© Hideyuki Kikuchi, 1983. Originally published in japan in 1983 by ASAHISONORAMA CO. LTD. English translation copyright © 2005 by Dark Horse Books and Digital Manga Publishing. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Dark Horse Books© and the Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cover Illustration by Yoshitaka Amano English Translation by Kevin Leahy Book Design by Heidi Fainza

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

Vampire hunter D / Hideyuki Kikuchi; illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano ; translation by Kevin Leahy, v. cm.

CHAPTER 1

The setting sun was staining the far reaches of the plain, its hue closer to blood than vermilion. The wind snarled like a beast across the barren sky. On the narrow road that cut through a sea of grass, high enough to hide all below the man’s ankles, the lone horse and rider ceased their advance as if forestalled by the wall of wind gusting straight at them.

The road rose a bit some sixty feet ahead. Once they’d surmounted the rise they would be able to survey the rows of houses and greenbelts of farmland that comprised Ransylva, just another hamlet in this Frontier sector.

At the foot of that gentle slope stood a girl.

The horse had likely been startled by her appearance and stopped. She was a beautiful young woman, with large eyes that seemed alight. Somewhat tanned, she had her black tresses tied back. An untamed aura, unique to all things living in the wild, emanated from every inch of her. Any man who laid eyes on her, with those gorgeous features like sunlight in summer, would undoubtedly draw his attention to the curves of her physique. Yet below the threadbare blue scarf swathing her neck she was concealed to the ankles by the ash-gray material of a waterproof cape. Except perhaps for her snug leather sandals and what seemed to be a coiled black whip in her right hand, she wore no necklaces or

An old-fashioned cyborg horse lingered at the girl’s side. Until a few minutes earlier, the girl had been lying at its feet. Woman of the wild or not, the fact that she noticed a horse and rider, not running but approaching silently amidst the kind of howling wind that would leave others covering their ears, and that she stood her ground meant the girl probably wasn’t some farmer’s wife or the daughter of a pioneer.

Having stopped briefly, the horse soon began walking forward. Perhaps realizing the girl wasn’t going to get out of the road, it stopped once again about three feet shy of her.

For a while there was nothing but the sound of the wind racing along the ground. In due time the girl opened her mouth to speak. “I take it you’re a drifter. You a Hunter?” Her tone was defiant and full of daring, and yet also a touch worn.

The rider sat on his horse but made no answer. She couldn’t see his face very well because he had a wide-brimmed traveler’s hat low over his eyes and was covered from the nose down by a scarf. Judging from his powerful frame and the combat utility belt, half revealed from his faded black long coat, it was safe to say he was no seasonal laborer or merchant dealing with scattered villages. A blue pendant hanging just below his scarf reflected the girl’s pensive expression. Her large eyes fixed on the longsword strapped to his back. Limning an elegant arc quite different from the straight blades cherished by so many other Hunters, it spoke of the vast expanses of time and space its owner had traveled. Disconcerted, perhaps, by the lack of response, the girl shouted, “That sword purely for show? If so, I’ll take it off you to sell down at the next open market. Set ’er down!”

As if to say that if that didn’t get an answer out of him then the time for talking is done, the girl took one step back with her right leg and crouched in preparation. The hand with the whip slowly rose to her side.

The rider responded for the first time. “What do you want?” The girl’s expression was one of amazement. Though the voice of her opponent was low, and she could barely pick it out over the snarling of the wind, it sounded like the voice of a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old youth.

“What the hell—you’re just a kid! Well, I’m still not gonna show you any mercy. Show me what you’ve got.”

“So, you’re a bandit then? You’re awfully forthcoming for one.” “You dolt! If I was looking for money, you think I’d go after a lousy drifter like you? I wanna see how good you are!” The wind shot with a sharp snap. The girl cracked her whip. It didn’t look like she was doing any more than playing it out lightly with her wrist, but the whip twisted time and again like an ominous black serpent in the light of the setting sun. “Here I come! If you fancy some good eatin’ in the village of Ransylva, you’ll have to go through me first.”

