far enough into his flesh to choke the life out of him. If you haven’t finished us all off by then, this boy will be cursing you from the hereafter. Does that light a little fire under you?”

“D ...”

What an utterly heartless tactic. The bonds had already begun working their way through his clothes. As the boy writhed in agony, D gave him a few powerful words of encouragement.

“This’ll just take a minute.”

Meaning he would take care of them in fifteen seconds each?

“O ... okay.”

Unlike the bravely smiling Dan, the four men were livid.

The ring formed by Rei-Ginsei’s three henchmen began to tighten like a noose. All of them were painted by the vermilion rays of the setting sun, but the palpable lust for blood rising from each seemed to rob the light of its color.

“Now, let’s show him what you can do one by one. Golem, you go first.”

As his boss gave him the command, not only Golem but all three henchmen began to look dubious. After all, the initial plan had been for all four of them to attack at once and kill him. But a moment later, Golem’s massive brown body raced toward D with the silent footfalls of a cat. The broad blade of his machete glittered in the red light. There was a loud clang! His machete was big enough to chop a horse’s head off, but just as it was about to hack into the Hunter’s torso, D drew his blade with lightning speed, bringing the tip of it down through Golem’s left shoulder. Or rather, it looked like it was going to go right through his shoulder, but it bounced off him.

Golem the Tortureless—a man with muscles of bronze.

His body had even proved itself impervious to high-frequency wave sabers.

Once again, Golem’s machete howled through the air, and D skillfully dodged it with a leap that carried him yards away in an instant. And once again, the giant went after him, closing on the Hunter.

“What’s wrong? You said fifteen seconds each!”

Like a cry to battle borne on the wind, D’s angry roar shook the grass and filled the mortar-shaped depression in the earth.

Doris awoke from her nap as someone gently shook her shoulder. A warm, familiar face was smiling down at her.

“Doc! I must’ve dozed off while I was waiting for you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’re exhausted. It took quite some time to take care of my patient at Harker’s, and I’ve just gotten back here myself. I swung by your place and no one was there, so I hustled back with the sneaking suspicion I might find you here. Did something happen? Where’s Dan and that young fellow?”

All her memories and concerns flooding back to her, Doris looked around. After D left, she’d helped the nurse deal with the patients, then she’d stretched out on a sofa in the examination room and fallen asleep.

There was no sign of the nurse, who’d apparently gone home, and the rows of houses and trees beyond the windowpanes were all steeped in red. The curtain was set to rise on her time for terror.

“Well... the two of them are hiding out in Pedros. I figured I’d join ’em there once I’d paid my respects to you ...”

As she attempted to rise, a cool hand came to rest on her shoulder. Pedros was the name of a nearly deserted village the better part of a day’s and a night’s ride from Ransylva. Even at that, it was still their closest neighbor.

“Even though you’ll have to get through at least one night before you arrive?”

“Uh, yeah.”

As he peered at her face with an uncharacteristically hard gaze, Doris unconsciously looked down at the floor.

Giving a little nod, the elderly physician said, “Very well then, I’ll press the matter no further. But if you’re really going to go somewhere, there’s a much better place for you.” At these surprising words, Doris looked up at the old man’s face. “I found it on my way back from Harker’s place when I decided to go through the north woods.”

Dr. Ferringo pulled a map out of his jacket pocket and unfolded it. The passing years had dulled his memory, so he often used this map of Ransylva and its surroundings anytime he had to travel far to treat a patient. It had a red mark on it in part of the north woods. It was a huge forest, the thickest in the area, and not a single soul in the village knew their way around the whole of it.

“Part of a stone wall caught my eye, and when I hacked away the bushes and vines covering it I found this place—ancient ruins. It appeared to be the remains of some sort of place of worship. It’s pretty large, and I only examined a small portion of it, but I guess you could say luck was with us, because that stone wall was inscribed with an explanation of the site. It seems it was constructed to keep vampires at bay.”

This left Doris completely speechless.

Now that he mentioned it, she could recall her father and his Hunter friends gathered around the hearth sharing stories about this place when she was a child. They said that far in the distant past, long before the Nobility rose to power in the world, people who’d been preyed on by vampires were locked up in a holy place and treated with incantations and electronics. Perhaps what Dr. Ferringo had discovered was one such facility.

“Then you mean to tell me if I’m in there, he can’t get at me?”

“In all likelihood,” Dr. Ferringo replied, smiling broadly.

“At any rate, I imagine it’s better than trying to reach Pedros now, or holing up here in my house. Shall we go out and give it a try?”

“Yes, sir!”

Less than five minutes later, the two of them were jolting along in Dr. Ferringo’s buggy as it hastened down the dusky road to the north woods. They must have rode for nearly an hour. Ahead, tiny walls of trees blacker than the darkness came into view. This was the entrance to the forest.

“Woah!”

Once they were in the buggy, the elderly physician hadn’t answered her no matter how she tried to get him to talk, but suddenly he’d given a cry and pulled back on the reins.

A small figure stood at the entrance to the forest. The face was unfamiliar to Doris, but with paraffin-pale skin and ivory fangs poking from the corners of her mouth—it had to be Larmica.

Doris grabbed the doctor by the arm as he prepared to lash the horses again. “Doc! That’s the Count’s daughter. What in the name of hell is she doing out here? We’ve got to get out of here, and fast!”

“That’s odd,” Dr. Ferringo muttered in an uncertain tone. “She shouldn’t be here.”

“Doc, hurry up and get this thing turned around!”

Seemingly frozen, the doctor didn’t move at her desperate cries, while the woman in the white dress standing up ahead came toward them, smoothly gliding through the grass without appearing to move her legs in the least. Doris had already pulled her whip out and was on her feet.

She felt a powerful pull at her hands, and before she knew it her whip had been taken from her. Taken by Dr. Ferringo!

“Doc?!

“So I was known until yesterday,” Dr. Ferringo said, fangs sprouting in his mouth.

Come to think of it, the hand he’d placed on Doris’ shoulder back at his hospital had been cold. And he was wearing a turtleneck shirt, which wasn’t like him at all! The instant hopelessness and fear were about to wrack her body, a fist sank into the pit of her stomach, and Doris collapsed into the shotgun seat.

“Well done,” said the lovely vampire, now hovering beside the buggy.

“Larmica, I presume. You honor me with your praise.” With bloodshot eyes and a hunger-twisted mouth, Dr. Ferringo’s smiling countenance was now that of a Noble. The previous night, he’d been attacked by the Count and made into a vampire.

The call on Harker’s home, and the ancient vampire-proof ruins, were complete fabrications, of course. Taking his orders from the Count, he’d concealed himself in the basement by day, appeared in the evening at a time when D would already have left, and played his part in luring Doris out of town. If separated from D, Doris would surely turn to the doctor—the Count’s assessment had been right on the mark.

“You’re to bring the girl to my father, are you not? I believe I shall accompany you.” Even though she was a fellow vampire, Dr. Ferringo donned a wary expression at Larmica’s formal speech and the frigid gaze she turned on him.

He’d been commanded to bring Doris into the heart of the forest and to the waiting Count, but he hadn’t heard that Larmica would be coming. And yet she suddenly appeared at the entrance to the forest and said she would go with him. Why wasn’t she with her father? But the doctor had only just become the Count’s servant, and it would be unpardonable for him to question his master’s daughter. Opening the door to the buggy’s backseat, he bowed and said, “Be my guest.”

Larmica moved into the vehicle like a mystic wind.

The buggy took off.

“Rather fetching for a human, isn’t she,” Larmica mumbled, peering at the face of the unconscious Doris.

“That she is. When I was human, she was like a daughter to me, and I never had occasion to view her in any other light. But when I look at her now, she’s so beautiful it’s a wonder I never tried anything with her. To be quite frank, I intend to ask a favor of my lord the Count and see if he won’t allow me to partake of a drop or two of her sweet, red blood in return for all my hard work— although I would not be so bold as to seek it from her throat.”

These were the words of the kind and faithful old physician? Now he was lost in fantasies of slowly sucking the blood from the very girl who two days earlier he’d risked his life to protect. His teeth ground together greedily.

He heard Larmica’s cheery voice behind him. “For the time being, allow me to give you my reward.” Without even allowing him time to turn, she took the steel arrow she’d kept concealed and thrust it through the elderly physician’s heart, killing him instantly. Tossing his body to the ground, Larmica sailed gracefully through the air, landed in the driver’s seat, and quickly brought the horses to a halt. Taking a furtive glance at the woods, she said, “I dare say Father will be furious, but I simply cannot allow a lowly human worm to be made a member of the glorious Lee family—and I most certainly won’t welcome one as his bride.” When she turned her eyes on the still-sleeping Doris, they had the most lurid light to them. A wolf could be heard howling out on the distant plains.

“Human, I shall show you your place now—as I rip you limb from limb before delivering you to Father.” She reached for Doris’ throat with both hands. Her nails shone like razors.

In the middle of the wilderness, with no one to protect her, hemmed in by the darkness, the girl remained in her stupor, oblivious to the very real danger she was in.

That was the moment.

A weird sensation shot through every inch of Larmica’s body. All her nerves were being pulled out and burned off, each and every cell was decaying with incredible speed. Black ichor squirted out through holes in her melting flesh, and she felt her intestines twist with the urge to vomit, as if the entire contents of her stomach had started to flow in reverse. That’s what the sensation felt like.

It was almost as if the night that had just begun had suddenly become midday. A familiar scent struck Larmica’s nose.

She had no idea how long it had been there, but a tiny speck of light burned in the darkness to her back. Apparently someone had heard Larmica’s anguished cries, and there was the sound of cautious footsteps coming closer through the grass. In its hand, the figure held Time-Bewitching Incense.

Having dodged a third horizontal slash of the machete, D once again took to the air.

To anyone watching, it would have looked like the act of a beaten man. Every time D went on the offensive, the bronze giant kept his eyes—clearly his only weakness—well covered with his massive club of a forearm.

“Give ’em hell, D!”

Golem dismissed Dan’s feverish support with a laugh. “Look, you’re making the little baby cry—” The sentence went no further.

The four pairs of eyes on the two combatants bulged in their sockets. None of the spectators had any idea what had happened.

D had his right leg out behind him for balance, and his sword ready and pointing down at the ground. The way his blade moved was like a jump cut in a film. The part where it slashed through the air was missing, and it skipped straight to where it went into Golem’s mouth, wide with laughter.

Though this freak could control the density of his musculature on the surface, an inch below, his body remained as soft as any other living creature’s. D’s sword slipped in through the only real opening in his defense aside from his eyes, and drove up to the top of his skull in one smooth thrust.

D must’ve been aiming for that ever since he discovered the giant’s flesh couldn’t be cut, but the way he found an opening at the end of the giant’s chatter, and made the thrust literally faster than the eye could follow, was nothing short of miraculous.

“Gaaah—”

It was actually rather humorous the way the scream didn’t escape the impaled giant until several seconds later. As his massive form dropped backwards, its toughness fading rapidly,

D stepped closer and split the giant’s skull with one emotionless slash of his sword. This time the giant didn’t make a sound. The sight of their staunch friend falling—sending up a bloody mist a

shade more crimson than the setting sun—snapped his spellbound compatriots back to their senses.

“Looks like you did it, punk. I’m up next,” Chullah said in a voice that sounded crushed to death, but as he stepped forward he was checked by a human awl—Gimlet.

“What speed. Kid, I’m willing to put my life on the line to see which is faster—my legs or that freaking sword of yours.” He was in front of D in a flash, like he’d ridden the wind over there, and he had a world-beating grin on his lips. Was it due to self-confidence, or was it the thrill in his bandit blood at meeting his worthiest opponent ever?

D held his sword at chest level, pointed straight at Gimlet’s heart.

In an instant, his opponent vanished.

Dan gasped.

Looking in the brush to D’s left, at the feet of a statue diagonally behind him, right behind his back—there was now a circle of countless Gimlets fifteen feet from him in any direction.

Gimlet—the man was as streamlined as the tool he was named for. As a result of a mutation, he was capable of superhuman bursts of speed in the vicinity of three hundred miles per hour. His body didn’t sport a single hair, and his face was relatively free from sharp features; it was nature’s way of reducing wind resistance during his superhuman sprints.

However, moving at super speed wasn’t his only talent. He would run a few yards, pause for an instant, and then run some more. By doing this over and over, he could leave afterimages of himself hanging in midair.

The foe right before you would multiply and be to your left one second, to your right the next—what warrior wouldn’t be distracted by that? Show him an opening for even an instant, and all the Gimlets to the front and to the rear, to the left and to the right, would brandish their bowie knives and move in for the kill.

Taking on Gimlet was the same as engaging dozens of opponents at the same time.

It came then as little surprise that quick-draw master O’Reilly hadn’t even freed his precious pistol before he was dropped from behind.

D’s gonna get himself killed! Tears glistened in Dan’s eyes. Not so much tears of fear as of parting.

As he raced around doing his special technique, it was actually Gimlet who was horrified. It’s not that this bastard cant move, it’s just that he won’t let himself be moved!

That’s right. Eyes half closed, D stood without making the slightest movement. Gimlet knew better than anyone that D’s tactic was the only way to negate his disorienting movement.

His powers could be used to their best advantage when his countless other selves made his enemy change their stance, forcing them to leave themselves open. Nevertheless, the gorgeous young man before him didn’t look at him or change his stance. Gimlet was little more than a clown prancing around in circles.

“What, aren’t you coming for me? Only three seconds left.”

When that icy voice pushed him over the brink, was it despair or impatience that launched Gimlet at D’s back? His murderous dash at three hundred miles per hour was met by the blade of Vampire Hunter D—who’d taken down a werewolf running at half the speed of sound. A flash of steel shot out, cutting Gimlet from the collarbone on his left side to the thoracic vertebrae on the right. Sending bloody blossoms of crimson into the air, the streamlined body of the runner hit the ground with incredible force.

The next battle was truly decided in a heartbeat.

“Look out behind you!”

D turned even faster than Dan could shout the words, and found a black cloud eclipsing his field of view. A massive swarm of minute poisonous spiders was pouring out of Chullah’s back,

riding the wind to attack him. No matter how ungodly his skill, D’s sword couldn’t possibly stop this.

However, Dan saw something as the wind roared.

D’s left hand rose high above his head, and the black cloud that covered half the depression became a single line that was sucked into the palm of his hand. The roar was not the sound of a wind blowing out, but rather of air being sucked back in.

The cloud was gone like that.

D raced like a gale-force wind.

His head split by a silvery flash of light, Chullah fell backwards—but from the moment his beloved spiders had been lost, he’d been nothing more than an empty husk with the shape of a man.

“Forty'three seconds all told—nicely done.” Rei-Ginsei watched D with fascination as the Hunter walked toward him, holding his bloody sword and not even breathing hard. Taking a shrike-blade from his belt, for some reason Rei-Ginsei slashed through the bonds that held Dan.

“D!”

Dan ran over to D without even bothering to rub his bruised arms and legs, and the Hunter gently put the boy behind a statue for safety’s sake before squaring off against the last of his foes.

“I’m in a hurry. Let’s do this!” Moving faster than his words, D’s longsword made a horizontal slash that reflected the red sunset.

Barely leaping out of the way, Rei-Ginsei stood at the bottom of the depression that until now had served as an arena.

“Please, wait—” he said, unable to conceal the quavering of his voice. His shirt had a straight cut running from the right side of his chest to the left, the result of D’s attack. D was ready to pounce on him.

“Wait—Miss Lang’s life hangs in the balance!”

Those words left Dan paler than D. Satisfied at the hint of unrest showing in D’s eyes, Rei-Ginsei felt his cheeks rise at last with his trademark angelic smile.

“What are you talking about?” Surprisingly, D’s tone was as calm as ever.

“Miss Lang is with Dr. Ferringo, is she not?”

“So what if she is?” D said.

“Right about now, the girl is being delivered to the Count. The poor thing had no way of knowing the good doctor she trusts more than anyone became a servant of the Count last night.” “What?!”

Rei'Ginsei was shocked to see the look of naked surprise and remorse that came over D. He didn’t know that D had personally escorted Doris to the doctor’s house. “Come now. Relax, relax. I shall tell you exactly where they’re to meet the Count. That is, if you agree to what I propose.”

“And what proposition would that be?”

“That the two of us replace the Nobles,” Rei'Ginsei said, his voice brimming with confidence. “I have an arrangement with Count Lee. If he can take possession of the girl as a result of me slaying you, I shall be made one of the Nobility. To be perfectly honest, if I decided to kill you, there’s still a very good chance I would succeed. However, having seen you in action for myself, I’ve had a change of heart. Even if I were to be made a Noble, as the good doctor was, I’m certain that, as a former human, I would be treated as a servant. I would prefer to become the Count instead.” Having rattled all that off in a single breath, Rei-Ginsei paused. Tinged with a hint of blue, the glow of sunset left delicate shadows on his beautiful profile. The shadows made his visage so indescribably weird that Dan trembled in the safety of the statue.

“In the world today, what keeps the Count in that position, aside from his immortality as a vampire? It’s his castle, and the fear that’s been fostered in the hearts and minds of the populace since ancient times. It’s that and that alone. They had their time once. But now they lie shrouded in the afterglow of destruction, vanishing into the depths of legend. If you and I should join

forces, we could do so much—kill the Count and all his followers, claim their fortune and their throne as the new Nobility. We might even bring the majesty of true Nobles into the world with no destruction.”

D watched Rei-Ginsei’s face. Rei-Ginsei watched D’s.

“You are already a dhampir-—half Nobility. Let me pretend I have killed you and have the Count drink my blood. And then ...” Rei-Ginsei laughed, “Surely there has never been such an exquisite couple in the entire history of the Nobility.”

Rei-Ginsei’s laughter was cut short by what D said next.

“You like to kill, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“It’s only fitting the Nobility be destroyed.”

In a flash, Rei-Ginsei was leaping away for the second time. In midair he shouted, “You fool!”

Count Lee’s daughter had called D exactly the same thing once.

Three flashes of black shot from his right hip. One flew over D’s head, arced, and came at him from the rear. One zipped right along the ground, clipping every blade of grass it touched until it turned up at his feet and shot toward his armpit. And one came straight at the Hunter as a distraction. Each was a shrike-blade unleashed on a different course with breathtaking speed.

However ...

All of Rei-Ginsei’s murderous implements were knocked out of the air with a beautiful sound.

A pained cry of “Ah” could be heard from the bushes, as Rei-Ginsei’s left hand was severed at the elbow. It flew through the air, a candle still held tight in its fist. D, who’d rushed to where Rei-Ginsei had landed the moment he’d fended off the three attacks, had chopped it off.

As blood spilled from Rei-Ginsei—just as it had from his three companions—his expression said less about his pain than it did of his disbelief. At the same time he was hurling his shrike-blades, he shook the Time-Bewitching Incense, but it hadn’t given off its beguiling scent. In fact, the candle hadn’t even lit.

It’s a fake! But when was it switched, and who could’ve done it?!

As agony and suspicion churned together in his gorgeous face, a naked blade was thrust under his nose.