The youth remained motionless atop his mount. He didn’t reach for his sword or for his combat belt. What’s more, when the girl saw how nonchalant he remained when challenged to battle by a good-looking young lady who gave no reasons but showered him with a murderous gaze, a tinge of consternation rushed into her expression. Letting out a rasp of breath, the girl struck with her whip. The weapon was made from intertwined werewolf bristles painstakingly tanned over three long months with applications of animal fat. A direct hit from it would sunder flesh.

The girl leapt back, her expression changed. Her whip was supposed to strike the youth’s left shoulder but for some reason, just at the instant she saw it hit him, the whip changed direction and shot instead for her own left shoulder. The youth had reversed the vectors of the whip without the slightest injury to himself and turned the attack back upon its source. To grasp the speed and angle of that black snake striking so fast it escaped the naked eye,

and have the reflexes to do something about it, was something that defied description.

Worked by her right hand, the whip did not strike her shoulder but danced back through thin air, yet the girl stood rooted to the spot and made no attempt at a second attack. She realized his fighting skills were as high above hers as the heavens were over the earth.

“Out of my way, please,” the youth said, as if nothing whatsoever had transpired.

The youth and his horse passed by her side, but when they’d gone a few steps more, the girl once again stepped into the road and shouted, “Hey, look at me!”

The instant the youth turned around, the girl grabbed her cape with her left hand and whipped it off in a single motion.

Clad in not a single stitch, a naked form so celestial none save the goddess Venus herself could have fashioned it glittered in the breeze. At the same time, the girl extended her other hand and undid her ponytail. Her luxurious raven mane splayed in the wind. Her nakedness alone had been beautiful, but this was truly enchanting. The wind twisted around, bearing nothing but the scent of a woman in the full of her bloom.

Through some masterful handling, the single tip whistling toward the youth split into eight parts just as it was about to strike. Each tip had a separate target, coiling around his neck, shoulders, arms, and chest with slightly different timing, making a hit much more difficult to avoid than if all struck simultaneously.

“You sure fell for that one,” the girl laughed. “That’s what you get for letting a little nudity distract you.” She hollered the

words, conceding nothing to the snarling wind. And then, almost disappointed, she suddenly added, “You’re the ninth. Looks like I’m out of luck after all. How do you wanna play this? You drop the weapon you’ve got on your back and the ones around your waist and I’ll have you undone in no time.”

The reply she received was totally unexpected. “And if I said I wouldn’t?”

The girl became indignant. “Then you get your choice of how I knock you out. Either I strangle you or I drag you to the ground. So, which of those suits your fancy?”

With his words as her signal to start, the girl concentrated all her might into her right hand. Her power coursed down the whip to the tips, trying to send the youth sailing through the air. But it didn’t! In fact, all eight loops passed right through the youth’s body without losing their circular form!

Not merely surprised but dumbfounded, the girl stood rooted and dazed. After all, here was an opponent who had beaten an attack that incorporated every bit of skill she possessed without so much as lifting a hand...

Though she remained in her absentminded stupor for a bit, the girl wrapped her fallen cape around herself and scrambled after the youth with a speed that was hard to believe from such slender legs. “Hold up. I apologize for that craziness just now. I’d like you to hear me out. I just knew you were a Hunter. Better yet, you’re a Vampire Hunter, aren’t you?”

“I know. I know Vampire Hunters are the most skilled of all Hunters. And I’m well aware what fearsome opponents vampires

are. Even though only one Hunter in a thousand is good enough to make the grade, your chances of fighting a vampire and winning are still only fifty-fifty, right? I know all that. My father was a Hunter, too.”

A tinge of emotion stirred in the youth’s eyes. With one hand he pushed back the brim of his hat. Long and thin and cold, his dark eyes were quite clear.

“I see, so that’s where you get that trick with the whip,” the youth murmured. “I’d heard all the vampires in these parts were wiped out during the Third Cleansing War. Of course, the war was a good thirty years back, so I suppose we can’t put much stock in that. So, you want to hire me? I take it someone in your family or one of your friends has been attacked. How many times have they been preyed upon?”