“Where is Miss Lang?”

“How foolish,” Rei-Ginsei groaned as he pressed down on his bloody, dripping wound. “Out of some duty you feel for no more than a human girl, you would cut me down—me, a human who told you of my contempt for the Noble, and that I would take his life. Accursed one, thy name is dhampir ... You share the Noble’s world by night and the mortal’s by day, but are accepted by neither. You shall spend all the days of your life a resident of the land of twilight.”

“I’m a Vampire Hunter,” D said softly. “Where is Miss Lang? That face you’re so fond of will be the next thing I carve.”

There was something about his words that wasn’t a mere threat. The ghastly aura that had stopped Rei-Ginsei in his tracks that time in the fog now hit him with several times its previous power. Rei-Ginsei heard his words come out of his mouth of their own volition, due to a terror beyond human ken. “The forest... Go straight in at the entrance to the north woods ... ”

“Fine.” D’s ghastly aura died down instantly.

Rei-Ginsei’s body shot up like a spring, and was pierced by a flash of silver.

And yet it was D that fell to one knee with a low moan.

“What?! That’s impossible ... ” It was only right that Dan exclaimed this as he peeked around the statue.

As Rei-Ginsei was leaping into the air, D’s sword slid into his belly in the blink of an eye. Half the blade’s length had clearly gone into his opponent. And yet the tip of the blade had emerged from D’s own abdomen!

“Damn!” Rei-Ginsei spat, leaping away. And as he did, something even stranger happened—naturally the sword in D’s

hand came out of Rei-Ginsei’s belly, but at exactly the same rate the blade jutting from D’s stomach pulled back into the Hunter’s body I

Dan watched in astonishment.

“I see now. I’d heard there were mutants like you,” D muttered. Not surprisingly, he was still down on one knee, and wincing ever so slightly. A deep red stain was spreading across the bottom of his shirt. “You’re a dimension-twister, aren’t you, you son of a bitch? That was close.”

Having leapt ten feet away, Rei-Ginsei’s eyes sparkled, and a loathsome groan escaped his throat. “I can’t believe you changed your target at the last second ... ”

Here’s what they meant by “that was close” and “you changed your target.”

Rei-Ginsei hadn’t beat back the pain of his severed arm and leapt up to launch an attack of his own. He expected to have his own heart pierced by D’s sword. At that instant, the sword was indeed headed straight for his chest, but at the last second it pulled back and pierced his stomach.

That was why he shouted, “Damn”—Rei-Ginsei realized D had noticed the way he’d adjusted the speed of his leap so his chest would be right where the Hunter could stab it. After all, a single thrust through the same vital spot as vampires could kill dhampirs too. Still, why had he resorted to such an outrageous tactic—allowing himself to be stabbed to kill his opponent?

Rei-Ginsei was a dimension-twister; through his own willpower, he could make a four-dimensional passageway in any part of his body but his arms and legs and link it with the body of his foe. In other words, when his foe attacked him, the bullets and blades that broke his skin would all travel through extra-dimensional space into the body of his assailant, where they would become real again. A bullet that was supposed to go through his heart would explode from the chest of the person that fired it;

bringing a vicious blade down on his shoulder would only split your own. What attack could be more efficient than that?

After all, he simply had to stand there, let his attackers do as they pleased, and his foes would die by their own hands.

But Rei'Ginsei leapt away. A belly wound wasn’t life threatening for a dhampir, and he was badly wounded himself.

“I’ll see to it you pay for my left hand another time!” he could be heard to say from somewhere in the bushes, and then he was gone without a trace.

“D, it’s all right now—oh, you’re bleeding!”

Ignoring Dan’s cries as the boy ran over to him, D used his sword like a cane and got right up.

“I don’t have time to chase after him. Dan, where’s the north woods?”

“I’ll show you the way. But it’ll take three hours to ride there from here.” The boy’s voice was filled with boundless respect and concern. The sun was already poised to dip beneath the edge of the prairie. The world would be embraced by darkness in less than thirty minutes.

“Any shortcuts?”

“Yep. There is one, but it cuts right through some mighty tough country. There are fissures, and a huge swamp...”

D gazed steadily at the boy’s face. “What do you say we give it a shot?”

“Sure!”

CHAPTER 7

It was Greco who’d used the Time-Bewitching Incense to save Doris. The morning after he eavesdropped on the conversation between Rei-Ginsei and the Count, Greco had one of the thugs who usually watched out for him pose as a visitor and call Rei-Ginsei down from his hotel room to the lobby. The thug was gone before Rei-Ginsei got there, however, and by the time Rei-Ginsei returned to his room, the Time-Bewitching Incense had been replaced with an ordinary candle that looked just like it. With the incense in his possession, Greco had kept watch on Dr. Ferringo’s house, and when the vampire-physician left with Doris, he’d followed after them but kept far enough back so they wouldn’t notice.

He intended to rescue Doris and bind her fast with the shackles known as obligation. And, if the fates were kind, he would also slay their feudal lord, the Count. In one fell swoop, he would become a big man in town, and he had ambitions of heading to the Capital. The fact that he had single-handedly dispatched a Noble would clearly be his greatest selling point to the Revolutionary Government, and his best chance to win advancement into their leadership.

However, the situation had changed somewhat. The buggy was supposed to go straight to the Count, but it had stopped when a girl in white suddenly appeared, and on top of that, the

very same girl staked Dr. Ferringo. No longer sure exactly what was going on, Greco was convinced that something had gone wrong. He got closer to the wagon. Seeing the vampiress and her lurid expression as she prepared to sink her claws into Doris’ throat, he’d given the Time-Bewitching Incense a desperate shake.

Timid at first, when he saw Larmica writhing in agony and he approached the buggy with his head held high. The incense was in his left hand. In his right hand, he was gripping a foot-long stake of rough wood so fiercely that it pressed into his fingers. Stakes were everyday items on the Frontier. The ten-banger pistol holstered at his waist with the safety off, and the large-bore heat-rifle stuck through the saddle of the horse he’d tethered in the trees, were for dealing with the Nobility’s underlings. His beloved combat suit was in the shop for repairs, just like most of his flunkies’ gear.

“Oh,” Doris groaned as she got up. In her writhing, Larmica must’ve struck some part of Doris’ body and brought her around. Her eyes were torpid for a brief moment, but they opened wide as soon as she noticed Larmica. Then she looked at Dr. Ferringo’s body, lying on the ground not far from the buggy, and at Greco and said, “Doc ... why in the world?...What are you doing way out here?”

“So that’s the thanks I get,” Greco said, clambering up into the backseat of the buggy. You know, I kept that bitch from making chunky splatter out of you. I followed you out here from town in the dark of night. You’d think that’d win a little favor from you.”

“Did you kill Doc, too?”

Doris’ voice shook with sorrow and rage.

“What, are you kidding? The bitch did it. Although, it did making rescuing your ass a little easier.”

Being careful not to let the tiny flame go out, Greco moved Larmica into the backseat with his other hand. The young lady in

white curled up under the seat without offering the slightest resistance. Not only was she deathly still, but she also seemed to have stopped breathing.

“That’s the Count’s daughter. Was she responsible for turning Doc into a vampire, too?”

“No, that was the Count. See, he attacked him last night so he could use him to lure you out here.” Greco quickly shut his mouth, but it was too late.

Doris stared at him with fire in her eyes. “And just how the hell do you know all this? You knew he was gonna be attacked and you didn’t even tell him, did you? You dirty bastard! What do you mean you saved me? You’re only looking out for yourself!”

“Shut your damn mouth, you!” Turning away from her burning gaze, Greco reasserted himself. “How dare you go talkin’ to me that way after I saved your life. We can hash that out later. Right now, we’ve got to decide what to do about her.”

“Do about her?” Doris knit her brow.

“Sure. As in, do we kill her or use her as a bargaining chip to negotiate with the Count.”

“What!? Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. And don’t act like this don’t concern you. I’m doing all this for you.”

Doris was in a daze as she watched the young tough make one preposterous statement after another. Then her nose twitched ever so slightly. She’d caught the scent of the Time'Bewitching Incense.

Come to think of it, the moonlit night felt strangely like a brilliant, sunny day. Greco said with pride, “The perfume in this candle is to thank. The Nobility has them, and apparently they can change day into night and vice versa. As long as it’s lit, the bitch can’t move a muscle and the Nobility can’t come near us—which is what got me thinking. It’d be so easy to kill her, but considering how she’s the Count’s daughter, there’d be hell to pay later. So, we take her hostage to set up a trade, then take the Count’s life, too, if all goes well.”

“Could you ... could you really do that?” Her plaintive voice made Greco’s lips twist lewdly, and when Doris averted her gaze she saw the pale face of Larmica as she lay beneath the backseat breathing feebly.

Larmica was lovely, and didn’t look very far in age from herself. Doris felt ashamed for having considered for even a moment using the young lady as a bargaining chip.

“Noble or not, there ain’t a parent out there who don’t love their own daughter. That’s how we can trip him up good. We’ll say we want to trade her for some treasure. Then when he comes out all confident, bang, we use the incense to nab him and drive this here stake through his heart. Rumor has it their bodies turn into dust and disappear, but if someone like my father or the sheriff is there to see it, they’d make a first-class witness when I give the government in the Capital my account.”

“The Capital?”

“Er, forget I mentioned it.” In his heart, Greco thumbed his nose at her. “At any rate, if we kill ’em, the two of us will get the Noble’s stuff—their fortune, weapons, ammo, everything! All for the huge service to humanity we’ll be doing.”

“But this woman ... she hasn’t done anything to anyone in the village,” Doris said vehemently, sifting through everything she could remember hearing since childhood.

“Open your eyes. A Noble’s a Noble. They’re all bloodsucking freaks preying on the human race.”

Doris was dumbstruck. This coarse thug had just hurled the same curse on them that she had once said to D! I was just like him then. That’s not right. Even if they are Nobles, I can’t use someone’s helpless daughter to lure them to their death. Just as Doris was about to voice her objections, a voice dark as the shadows held her tongue.

“Kill me ... here ... and now ...”

Larmica.

“What’s that?” Greco sneered down at her in his overbearing manner, but her expression was so utterly ghastly it took his breath away. Even as she was subjected to the agony of her body burning in the midday sun, she showed incredible willpower.

“Father ... is not so foolish he would exchange his life for my own. And I will not be a pawn in your trade ... Kill me ... If you don’t... I shall kill you both someday ...”

“You bitch!” Greco’s face seemed to boil with anger and fear, and then he raised his stake. As a rule, he hadn’t had much self-restraint to start with.

“Stop it! You can’t do that to a defenseless person!” As she spoke, Doris grabbed his arm.

The two of them struggled in the buggy. Strength was in Greco’s favor, but Doris had fighting skills imparted to her by her father. Suddenly letting go of his arm, she planted her left foot firmly and put the full force of her body behind a roundhouse kick that exploded against Greco’s breastbone.

“Oof!”

The cramped buggy, with its unsteady footing, was too much for him. Greco reeled back, caught his leg on the door, and fell out of the vehicle.

Not even looking at where the dull thud came from, Doris got out of her seat and tried to talk to Larmica. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna let that jerk do anything to you. But I can’t very well just send you on your merry way, either. You know who I am, right? You’ll have to come back to my house with me. We’ll figure out what to do about you there.”

A low chuckle that seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth cut off all further comment from Doris. “You are free to try what you will, but I won’t be going anywhere.”

Doris thought her spine had turned to ice when she saw the beautiful visage look up at her, paler than moonlight and filled now by an evil grin of confidence. She didn’t know

what had just happened. When Greco had fallen from the buggy, the Time-Bewitching Incense had gone out!

Larmica caught hold of Doris’ hand with a grip as cold as ice. In the darkness, Doris’ eyes made out pearly fangs poking over the lips of the child of night as she got to her feet.

Doris was pulled closer with such brute strength Greco couldn’t even begin to compare. She couldn’t move at all. Larmica’s breath had the scent of flowers. Flowers nourished with blood. Two silhouettes, two faces overlapped into one.

“Aaaagh!” A scream stirred the darkness, and then was gone. Trembling, Larmica shielded her face.

There in the dark she’d seen it. No, she’d felt it. Felt the pain of the same holy mark of the cross her father had seen on the girl’s neck two days earlier! It would make its sudden appearance only when the breath of a vampire fell on it.

The vampires themselves didn’t know why they feared it. All that was certain was that even without seeing it their skin could feel its presence. In that instant some nameless force bound them. This was the mark they couldn’t allow humans to know about, something that had supposedly sunk into the watery depths of forgetfulness thanks to ages of ingenious psychological manipulation—so how could this girl have the holy mark on her neck?

Though Doris didn’t understand why Larmica—who’d enjoyed an overwhelming advantage until a second earlier—had suddenly lost her mind, she surmised that she’d been saved. Now she had to run!

“Greco, you all right?”

“Oooh, kind of.” The dubious response that came from the ground beside her suggested he might have hit his head.

“Hurry up and get in! If you don’t get your ass in gear I’ll leave you out here!”

And with that threat she took the reins in hand and gave them a crack. She intended to throw Larmica off with a sudden jolt forward. But the horses didn’t move.

Doris finally noticed a man wearing an inverness standing in front of the horses and holding them by their bridles. For some time now, a number of figures had been standing at the edge of the woods.

“As the doctor was late, I thought something might be amiss, and my suspicions proved correct,” one of the silhouettes said in a voice of barely suppressed rage. It was the Count. Though her heart was sinking into hopelessness, Doris was still the same warrior woman who’d bitterly resisted the Count all along. Seeing that the whip Doc had taken from her earlier was lying on the seat beside her, Doris snatched it up and swung it at the man in the inverness.

“Huh?” Doris cried, and the man—Garou—grinned broadly. She was sure she’d split the side of his face open, but he bobbed his head out of the way and caught the end of the whip between his teeth. Grrrrr! With a bestial growl he—it—started chewing up Doris’ whip, a weapon that had stood up to swords without a problem.

“You’re a werewolf,” Doris shouted in surprise.

“That’s correct,” the Count responded. “He serves me, but unlike me he is rather hot-blooded. Another thing you may wish to consider—-I told him that, should you give us any trouble, he had my permission to hurt you. It might be amusing to see a bride missing some fingers and toes.”

Suddenly a boom rang out. Still flat on his ass on the ground, Greco had fired off his ten-banger. High-power powder—the type that could easily punch a hole through the armor of larger creatures—enveloped the Count and those near him in flames. The Count didn’t even glance at Greco, and the flames were promptly swallowed by the darkness. Such was the power of the Count’s force field.

“Raaarrrrrr! ” The werewolf snarled at Greco. Halfway through its transformation, it glared at Greco with blood-red eyes. Greco gave a squeal and froze. White steam rose from the crotch of his pants. Fear had gotten the better of his bladder, but who could blame him?

Doris’ shoulders sank. The last bit of will she possessed was thoroughly uprooted.

“Father ...”

Larmica drifted down to the ground like a breeze. With glittering eyes, the Count gave her a hard look and said, “I have an excellent idea of what you were trying to do. Daughter or not, this time I’ll not let you get away with it. You shall be punished on our return to the castle. Now stand back!” Ignoring Larmica as she headed silently to the rear, the Count extended a hand to Doris.

“Well, now, you had best come with me.”

Doris bit her lip. “Don’t be so pleased with yourself! No matter what happens to me, D is gonna send you all to the hereafter.”

“Is he really?” The Count forced a smile. “Right about now the stripling and your younger brother are both being taken care of by our mutual acquaintances. In a fair fight, he might have prevailed, but I gave his foes a secret weapon.”

“Father ...” From the tree line to the Count’s rear, Larmica pointed to where Greco crouched on the ground. “That man had Time-Bewitching Incense.”

“What!” Even through the darkness the sudden contortion of the Count’s face was clear. “That cannot be. I gave it to Rei-Ginsei.” Here he paused for a beat, and after closely scrutinizing his daughter’s face said, “I can see that you speak the truth—which means the stripling is—”

“Correct.”

A low voice made all who stood there shrink in fear. The Count looked over his shoulder again, and Doris’ eyes darted in the same direction—toward Larmica. Or rather, toward

something looming from the trees to her back. A figure of unearthly beauty.

“I’m right here.”

A groan that fell short of speech spilled from the Count’s throat.

Never did I imagine this rogue might come back alive ...

If Time-Bewitching Incense hadn’t played its pivotal role in the duel, the Hunter’s survival was far from impossible. But unless he had an aircraft of some sort, it should’ve taken D another hour by horse to cover the distance from the site of his duel with Rei'Ginsei.

And yet D was here. He had been one with the darkness, and neither the Count’s night-piercing gaze nor the three-dimensional radar of the robot sentries had detected him.

The robot sentries turned in D’s direction, but an attack was impossible, of course.

“Don’t try anything funny—I’ll show her no mercy.” Garou was just about to pounce on Doris when a low but not particularly rough voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Doris, you and what’s-your-name—bring the wagon over here. Be quick about it!”

“Ye—yessir!” Doris answered dreamily, not just because of the relief she felt in being rescued, but because D had called her by name for the first time ever.

“Garou, grab the girl,” the Count commanded sharply.

As the black figure prepared once again to leap up into the buggy, it was buffeted with another castrating voice—Doris’.

“You come near me and I’ll bite my tongue off!”

The werewolf snarled loudly and stopped. So many irritations. Greco flopped into the buggy.

“I’m prepared to die before I’d ever become one of your kind. If it’s gotta be here and now, that won’t bother me.” The threats of an insignificant human—a mere girl of seventeen—silenced the Count. To all appearances, D and Doris had won this outré

encounter. The Count was obsessed with Doris, and would have her at any price. Conversely, if Doris were to die, that would be the end of everything.

“We shall settle this another time.”

The buggy stirred the night air as it sped to D’s side, and the Count put his arm around Larmica’s shoulder for the first time. The next instant, the two figures nimbly made their way up into the buggy.

What was astonishing about this whole encounter was that D never even touched the sword on his back. Even when he’d taken Larmica hostage, he hadn’t threatened her with his blade. Larmica had moved to the back as her father ordered, and the second she sensed D’s presence behind her, she found she couldn’t move a muscle. She was paralyzed by the overwhelming aura that radiated from him—one that the superhuman senses of vampires alone could fully appreciate. The same aura had prevented the Count and Garou from raising a hand against him.

“What do you intend to do with my daughter?” the Count called out to D, who kept a steady gaze trained on him and his party from the backseat of the buggy.

There was no reply

“The little imbecile has crossed me at every turn and cost me the chance of a lifetime—-I no longer consider her my daughter. Let her lie in the sun till decay takes her to the marrow of her bones!”

His words were unthinkably harsh for a father, but then, on the whole, the vampire race had extremely dilute notions of love and consideration, compared to human beings. Quite possibly it was this trait that had both led them to the heights of prosperity and guided them to their eventual downfall.

When her father’s words reached her ears, Larmica didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

“Doc, we’ll come back for you later! ” Following Doris’ sorrowful cry, the buggy took off.