The girl hesitated for an instant, then laid her hand to the scarf around her neck. “See for yourself.”

The wind-borne cries of wild beasts streamed like banners across the darkening sky.

On the left side of her neck in the vicinity of the main artery, a pair of festering wounds the color of fresh meat swelled from the sun-bronzed flesh.

“It’s the Kiss of the Nobility,” the girl said in a low voice, feeling all the while the eyes of the youth bearing down on her from horseback.

The youth tugged down the scarf shielding his face. “Judging by that wound, it was a vampire of some rank. It’s surprising you can even move.” His last remark was a compliment to the girl. The reactions of people who had been preyed on by vampires varied with the level of their attacker, but in most cases the victims became doll-like imbeciles, with

the very soul sucked out of them. Their skin lost its tone and became like paraffin, and the victim would lie in the shade day after day with a vacant gaze, waiting for a visit from the vampire and a fresh kiss. To escape that fate, one needed extraordinary strength of body and spirit. And this girl was clearly one such exception.

However, at the moment the girl wore the dreamlike expression of the average victim.

She had lost herself in the beauty of the unmasked youth, with his thick, masculine eyebrows, smooth bridge of a nose, and tightly drawn lips that manifested the iron strength of his will.

Set amid stern features shared only by those who had come through the numerous battles of a grief-ridden world, his eyes harbored sorrow even as they sparkled. That final touch made this crystallized beauty the image of youth incarnate, chiseled, as it were, by nature itself, perfect and complete. Nevertheless, the girl was shaken back to her senses by something vaguely ominous lurking in the depths of his gaze. It sent a chill creeping up her spine. Giving her head a shake, the girl asked, “So, how about it? Will you come with me?”

“You said you were knowledgeable about Vampire Hunters. Are you also aware of the fees they require?”

The more powerful the supernatural beasts and monsters a Hunter specialized in, the more expensive their fees. In the case of Vampire Hunters, they got five thousand dalas a day minimum. Incidentally, a three-meal pack of condensed rations for travelers was about a hundred dalas. “Three meals a day,” the girl said, as if she’d just settled on it.

A faint smile played across the youth’s lips, as if mocking her. “The Kiss of the Nobility is probably preferable to being bedded by the likes of me.”

“The hell it is!” Suddenly tears glittered in the girl’s eyes. “If it comes down to that or becoming a vampire, I have no problem with someone havin’ his way with me. That doesn’t have anything to do with a person’s worth anyway. But if you must know, I’m ... no, forget that, it doesn’t matter. So, how about it? Will you come with me?”

Watching the girl’s face for a while as anger and sorrow churned together, the youth quietly nodded. “Very well then. But in return, I want to be clear on one thing.”

The girl’s face froze. This gorgeous man couldn’t be ... But come to think of it, he was too gorgeous ...

“Is that okay? If you wait a while longer, another Hunter may come by. You don’t have to do this.”

Swallowing the sour spit that filled her mouth, the girl offered a hand to the youth. She attempted a smile, but it came out stiff. “Glad to have you. I’m Doris Lang.”

The youth didn’t shake her hand. Just as expressionless and emotionless as when he first appeared, he said, “Call me ‘D.’”

Doris’ home was at the base of a hill about thirty minutes at a gallop from where the pair happened to meet. The two of them rode at a feverish pace and arrived there in less than twenty minutes. The second she wrapped up her discussion with D, Doris put the spurs to her horse, as if pushed by the encroaching twilight. Not only vampires, but also all the most dangerous monsters and supernatural beasts waited until complete darkness fell before they became active. There wasn’t cause to be in such a hurry, but D remained silent and followed his attractive employer.

Her home was a farm surrounded by verdant prairies that were most likely rendered permanently fertile by the Great Earth Restoration Project three millennia earlier. At the center was the main house. Constructed of wood and tensile plastics, the house was surrounded by scattered stables, animal pens, and protein' synthesizing vegetation in orchards consisting mainly of thermo-regulators fastened to reinforced sheets of waterproof material. The orchards alone covered five acres, and second-hand robots were responsible for harvesting the protein produced there. Hauling it away was a job for the humans.

When Doris had tethered her horse to the long hitching post in front of the main house, the reason for her hasty return threw the door open and bounded out.

“Welcome home,” a rosy-cheeked boy of seven or eight called down from the rather lofty porch. He hugged an antiquated laser rifle to his chest.

“This is my little brother Dan,” Doris said to D by way of introduction, and then in a gentle voice she asked, “Nothing out of the ordinary while I was gone, was there.^? Those mist devils didn’t come back now, did they?”

“Not at all,” the boy replied, throwing out his chest triumphantly. “Don’t forget, I blasted four of the buggers just the other day. They’re so scared they wouldn’t dare come back again. But just supposing they do, I’ll fry ’em to a crisp with this baby here.” That said, his expression suddenly grew sullen. “Oh, I almost forgot... That jerk Greco came by again. Carrying some bunch of flowers he says he had sent all the way from the Capital. He left ’em here and asked me to pass them along to my ‘lovely sister when she gets home.’”

“Chopped ’em up in the disposal unit, mixed in some compost, and fed it to the cows!”

Doris gave a deep, satisfied nod. “Good job. Today’s a big day. We’ve got company, too.”

The boy, who’d been sneaking peeks at D even as he spoke with his sister, now smiled knowingly at her. “Say, he’s a looker, ain’t he? So, this is how you like ’em, eh, Sis? You said the robots were in such lousy shape you were going out to look for someone to replace them, but it looks to me like you went out hunting for a man.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t talk that foolishness. This is Mr. D. He’ll be helping us out around the farm for a while. And don’t you be getting in his way now.”

“There’s nothing to be bashful about,” the boy chuckled. “I know, I know. One eyeful of him, and old Greco don’t look much better than a man-eating frog. I like him a heck of a lot better, too. Pleased to meet you, D.”

Showing no signs of being bothered by the emotionless tone D used even when addressing a child, the boy disappeared into the main house. The pair followed him inside.

C<T’m sorry, he must have really gotten on your nerves,” Doris JL said in an apologetic tone when dinner was finished and she’d finally managed to drive Dan off to his bedroom, ignoring the boy’s protests that he wasn’t sleepy yet.

D passed the sword he normally wore on his back from his right hand to his left as he stood at the window gazing at the darkness beyond. Thanks to the clear weather that had persisted the past four or five days, the solar batteries on the roof were well charged and glittering light showered generously on every comer of the room from lighting panels set in the ceiling.

Apparently there was something about the inhospitable stranger the boy liked, and he’d planted himself by the man’s side and wouldn’t leave, imploring him to talk about the Capital, or to

tell him about any monsters or supernatural creatures he might have slain in his travels. Then, to top it all off, he created quite a commotion when he said his sister was being a pest and grabbed D by the arm to try and bring him back to his room where they could talk man-to-man all night long.

“You see, he gets like that because travelers are so rare. And we don’t usually have much to do with the folks in town, either.” “It doesn’t bother me. I take no offense at being admired.” As he spoke, he made no attempt to look at Doris sitting on the sofa, wearing the shirt and jeans she’d changed into earlier. His tone was as cold as ever. Closing his eyes lightly, he said, “It’s now nine twenty-six Night, Frontier Standard Time. Since it has already fed once on the person it’s after, I don’t imagine it’ll be in that much of a hurry, so I suppose after midnight will be the time to watch. In the meantime, could you tell me everything you know about the enemy? Don’t worry; your brother is already asleep. I can tell by his steady breathing.”

Doris’ eyes went wide. “You can hear something like that through the door and everything?”

“And the voice of the wind across the wilderness, and the vengeful song of the spirits wandering the forest shade,” D murmured, then he came to stand at Doris’ side with the smooth strides of a dancer.

When she felt that cold and righteous visage peering down at the nape of her neck, Doris shouted, “Stop!” and pulled away without thinking.

Though the abhorrence was quite evident in her voice, D’s expression didn’t change in the least. “I’m just going to have a look at your wounds. To get a general idea of how powerful a foe I’m up against.”