After they’d gone a short way across the plains, they could hear a horse whinnying up ahead. Apparently, whoever was out there had noticed them.

“Who’s that? Is that you, Sis?!”

“Dan! You’re all right, are you?!” Doris asked, her voice nearly weeping as she drove the buggy over to her brother. He was on horseback. And he held the reins to a second horse. That one had been Rei-Ginsei’s, and they’d brought it for Doris. They’d planned on having her ride home with them, but unfortunately they’d picked up some unwanted baggage. The whole reason D had taken Doris and Greco out in the buggy was to solve their transportation problems.

“I’m going to lighten our load. You two get on the horse. Dan, you come over here with me.”

By “you two” he meant Doris and Greco. Because so many of the things that’d been happening were beyond his comprehension, Greco felt like his brains were half scrambled, so he followed orders without the slightest protest. The transfers were effected in a matter of seconds.

“Are you sure you can still handle the buggy if you’ve got her riding with you?” Doris asked from her seat in the saddle. The real question was: how many present noticed the jealousy in her voice? D made no answer, but silently lashed the horses with Doris’ whip.

The wind howled in the girl’s ears as the forest and fiends were left further and further behind.

“Dan, you weren’t hurt, were you?”

Doris barely squeezed the question out as she rode alongside them. They were going full speed to keep the Count from catching up, and the wheels of the buggy spun wildly.

“Not a bit. I was gonna ask you the same thing—hey, of course you’re fine. D’s on the job. He wouldn’t let anyone harm a hair on your head.”

“No, I suppose he wouldn’t,” Doris concurred, her eyes full of joy.

“I wish you could’ve seen it,” Dan said loudly. “It took him less than fifteen seconds each to get rid of them freaks. It’s too bad the last one got away, but that couldn’t be helped with D being hurt and all.”

“Huh? Was he really?”

It was understandable that Doris grew pale, but why Larmica suddenly looked over at D from her seat was unclear.

“Hunters are really great, though. He got stabbed through the gut and it didn’t even bother him—good oP D rode through the roughest country with me on the back and pulling another horse behind us. You should’ve seen it. When D had the reins, them darned horses would jump right over the biggest crevice or a swamp full of giant leeches without batting an eye. Oh yeah, and they wouldn’t stop no matter how steep the grade got—I’m gonna have him teach me all that horse and sword stuff later!” “Oh, that’s great. You pay good attention when he does now...” Doris’ words were exuberant, but the power petered out of them and they were shredded by the wind. Perhaps her maiden instincts had given her some hint of how their story was going to end.

Deathly still and watching the darkness ahead, Larmica suddenly muttered, “Traitor.”

“What did you say?!” Doris was the picture of rage. She realized the vampiress was referring to D. Larmica didn’t even look at the girl, but bloody flames fairly shot from her eyes as she stared at D’s frigid profile.

“You have skill and power enough to intimidate Father and myself, but you have forgotten your proud Noble blood. You feel some duty to the humans—worse yet, you are foolish enough to serve them by hunting us. I feel polluted simply speaking to you. Father wouldn’t bother to follow you this far. Slay me here!”

“Shut up! We don’t take orders from prisoners,” Doris roared. “What have you high-ranking Noble types done to us? Just because you wanna feed, because you want hot human blood, you bite into the throats of folks who never did you any harm and make them vampires. They just turn around and attack the family that loved them—in the end, their family has to drive a stake through their heart. Demons is what you are. You’re the Devil.

Do you have any idea how many people die every year, parents and children crying out to their loved ones as they’re killed in tidal waves and earthquakes caused by the weather controllers your kind runs?” Doris spat the accusations at her like a gob of blood, but Larmica just smiled coolly.

“We are the Nobility—the ruling class. The rulers are entitled to take such measures to ensure the rebellious feelings of the lower class are kept in check. You should consider yourself lucky we even allowed your race to continue.” And then, with a long gaze at Greco as he brooded and raced along on his horse, she said, “Indeed, we will attack your kind to drink but a single drop of sweet blood. But what has that man done? I heard. For wanting you, he did nothing to warn that decrepit old man, even when he knew he was to be attacked, did he not?”

Doris couldn’t find a thing to say.

Larmica’s voice continued to dominate the night. “But I do not condemn him for that,” she laughed. “To the contrary, the man is to be lauded. Is it not appropriate to sacrifice others to satisfy our own desires? The strong rule the weak, and the superior leave the inferior in the dust—that is the great principle that governs the cosmos. There are many among you who seem to share our point of view.”

“Ha ha ha,” Doris suddenly laughed back mockingly. “Don’t make me laugh. If you’re such great rulers then what do you want with me?” Now it was Larmica’s turn to be silenced. “I heard something, too. It made me sick to hear it, but it seems your father wants to make me his bride. Every night he comes sniffing around my place like a dog in heat, and I turn him down—you’d think he’d be tired of it by now. The Nobility must be hard-pressed

for women. Or is it something else? Could it be your father’s just weirder than the rest?”

The killing lust in Larmica’s eyes was like a heat ray that flew at Doris’ face. Not to be outdone, Doris met it with a shower of sparks from her own hatred. It was as if there was a titanic spray of invisible embers between the galloping horse and racing buggy when their eyes locked.

Suddenly, D pulled back on the reins.

“Oh!” Doris gasped as she hastened to stop her horse as well. Greco alone was at a loss as to what to do, but then he decided staying with them any longer would only make matters worse, and he rushed away into the darkness.

Though no one was quite sure what he was doing, all of them followed D’s lead, dismounting when he climbed down from the buggy. Larmica quickly turned to face the other three.

“What do you intend to do?” Larmica asked.

“As you yourself said, we’ve gone far enough the Count won’t give chase. Now all we have to do is deal with you,” D said softly. A tense hue raced into Larmica’s face, and then into those of Doris and Dan. “I’ve been hired to keep her safe. Therefore,

I’ll have to slay your father. But anything else is another matter— meaning I now need my employer to decide what to do about you. Well?”

His final “Well?” had been directed at Doris. She was perplexed. They’d just been arguing a few seconds earlier. She’d thought she hated the vampiress enough to kill her, but the girl she saw looked like a beautiful, defenseless young lady about her own age.

This daughter of the detestable Nobility. If not for her family, me and Dan would be living in peace now—I wanna kill her. I’ve got it. I can give her my whip and have her fight D. That’d be fair. If we gave her a chance like that, there’d be nothing to be ashamed about.

“What do you want to do?” D asked.

“Slay me,” Larmica said with eyes ablaze.

And then Doris shook her head.

“Let her go. I don’t have it in me to murder. I couldn’t do that to her, even if she’s a Noble ...”

D turned to Dan. “What about you?”

“It’s plain as day, ain’t it? I couldn’t do nothing as low as cutting down a woman in cold blood—and you couldn’t either, could you?”

Then the Langs saw a smile spread across D’s face. For years after, even for decades after, the two of them would remember D’s expression, and take pride in the fact they were responsible for it. It was just such a smile.

“Well, there you have it. You’d best go now.”

And with that D turned his back to Larmica, but she flung abuse at him anyway.

“The stupidity of the lot of you amazes me. Do not delude yourselves that I am in any way grateful. I will make you rue your decision to set me free! Had I been in your position, I would have had you slaughtered like a sow. And your brother as well.”

The other three didn’t turn to look at her again, but went back to the buggy.

“Take this horse.”

Doris dropped the reins in front of Larmica.

“Even children know the cosmic principle, it seems,” D said calmly from the driver’s seat.

“What?”

“Survival of the fittest, might makes right—that’s not what your Sacred Ancestor used to say.”

Larmica’s eyes bulged, but a moment later she laughed out loud. “Not only are you sickeningly soft-hearted, but it appears you’re given to delusions as well. Did you mention the Sacred Ancestor? There’s no chance a lowly creature like you would know someone of his greatness. He who made our civilization,

our whole world, and the laws by which we ruled. Every one of us faithfully followed his words.”

“Every one of you? Then why was the poor old bastard always so troubled ...”

“The poor old bastard? You mean ... No, you couldn’t...” Larmica’s voice carried a hint of fear. She recalled a certain plausible rumor that had been whispered at a grand ball at the castle when she was just a child.

“Such skill, and such power ... Might it be that you are ...” The whip cracked.

When the buggy had dashed off leaving only the tortured squeal of its tires in its wake, the daughter of the Nobility forgot all about gathering the reins of the horse before her as she stood stock still in the moonlight.

“Milord, might it be ...”

The next day, Dan and D accompanied Doris when she went out to claim Dr. Ferringo’s body. They then paid a call on the sheriff and entrusted him with the remains before bringing all of Rei-Ginsei and Greco’s misdeeds to light.

Having received a communiqué from the village of Pedros about the Frontier Defense Force, the sheriff had been out to the ruins himself and discovered the trio of lurid corpses there. Based on Doris’ testimony, he concluded Rei-Ginsei’s gang was connected to the disappearance of the FDF patrol. In an attempt to ascertain the whereabouts of that patrol, special deputies rushed off to the neighboring villages.

“Well, Rei-Ginsei won’t be at large for long now. Of course, there’s also a good chance he made like the wind last night right after you lopped off his cabbage-collector.”

On the way back to the farm, Doris’ expression was sunny— she had at least one of her problems taken care of. But D told her simply, “If he becomes a Noble, he could lose all his limbs and still be a threat.”

Rei-Ginsei had ambitions of joining the Nobility. Given his skill and scheming nature, to say nothing of a vindictiveness that put a serpent to shame, it was unthinkable that he would run off with his tail between his legs, or quit before he’d achieved his ends. He may have fled, but it was clear he’d hidden himself somewhere and would be vigilantly watching what they did. He might still carry out the Count’s orders.