“I’m sorry. Go ahead, take a look,” she said, turning her face away and exposing her neck. Even if the slight trembling of her lips was a remnant of her reaction seconds earlier, the redness of her cheeks was caused, no doubt, by the embarrassment of a

virgin having her flesh scrutinized by a wholly unfamiliar young man. After all, in her seventeen years, she hadn’t so much as held hands with a boy before.

Seconds later, D’s expression had a distant air to it. “When did you run into him?”

Doris breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of his voice, which was entirely without cadence. But why was her foolish heart pounding so? Unaffected by her racing pulse, and gazing raptly at D’s face all the while, she began to recount the tale of that terrible night in the most composed tone she could muster.

“It was five nights ago. I was chasing a lesser dragon that’d slipped onto the farm while we were fixing the electromagnetic barrier and killed one of our cows, and when I finally thought I’d finished it off, it was already pitch-black out. To make matters worse, it was near his castle. I was all set to hightail it home when what should happen but the dying beast suddenly spits fire and burns the back half of my horse to a cinder. I’m thirty miles from home, and the only weapons I’ve got to speak of are the spear I use to kill lesser dragons and a dagger. I ran as fast as I could. I must’ve run for a good thirty minutes when I noticed something, like there was someone running along right behind me!”

Doris suddenly fell silent, not only because the memory of that terror had become fresh again, but also because a fiendish howl had just pierced the darkness from somewhere very close. The breath was knocked out of her as she turned her beautiful face in that direction, but soon enough she realized it was only the sound of some wild animal. Her expression became one of relief. Though rather dated, an electromagnetic barrier that had cost them a pretty penny sealed the perimeter of the farm, and within it they had a variety of missile weapons set up.

She resumed the account of her horrid experience. “At first I thought it was a werewolf or a poison moth man. But there was no sound of footsteps or wings flapping, and I couldn’t even hear it breathing. Yet I just knew there was someone right behind me,

no more than a foot away, and moving at exactly the same speed I was. I finally couldn’t take it any more and I whipped around—-and there was nothing there! Well, there was for a fraction of a second, but then it circled around behind me again.” Memory was sowing terror across the girl’s face. She gnawed her lip and tried to force her trembling voice out. D said nothing, but remained listening.

“That’s when I started shouting. I told whoever it was to stop hiding behind me and come out that instant. And when I’d said that, out he came, dressed in a black cape just like I’d always heard. When I saw the pair of fangs poking over his mean, red lips, I knew what he had to be. After that, it’s the same old story.

I got my spear ready, but then my eyes met his and all the strength just drained right out of me. Not that it mattered much, because when that pasty face of his got closer and I felt breath as cold as moonlight on the base of my neck, my mind just went blank. The next thing I knew it was daybreak and I was lying out on the prairie with a pair of fang marks on my throat. That’s why I’ve been down at the base of that hill each and every day, morning till night, looking for someone like you.” Her emotional tale over at last, Doris slumped back onto the sofa exhausted. “And he hasn’t fed on you again since?”

“That’s right. Though I do wait up for him every night with a spear ready.”

D’s eyes narrowed at her attempt at levity. “If we were merely dealing with a blood-starved Noble, he’d be coming every night. But, you see, the greater the interest they take in their victim, the longer the interval between attacks so they can prolong the pleasure of feeding. But the fact that it’s been five days is incredible. It seems he’s extremely taken with you.”

“Spare me the damn compliments!” Doris cried. No trace of the spitfire who had challenged D to battle at twilight remained now. She sat there, a lovely seventeen-year-old girl trembling in fear.

As D surveyed her coolly, he added words that only made the hair on her neck stand higher. “The average interval between attacks is three to four days. More than five is extremely rare. He’ll come tonight without a doubt. From what I can tell from your wounds, he’s quite powerful, as Frontier Nobility go. You said something about ‘his castle.’ His identity is clear to you, is it?” Doris gave a little nod. “He’s been lord over this region since long before there was any village of Ransylva. His name is Count Lee. I’ve heard some say he’s a hundred years old, while others say he’s ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand years old, eh? The powers of a Noble grow with the passing years. He could prove a troubling adversary,” D said, though his tone didn’t sound particularly troubled.

“The powers of a Noble? You mean things like the power to whip up a gale with a wave of the arm, or being able to turn into a fire dragon?”

Ignoring Doris’ query, D said, “There’s one last thing I need to ask you. How does your village handle those who’ve been bitten by vampires?”

In many cases those who’d felt the baleful fangs of a vampire were isolated in their respective village or town while arrangements were made to destroy the culprit, but if they were simply unable to defeat the vampire, the victim would be driven from town or, in the worst cases, disposed of. This was the custom because a night fiend, crazed with rage at not being able to feed on the one it wanted, would attack anyone it could get its hands on. More towns and villages than anyone could count had been wiped out for just that reason. Ransylva had similar policies in effect. That was the reason Doris hadn’t asked anyone else for help, but had privately sought a Vampire Hunter. Her failure to confide in her brother was for fear that his conduct might tip off the villagers if they happened to go into town. Had she no younger brother to consider, she’d surely have gone after the vampire on her own, or done away with herself.

Vampires dealt with their victims in one of two ways. Either they drained all the blood from their prey in one feeding and left them a mere corpse or, through repeated feedings, they turned the individual into a companion. The key point in the latter was not the number of times the vampire fed but rather something D had touched on earlier: whether or not the vampire took a liking to its victim. Sometimes a person joined their ranks after a single bite, while other times they might share the kiss of blood for months only to die in the end. And it went without saying that those transformed into vampires had to bear their destiny as detestable demons, wandering each night in search of warm human blood, living in darkness eternal. For Doris, and for every other person in this world, that was the true terror.

“Everywhere it’s the same, isn’t it,” D muttered. “Accursed demons, ghouls from the darkness, blood-crazed devils. Bitten once and you’re one of them. Well, let them say what they will. Stand up, please,” he said to Doris, who was caught off-guard by the one remark meant for her. “It looks like the guest we were expecting has come. Let me see the remote control for your electromagnetic barrier.”

In order to keep all kinds of strange visitors from sneaking onto the farm while both Lang children were away, they had to have some way to erect the force field from the outside. Acquired secondhand off a black market in the Capital shortly after their father’s death four years ago, the barrier was their greatest treasure except, of course, for the rare occasions when it broke down. Their losses to the wraiths and rabid beasts that wandered

the night were far less than those of other homes on the periphery; to be more exact, their losses were practically nonexistent. But the purchase came with a price. After they bought it, they were left with less than a third of their father’s life savings.

“How are you gonna fight him?” Doris inquired. It was a question that sprung from the Hunter blood flowing in her veins. The fighting techniques of Vampire Hunters, who were rare even out on the Frontier, were rumored to be gruesome and magnificent, but almost no one had ever witnessed them firsthand. Doris herself had only heard of them in tales. And the youth before her now was completely different from the rustic Hunter image conjured up by those stories.

“You should see for yourself, and I wish I could let you, but I need you to go to sleep.”

The youth’s right hand touched Doris’ right shoulder, which was taut with swells of muscle while still retaining some delicacy. Whatever the technique or power he now employed, as soon as Doris noticed the frightening cold charge coursing through her body from her shoulder she lost consciousness. But just before she did, she glimpsed something eerie in the palm of D’s left hand, or at least she believed she did. She thought she saw something small, of a color and shape she couldn’t discern, but whatever it was it clearly had eyes and a nose and a mouth, like some sort of grotesque face.

Apparently confident in the efficacy of his actions, D didn’t even bother to check if Doris was actually unconscious before leaving the room with his sword over his shoulder. The reason he’d put her to sleep was to prevent her from interfering in the battle that was about to begin. No matter how firm their resolve, anyone who’d felt the vampire’s kiss once could not help but heed the demon’s commands. Many were the Hunters who had been shot from behind or had their hearts pierced by the very women they sought to save from cursed fangs. To guard against that, veterans

would give the victims a sedative or confine them in portable iron cages. But the extraordinary skill D had just displayed with his left hand would have been viewed by even the most veteran of Hunters as impossible in all but dreams cast by the Fair Folk.