A daylight foe—because of him, D’s movements were greatly restricted. Up until now, he’d only had to worry about taking up his blade by night. But now, it would be patently impossible to go attack the Count in his castle and leave Doris and Dan under the scrutiny of an appreciable foe who possessed both weird weapons and even stranger skill.

“Still, it’s too bad they didn’t lock that bastard Greco up,” Dan muttered.

The sheriff was wrapped up in the Rei-Ginsei case, but couldn’t get to the bottom of Greco’s activities. The three of them had accompanied the lawman to the mayor’s house to question him, but the thoroughly disgusted mayor appeared and informed them that Greco had returned quite agitated the previous night, grabbed all the money in the house as well as the combat suit that’d just come back from the repair shop, and took off on his horse. The sheriff had Doris and the others wait in his office while he checked with some of Greco’s partners-in-crime, but they all said they didn’t know where he was.

Rei-Ginsei and Greco—with the whereabouts of both of them unknown there was little the sheriff could do. He informally sent Greco’s description to the other villages and requested that if the man was found, he was to be detained for having important information about the murder of Dr. Ferringo.

“But we can’t charge him in this case,” the sheriff told a visibly dissatisfied Doris. “From what you tell me, it seems Doc was killed by this Noble girl. And as for the matter of being turned into a vampire in the first place—-well, even now it’s not

clear if a person suffers any harm when that happens. I wish to hell the Capital would give us a clear ruling on that...”

Doris nodded reluctantly.

It was unclear whether or not turning someone into a vampire could be considered murder. From one perspective, the change merely caused a shift in personality, not an absolute loss of life. The question dogged mankind throughout history, remaining undecided to this very day. Consequently, Greco couldn’t be charged with a crime, even though he didn’t inform the sheriff when he knew the Count was going to “kill” Dr. Ferringo.

“Quite the contrary, in the eyes of the law Greco might be considered a hero for rescuing you.” Seeing Doris’ slender eyebrows rise in wrath, the sheriff hurriedly added, “And while I don’t have any authority to get caught up in personal squabbles ...” The rest was implied—when I find the weasel, I’m gonna belt him good. Doris and Dan looked at each other and grinned.

Doris found herself in the first peaceful lull since the Count had attacked her.

There was a mountain of work to be done. Synthesized protein harvested by the robots had to be put into packages, stacked at the edge of the garden, and covered with a water-repellent tent until the traveling merchant made his monthly call. The Langs didn’t sell it, but rather traded it for daily necessities. The protein Doris and Dan grew was well known for its density, and the merchant always gave them an exceptional rate in trade for it.

The milking and general care of the cows had been neglected as well. Of course, the village of Ransylva was where most of that was traded; even though she’d been shut out of all the shops, she couldn’t let the cows go any longer. Doris’ battle with the Count didn’t put food on the table.

With Dan and a battered robot to help her, the job would’ve taken three whole days, but D did it in half a day.

He skillfully poured huge bowls of milky protein extract into

plastic packages, and then carried them from the processing area to the garden when he had a pile of a certain size. The boxes weighed a good seventy pounds each, and he carried three of them at a time. When he first saw it, Dan bugged out his eyes and exclaimed, “Wow!” but after three straight hours of this superhuman toting, his jaw dropped and he was left speechless.

The speed with which D milked the cows was almost miraculous. In the time it took Doris to do one cow, he did three. And that was only using his left hand. His right hand was left empty to go for the sword by his side at any time. That was the way Hunters were.

I wonder what kind of family he comes from?

It wasn’t the first time this question had occurred to her, but it hadn’t been answered in the days they’d been fighting, and even then Doris hadn’t had the time ask anyway. Actually, it was the code of the Frontier that you didn’t go poking into the background of travelers, and D’s bearing in particular didn’t invite questions.

Doris watched D’s profile with a distant look in her eyes as he silently worked one hand on the cow, the white fluid collecting in an aluminum-plated can.

The scene seemed so familiar; maybe it was the girl’s feverish, young heart that made her feel like it would go on this way forever. While it wasn’t that long ago that Doris had lost her father—and her battle to protect her brother and the farm began—she suddenly realized how exhausted she was.

“Done. Aren’t you finished yet?”

At D’s query, Doris returned from her fantasies. “Er, no, I’m done here.”

As she stood up and pulled the can out from under the cow, she felt as if she was naked before him.

“Your face is flushed. You coming down with a cold or something?”

“No, it’s not. It must just be the sunset.”

The interior of the barn was stained red.

“I see. The Count will probably come here again. You’d best eat early and get Dan to bed.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Doris grabbed the handle of the can with both hands and carried it to one side of bam. For some reason she had no strength.

“Leave it. I’ll carry it,” D said, having seen how wobbly her legs were.

Til be fine!”

Her tone was so rough she surprised herself. Tears rolled out with the words. Dropping the can to the ground, she ran out sobbing.

As D went after her—though his casual pace hardly made it seem like pursuit—Dan trained an apprehensive gaze on him from the porch.

“Sis ran around back crying. You two have a fight or something?”

D shook his head. “No. Your sister’s just worried about you.” “You know, someone told me a man shouldn’t make women cry.”

D smiled wryly. “You’re right. I’ll go apologize.”

Taking a few steps, D then turned to Dan again.

“You still remember that promise you made, do you?”

“Yep.”

“You’re eight now. In another five years, you’ll be stronger than your sister. Don’t forget.”

Dan nodded. When he raised his face, it was shining with tears.

“Are you gonna go away, D? Once you’ve killed the Count, I mean.”

D disappeared around back without giving an answer.

Doris was leaning against the fence. Her shoulders were quaking.

D’s footsteps didn’t make a sound as he went and stood behind her.

A cool breeze played through the grassy sea beyond the fence and through Doris’ black tresses.

“You should go back to the house.”

Doris didn’t reply, but after a bit she mumbled, “I should’ve looked for someone else. Once you’re gone, I won’t be able to live like I did before. That milking can just now—I used to be able to carry two at a time. I won’t be able set Dan straight when he needs it, or have the strength to fend off any fellahs who come out here courting me. But you’re gonna go just the same.”

“That was the deal. That will end your sorrow. That or my death.”

“No!” Doris suddenly buried her face in his muscular chest. “No, no, no.”

She didn’t know what she was protesting. Nor did she know why she cried. Neither the young woman weeping—as if weeping could keep a phantom from vanishing—-nor the young man with the melancholy air supporting her moved for the longest time. And then, after a little while ...

Doris lifted her face suddenly. Just above her head, D had started to growl softly. Doris was about to ask, “What is it?” when her head was forced back against his chest by his formidable strength. A few seconds more passed.

The two silhouettes were fused in the red glow, but from between the two of them came the words, “I’m okay now,” in a feverish voice.

Nothing else was said, and soon D gently pushed Doris away and quickly walked back toward the house.

As he rounded the corner of the barn, a voice said teasingly, “Why didn’t you drink her blood?” It originated around his waist.

“Shut up.” For once D’s voice bore undisguised emotion.

“The girl knew. She knew what you wanted. Oh, now don’t you make that face with me. You can fight it all you like, but

you’ve got the blood of the Nobility in the marrow of your bones. The fact that when you fancy a woman you’re more interested in latching onto her pale neck instead of getting her in the sack is proof of that.”

It was true. When Doris had bared her soul to him, and he felt her warm body sobbing against his chest, D’s expression became the same lurid vampire visage he’d worn when he drank the blood of the Midwich Medusas in the darkness of the subterranean aqueduct. But somehow, with his truly impressive willpower, he’d managed to fight the urge this time.

As D kept walking, the voice said to him, “The girl saw your other face. Not just that, but I bet she smelled your breath as it brushed her neck. Smelled the scent of your cursed blood. And still she said she didn’t mind. Go easy on the nice guy routine. You fight your own desire and deny the wishes of the girl—is that any way for a grown dhampir to act? You’re always on the run— from your blood, and from the people who want you. When you tell them you were fated to part, that’s just dressing it up in a pretty excuse. Listen to me. Your father—”

“Shut up.” The words D said were the same as a moment earlier, but the eerie aura behind them made it plain this was far more than just a threat. The voice fell silent. Climbing the stairs to the porch, D turned a thoughtful gaze to the prairie and muttered, “Still, I’ve got to go—go and find him.”

Cif\h, shit!”

As D’s hard gaze filled the lenses’ field of view, a shadowy figure hurriedly ducked, afraid that D would see him. But he forgot he was now on a hill a good thousand feet away. It was none other than the mayor’s hell-raising son Greco, who most believed to have long since fled the village. He was wearing his combat suit.

“That son of a bitch gets to have all the fun,” Greco said, slamming his electronic binoculars against the ground. The

previous night, after deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he’d come up to the top of this hill and kept an eye on the farm. Lying flat on his belly, he reached over to his saddlebags and pulled the Time-Bewitching Incense out from among the food and provisions packed in there.

“Heh, you’ll get yours once the sun’s down. I’ll use this baby to get you down crawling on the ground, then nail you with a stake. Then yours truly will take Doris by the hand and kiss this godforsaken shithole goodbye,” he said spitefully, turning his eyes toward the farm again. The previous night he’d been so scared by the Count and his werewolf that he’d abandoned all thought of killing them and decided to abduct Doris instead. And clearly, the person he talked about dispatching with a stake was D.

“I wonder if it’ll go as smoothly as all that?” The words rained down on Greco in a cool voice.

“What the—?!”