Once out in the hall, D opened the door to Dan’s room. The boy snored away peacefully, oblivious to the deadly duel about to ensue. Quietly shutting the door, D slipped through the front hall and down the porch steps onto the pitch-black earth. No trace of the midday heat remained now. The green grass swayed in a chilled and pleasant night breeze.

It was around September. It was to the great credit of the Revolutionary Army that they hadn’t destroyed the dozen weather controllers buried beneath the seven continents. If not by day then at least by night the most comfortable levels of heat and humidity for both the Nobility and humans were maintained all year round. There were, however, still the occasional violent thunderstorms or blizzards, written into the controller’s programs by some uniformity-hating Nobles to recreate the unpredictable seasons of yore.

With a graceful stride that was a dance with the breeze, D passed through a gate in the fence and went another ten feet before coming to a stop. Before long there came from the depths of the darkness, from the far reaches of the plain, the sound of horse hooves and wagon wheels approaching. Could it be that D had heard them even as he talked with the young lady in that distant room?

A team of four horses and a carriage so black it seemed lacquered with midnight appeared in the moonlight and halted about fifteen feet ahead of D. The beautifully groomed black beasts drawing it were most likely cyborg horses.

A man in a black invemess cape was seated in the coachman’s perch, scrutinizing D with glittering eyes. The black lacquered whip in his right hand reflected the moonlight. By the light of the moon alone D could make out a touch of beast in his face and the terribly bushy backs of his hands.

The man quickly alighted from the driver’s seat. His whole body was like a coiled spring; he even moved like a beast. Before he could reach for the passenger door, the silver handle turned and the door opened from the inside. A deep chill and the stench of blood suddenly shrouded the refreshing breeze. As D caught a glimpse of the figure stepping down from the carriage the slightest hue of emotion stirred in his eyes. “A woman?”

Her dazzling golden hair looked like it would creep along the ground behind her. If Doris was the embodiment of a sunflower, then this woman could only be likened to a moonflower. Her snow-white dress of medieval styling was bound tight at her waist, spreading in bountiful curves reaching to the ground. The dress was certainly lovely, but it was the pale beauty unique to the Nobility that made the young lady seem an unearthly illusion, sparkling as she did like a dream in a shower of moonlight. But the illusion reeked of blood. The flames of a nightmare crackled in her lapis-lazuli eyes, and her beckoning lips were red as blood as they glistened damply in D’s night-sight, calling to mind a hunger that would not be sated in all eternity. The hunger of a vampire.

Gazing at D, the young lady laughed like a silver bell. “Be you some manner of bodyguard? Hiring a knave like you for protection is just the sort of thing a lowly human wretch would do. Having heard from Father that the girl who lives here is not only of a beauty unrivaled by the humans in these parts, but that her blood is equally delectable, I came to see her for myself. But as I expected all along, there is no great difference between these foolish, annoying little pests.”

Ghastliness rushed into the girl’s face. The pearly fangs that appeared without warning at the corners of her lips didn’t escape D’s notice.

“First I shall make a bloody spatter of you, and then I’ll drain the humble blood from her till not a drop remains. As you may well know, Father is inclined to make her part of our family, but I

will not stand by while the blood of the Lee line is imparted to a good-for-nothing that would stoop to a trick of this sort. I shall strike her from the face of the earth into the waiting arms of the black gods of hell. And you shall accompany her.”

As she spoke, the young lady made a sweep of her slender hand. Her driver stepped forward. Murderous intent and malevolence radiated from every inch of him like flames licking at D’s face.

You lowly worms have forgotten your station, his mien seemed to say. Turncoat scum you are, forgetting the debt you owe your former masters, rebelling against them with your devious little minds and weapons. Here’s where you learn the error of your ways.

The transformation had begun. The molecular arrangement of his cells changed, and his nervous system became that of a wild beast born to race across the ground at great speeds. The four limbs clutching at the earth began to assume a shape more befitting a lower animal. A prognathous jaw formed, and revealed rows of razor-sharp teeth jutting from a crescent-moon mouth that split his face from ear to ear. Jet-black fur sprouted over every inch of him.