Looking up, Greco saw a handsome young man sitting on a branch directly overhead. He wore an innocent smile, but his left arm was missing below the elbow, and its stump was wrapped in a bloody white cloth. He needed no introduction. And yet, less than twenty-four hours after losing one arm he’d climbed up into a tree and scared the daylights out of Greco while looking no worse for wear, aside from a little darkness around his eyes. What strength he had, both physically and mentally!

Rei-Ginsei got back down to the ground without making a sound.

“Wh ... what the hell do you want?”

“Don’t play the innocent. I’m the rightful owner of that candle. Thanks to you, I lost my arm. I came out to the farm in the hopes of encountering the Count, but lo and behold, I’ve run across someone else of interest to me. So, are the three of them still hale and hearty?”

His speech was refined, but Greco felt a crushing coercion in it that left him bobbing his head in agreement.

“I suspected as much. In which case, I shall have to score some quick points here if I’m to be made one of them.” After that enigmatic statement, the handsome young man addressed Greco with familiarity. “What do you say to joining forces with me?” “Work with you?”

“From what I observed up in the tree, you seem obsessed with the young lady on the farm. Yet her bodyguard remains an obstacle. I have another reason for wanting him out of the way. What say you?”

Greco hesitated.

Rei-Ginsei chided him. “Are you certain you can finish him, even with the candle and your combat suit? With your skill?” Greco was at a loss for an answer. That was exactly why he hadn’t gone down and abducted Doris yet. Thanks to the effect it had on the Count’s daughter, he’d been able to verify that Time-Bewitching Incense was highly effective against pure vampires, but when it came to a half-human dhampir, he didn’t have much confidence. He’d donned the combat suit, but since it was just back from the repair shop he wasn’t used to wearing it or using it, and if he had to call upon its power, it was doubtful he could use it to its full potential. “You mean to say, if I hook up with you, we might be able to do this?” His words were proof enough he’d fallen under Rei-Ginsei’s spell.

Killing his smile, the handsome young man nodded.

“Indeed. Once the sun has set I shall fight him, so watch for the right moment to light the candle, if you please. Should he leave himself open for even an instant, well, that’s where my blades come in,” he said, pointing to the shrike-blades on his hip.

Greco made up his mind. “Sure ... but what happens after that?”

“After that?”

“I know you’re planning on handing the girl over to the Count, but that’s exactly what I’ve been busting my hump to keep from happening.”

“In that case, take her and flee,” Rei-Ginsei said casually. Seeing the now-stupefied Greco, he added, “I merely promised him I would slay the dhampir. I don’t care a whit whose property the girl becomes. That matter is between yourself and the Count, is it not? But you being a fellow human and all, if you like I shall tell my compatriots scattered across the Frontier to aid you in your flight from the Count.”

“Would you really?” Greco’s tone had become an appeal. The question of how he could shake the pursuing Noble if he managed to make good his escape with Doris was a point of concern for him. But why on earth would Rei-Ginsei say such a thing to him? Because he wasn’t sure that just getting the Time-Bewitching Incense would be enough to beat D.

The indescribable swordplay the Hunter displayed as he made good his promise to dispatch three of the superhuman gang leader’s valued henchmen in less than fifteen seconds each, and the invincibility he demonstrated in getting to his feet again despite the sword sticking out of his belly—the mere thought of these things was enough to give Rei-Ginsei gooseflesh. Just to be prepared for any eventuality, he decided to use the stupid little hood he’d found. Once D had been slain, Greco would have outlived his usefulness, and he would be crushed like an insect. “Well, I believe we have a bargain then.” Rei-Ginsei flashed a smile so beautiful it would put a flower to shame, and held out his remaining hand.

“Um, okay.” Greco hesitated to take his hand. “But I don’t completely trust you yet. Just so we’re clear, if you try anything funny I’ll wreck the candle on the spot.”

“Fair enough.”

“Then that’s just great.”

They shared a firm handshake.

The round moon rose. Strangely large and white, the unsettling lunar disc sent wild waves of anxiety across the

hearts of all who looked up at it. An old farmer named Morris snapped awake when he felt a chill. Sitting up in bed, the old man looked to the bedroom window and felt his hair rising on end. The window he was certain he’d locked was open now.

But that wasn’t what terrified the old man.

His granddaughter Lucy, whom he’d looked after since she’d lost her parents in an accident, stood by the window in her little nightgown, staring at her grandfather with vacant eyes. Her face was paler than the moonlight spilling in through the window.

“Lucy, what’s the matter?”

When he noticed the twin streaks of red coursing down his granddaughter’s throat, the old man froze in his bed.

“I am ... Count Lee,” Lucy mumbled. In a man’s voice! “Give me Doris Lang ... If you do not... tonight, tomorrow night... every night the ranks of the living-dead shall swell... ”

And then his granddaughter collapsed on the floor.

After dinner, Dan had been inseparable from D, but even he couldn’t resist the sandman indefinitely, and he had to retire to his room. Doris disappeared into her own bedroom, leaving D alone in the living room, which was lit only by stark moonlight. He’d been sleeping there since the first night, since he said the room to the back of the house was too cramped. He lay on the sofa, his eyes cold and clear as ice. The hour was nearing eleven Night.

A white light flickered.

The bedroom door opened, and Doris stepped out. A threadbare bath towel covered her from her breasts to her thighs. Crossing the living room without a sound, she stood before the sofa. Her ample bosom was heaving. Taking two deep breaths, Doris let the towel fall.

Unmoving, unblinking, D fixed his eyes on the girl’s naked form. Her well-proportioned and slightly muscled body wasn’t

yet endowed with all a woman’s sensuality, but it had more than enough of the pale virgin charm that always took men’s breath away.

“D ...” Doris’ voice caught in her throat.

“I haven’t finished my work here.”

“I’ll pay you in advance. Take it...”

Before he could even speak, her warm flesh was on top of him and her sweet breath was tickling his nose.

“Hey, I’m...”

“The Count’s gonna come again,” Doris panted. “And this time it’s gonna get settled—at least, that’s the feeling I get. I probably won’t get a chance to give you your reward—so take me, suck my blood, do whatever you like to me.”

D’s hand brushed the girl’s lengthy tresses aside, exposing the face they’d hidden to the night air. Their lips met.

For a few seconds they remained together—and then D sat up quickly. His eyes raced to the window. That way lay the main gate.

“What is it? The Count?” Doris’ voice was taut.

“No. I sense two groups. The first is a pair, and the second— there’s a lot of them. Fifty, no, close to a hundred strong.”

“A hundred people?!”

“Go wake up Dan.”

Doris disappeared into her bedroom.

Near the gate to the farm, a pair of silhouettes suddenly halted their horses and looked back across the prairie. Countless points of light swayed closer, coming from the direction of town. As the pair strained their ears, they could hear a rumble of voices that bordered on rage, mixed with the beating of numberless hooves.

“What could that be?” mumbled Rei-Ginsei.

“Folks from town. Something must’ve happened,” Greco said, watching the points of light nervously. Those were flaming torches.

“At any rate, we’d do well to conceal ourselves and see what transpires.”

The two of them quickly melted into the shadows of the farm’s fence.

They didn’t have long to wait; the procession of villagers assembled before the entrance to the farm shortly after they’d hidden themselves. Greco’s brow furrowed. Leading the pack was his father, Mayor Rohman. Steam was rising from his bald pate. Around him were his family’s hired hands, all armed to the teeth with crossbows and laser rifles; the villagers carried spears and rifles as well.

More than half of them looked like they’d just been dragged out of bed, dressed in pajamas and slippers. Humorous as it appeared, it testified to exactly how serious the situation had become. The shadows of hatred and fear fell heavily on every face.

This was a mob. There was no sign of the sheriff.

“Doris! Doris Lang! Turn this barrier off,” the mayor roared in front of the gate.

A light went on in one window of the house.

Soon after, a pair of figures loomed on the front porch.

“What in the blazes is your business at this hour of the night! You bring the whole damn town out here to rob the place or something?” That was Doris’ voice.

“Just turn the barrier off already! Then we’ll discuss it,” the mayor bellowed back.

“It’s already off, you moron. You gonna stay out there all night?”

A number of fiery streaks shot out from around the mayor, melting the chain off the gate.

The crowd spilled into her front yard.

“Hold it right there! Come any closer and I’ll shoot you dead!” More than Doris’ threat, more than the laser rifle propped against her shoulder, it was the sight of D standing there behind

her that checked the crazed mob and stopped them ten feet shy of the porch.

To cow a group, you had to take aim at a person at the center of their rampage and carefully cut them off from the others. Just as her father had taught her, Doris aligned the barrel of her laser rifle perfectly with the mayor’s breastbone, letting the promise that she wouldn’t give an inch flood through her entire being.

“Okay, I want some answers. What’s your business? And where the heck’s the sheriff? I’m warning you right now, if he’s not here I don’t owe you a good answer no matter what kind of complaint you got. Dan and I both pay our taxes.”

“That pain in the ass got slapped around a little and thrown in his own jail. We’ll let him out again once we’ve taken care of the lot of you,” the mayor said with disgust. And then, still glaring at Doris, he gave a wave of one hand. “Come on, show her.”

The crowd parted and a hoary-headed old man stepped to the fore. In his arms he held a little girl with braids in her hair.

“Mr. Morris, is Lucy...” Doris began, but swallowed the rest of her words. Two repugnant streaks of blood marked the girl’s paraffin-pale throat.

“There are more.”

With the mayor’s words as their cue, two pathetic couples came forward.

The miller Fu Lanchu and his wife Kim, the huntsman Machen and his spouse—both couples were in their thirties, though the wives of both men were still renowned in the village for their beauty. The sight of the women—now held up by their husbands as their vacant eyes pointed to the heavens and fresh blood dripped down their throats—told Doris everything.

“The Count did this, the ruthless bastard ...”

“That’s right,” Machen said with a nod. “The wife and I were tuckered out from a hard day’s work, and headed off to bed early. Not long after that, I woke up feeling chilled and found

my wife not by my side where she should be but standing over next to a wide-open window, glaring at me with these burning eyes. And when I jumped out of bed to see what the hell was going on—” The miller Lanchu picked up where Machen left off. “All of a sudden my wife said in a man’s voice, ‘Give me Doris Lang. If you don’t, your wife will remain like this forever, neither alive nor dead.’ He said those exact words.”

“The moment she stopped speaking, she just keeled over, and she hasn’t moved or spoken since!” Machen’s voice was a veritable scream. “I rushed to take her pulse, but there wasn’t a trace of one. She’s not breathing either. And yet, her heart’s still beating.” “Now, I didn’t believe any of what Greco was saying,” said Mr. Morris. “Knowing you, I figured if some vampire had bit you, you’d have done away with yourself. Why, if it was true, I thought I’d lend what aid an old fool could and help you destroy our lord. But why did my granddaughter Lucy have to suffer in your place ... She’s only five!”

The old man’s teary, grief-stricken appeal gradually brought down the barrel of Doris’ weapon. Her voice now stripped of its willfulness, Doris asked, “So what are you saying we should do?” The mayor turned his dagger-filled gaze at D. Stroking his bald head, he said, “First, chase the punk behind you off your farm. Next, you’re going into the asylum. I’m not saying we’re going to grab you and give you to the Count as tribute or anything as heartless as all that. But you’ve got to follow the law of the village. In the meantime, we’ll take care of the Count.”

Doris vacillated. What the mayor proposed had its merits. Since she’d been bitten by a vampire, the only thing that kept her out of the asylum was the aid of Dr. Ferringo and the sheriff. Now the elderly physician was dead, and the sheriff wasn’t here. But there were three people here who’d been made living-dead in her stead, and lots of villagers with hate-filled eyes. Her rifle drooped limply to the floor.

“Take her away,” the mayor commanded triumphantly.

And at that moment, D said, “How will you take care of him?” The buzz of the mob, which had gone on incessantly during Doris’ discussion with the mayor, came to an immediate halt. Hatred, horror, menace—as they gazed upon him with every emotion they felt toward the unknown, Vampire Hunter D slowly made his way down the porch stairs with his sword over his shoulder. The mob shrank back without a word. All except for the mayor. The instant D’s eyes caught him, he became utterly paralyzed. “How will you take care of him?” D asked again, stopping a few paces away from the mayor.

“Well, um ... actually ...”

D reached out his left hand and stuck the palm of it against the mayor’s octopusdike face. For a moment the man’s voice broke off, and then he went on again.

“Throw her ... in the freaking asylum ... and then negotiate. Tell him ... he’s not to harm anyone in town any more ... If he does, we’ll kill the love of his life ...”

The mayor’s face twisted and beads of sweat formed chains across his brow, almost as if he was battling some titanic force within himself.

“After we talked to him ... we’d tell Doris we’d destroyed the Count or something ... let her out... After that, he could do what he liked—make her one of his kind, bleed her to death, whatever ... You’re the devil... you little punk. If you give Doris any more help ...”

“Aren’t you the cooperative one?”

D took his hand away. The mayor took a few steps back, his face looking like whatever demon had possessed him had just left. Beads of sweat streamed down his face.

“This young lady hired me,” D said darkly. “And as I haven’t finished what I was hired to do, I can’t very well leave now. Especially not after hearing your detailed confession.” Suddenly, his tone became commanding. “The Nobility won’t die out if you stand around and do nothing. How many

times will you give in, and how many people are you willing to sacrifice to those who have nothing but extinction ahead of them? If that’s the human mentality, then there’s absolutely no chance I’ll let you have the girl. An old man who can only weep for the child taken from him, and husbands who would have another girl take the place of their own defiled wives—the flames of hell can take you, and everyone else in this village as well. I’ll take on humans and Nobles alike. I will defend this family even if I have to leave a mountain of corpses and a river of blood the likes of which you can’t begin to imagine— any objections?”

The people saw the crimson gleam of his eyes through the darkness—the eyes of a vampire! D took a step forward, and the silenced mob was pushed back by a wave of primal fear.

“I object.”

Everyone stopped at what was a beautiful voice for such a loud shout.

“Who’s that?”

“Let him through!”

One voice after another arose from the back of the pack, and as the crowd split down the middle, a young man who was almost blindingly handsome stepped forward. While the beauty of his countenance was great, it was the unusual state of both his left and right arms that drew the people’s attention. His right arm was sheathed all the way to the shoulder in what looked like the metallic sleeve of a combat suit, and his left arm was missing from the elbow down. Proffering the stump of his arm, Rei-Ginsei said, “I came to thank you for doing this yesterday.” His tone made it seemed like an amiable greeting.

“You? Everyone, this is the bastard who attacked the FDF patrol!” The mayor and the rest of the mob started murmuring when they heard Doris shout that.

Rei-Ginsei calmly replied, “And I suppose you have some proof of that, do you? Did you find some trace of the patrol—

their horses’ corpses, anything? True, there has been some unpleasantness between us in the past, but I can’t have you heaping any further aspersions on my good name.”

Doris ground her teeth. Rei-Ginsei definitely had her at a disadvantage where the FDF case was concerned. Without victims, he couldn’t be charged with a crime. Though if the sheriff was there, there’s little doubt he’d have promptly taken Rei-Ginsei into custody as a material witness.

“Mister Mayor, may I be so bold as to make a suggestion?” Greeted by a flash of pearly teeth, the mayor smiled back nervously. Like all who’d been enslaved by Rei-Ginsei’s grin, he did not notice the devil that hid behind it. “And what would that be?” the mayor asked.

“Please allow me to do battle with our friend, here and now. Should he win, you will leave this family alone, and should I win, the girl shall go to the asylum. How does that suit you?”

“Well, I don’t know ...” The mayor vacillated. His position really wouldn’t allow him to entrust a matter of this magnitude to a man he didn’t know in the least—particularly someone as shrouded in suspicion as Rei-Ginsei was.

“Can the lot of you do something then? Come tomorrow evening, there shall be more victims.”

The mayor made up his mind. All the villagers were held at bay by D’s energy. He had to see what the man could do. “Very well.”

“One more thing,” Rei-Ginsei said, extending a single finger of the combat suit. Of course it was Greco’s. To keep Doris from realizing as much, he’d only donned the one sleeve. If his connection to Greco came to light, they would realize where the Time-Bewitching Incense was now. “Dispatch someone to the neighboring villages and have the warrants out on me withdrawn.” “Okay—understood,” the mayor said, the words coming out like a moan. With no one but this dashing young man to rely on, he had no resort but to concede to his every demand.

Rei-Ginsei turned to Doris and asked, “And is that fine with you, too?”

“Sure. You’ll just wind up getting your other hand lopped off,” Doris replied.

D asked, “Where do you want to do this?” He made no mention of the fact that his opponent was trying to curry favor with the Nobility, or that he’d attempted to strangle a helpless young boy.

“Right here. Our duel will soon be over.”

Only the moon watched the moving people.

In front of the porch the two of them squared off, ten feet apart.

The villagers filling the front yard, and Doris and Dan up on the porch, were on pins and needles. When they all let out a deep breath seemingly on cue, three shrike -blades flew from Rei-Ginsei’s right hip. The combat suit’s muscular enhancement system made them all faster than ever, faster than the human eye could follow, and yet all of them were knocked from the sky just in front of D by a silvery flash.

In the blink of an eye, D was in the air over Rei-Ginsei’s head. Sword raised for the kill, the moment the crowd gasped at their premonition of the blade cleaving Rei-Ginsei’s head, the victorious Hunter wobbled in midair.

Who could miss that chance? Once again Rei-Ginsei’s right hand went into action, sending out a stream of white light. That was Greco’s wooden stake, which he’d kept tucked through the back of his belt. With Rei-Ginsei’s normal skill, D most likely would have dodged it despite his throes of agony, but now it had the added speed of the combat suit. Longsword still raised above his head, with the stake stuck through his heart and sticking out his back, D sent out a faint mist of blood as he thudded to the ground.

“Nailed him!”

The jubilant cry came from neither Rei-Ginsei nor the villagers. The crowd was more confused by the strange feeling that night had become day than they were by the duel’s gruesome finale.

“Greco! Oh, so you were in cahoots with this jerk!”

With that shout, Doris took aim with her rifle at the figure who’d popped up in front of the fence holding a candle in one hand, but a sudden massive blow to the barrel of the weapon knocked it back, striking its owner in the forehead.

“Now’s our chance! Grab her!”

Giving a faint smile to the villagers as they charged Dan and the unconscious sister Dan clung to, Rei-Ginsei fastened the last returning shrike-blade to his belt and stripped off the combat suit sleeve.

The limp Doris was thrown on a horse, as was her bellowing and far-from-cooperative brother, and the villagers went back out through the gate.

“What are you up to?” Greco grimaced, about to go get the horse he’d hidden at the rear of the farm.

Rei-Ginsei was stooping down over the body of the already deceased D. Raising the left hand, he eyed the palm and back of it suspiciously. “I simply don’t understand,” he groaned. “This is the same hand that swallowed Chullah’s spiders and made the mayor spill his secrets ...There must be some secret to it.” As he said that, he took a shrike-blade from his hip and slashed the left hand off at the elbow, which made Greco’s eyes bug in his head. He then discarded the hand in the nearby bushes. “I couldn’t rest easy if I didn’t do that. Also, I believe that makes us even,” he said coolly.