The driver was a werewolf, one of the monsters of the night resurrected from the dark depths of medieval legend along with the vampires. D could tell just by watching the transformation, which some might even term graceful, that the driver was not one of the genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced fakes the vampires had spread across the world.

A throaty howl blazing with the glee of slaughter split the wordless void. With both eyes glittering wildly, the inverness-wearing wolf lurched up onto his hind feet. This was exactly what made the werewolf a lycanthrope among lycanthropes, for despite its four-footed form, a werewolf’s speed and destructive power were greater when it stood erect.

Perhaps taking the fact that the youth had stood stock still and not moved a muscle since their arrival to mean he was paralyzed with fright, the black beast crouched ever so slightly. Trusting its entire weight to the powerful springs of its lower body, it leapt over fifteen feet in a single bound.

D didn’t move. The werewolf, dropping down on D from above with every intention of sinking its iron-shredding claws into his skull, changed course in midair. It sailed over D’s head as if poised to make another jump, and landed in the bushes a few yards behind the Hunter.

Staged completely in midair, a jump like that was a miraculous maneuver only possible by coordinating the power of the lungs, the spine, and extremely tenacious musculature for a split second, and it was something werewolves alone could do. Even groups of seasoned Werewolf Hunters occasionally fell victim to attacks like this because the attack was far more terrible than any rumors the Hunters might have heard, and they weren’t prepared to counter the real thing. These demonic creatures could strike at their prey from angles and directions that were patently impossible as far as three-dimensional dynamics were concerned and the attack was entirely silent.

However, moans of pain spilled from the beast’s throat as it huddled low in the brush. Bright blood welled from between the fingers pressed against its right flank, soaking the grass. Its eyes, bloodshot with malice and agony, caught the blade glittering with reflected moonlight in D’s right hand as the Hunter stood facing it silently. Just as the werewolf was ready to drive its claws home, D had drawn the sword over his shoulder with ungodly speed and driven it into his opponent’s flank.

“Impressive,” one of them said. Strangely, that someone was D, who’d been under the impression that he had cleanly bisected

the werewolf’s torso. “Until now, I’d never seen what a true werewolf was capable of.”

His low voice sowed the seeds of a new variety of fear in the heart of the demonic beast where it lay in the bushes. The beast’s legs could generate bursts of speed of three hundred and seventy miles per hour—almost half the speed of sound. There had been less than a fiftieth of a second between the time it jumped and its attack on D, which meant the youth had been able to swing his sword and split its belly open even more quickly. Worse yet, the werewolf’s wound wouldn’t close! That wouldn’t be so unusual when it was human, but once it assumed the beastly form, the cells of a werewolf’s flesh were like single-cell organisms, giving it the regenerative power of a hydra. Cells created more cells, closing wounds instantly. But the blade the werewolf had just tasted made regeneration impossible, though it was probably not due to the blade but rather the skill of the youth who wielded it. Skin and muscle tissue that could reject bullets weren’t showing any signs of regenerating!

“What’s wrong with you, Garou?” the young lady shouted. “In wolf form, you should be unstoppable! Do not make a game of this. I demand you tear this human apart immediately!” Though he heard his mistress scolding him, the werewolf Garou didn’t move, partly because of the wound but also because of the youth’s divine skill with a sword. What really tapped the wellspring of horror was the lurid will to kill that gushed from every pore of the youth just before the werewolf could unleash its deadly attack. That hadn’t come from anything human!

“Your guard is wounded,” D said softly, turning to the young lady. “If he doesn’t come at me again, he might live to a ripe old age. You might, too. Go home and tell your father a dangerous obstacle has cropped up. And that he’d be a fool to attack this farm again.”

“Silence!” the young lady screamed, her gorgeous visage becoming that of a banshee. “I am Larmica, daughter of Count Magnus Lee, the ruler of the entire Ransylva district of the Frontier. Do you think I can be bested by the likes of you and your sword?”

Before she’d finished speaking, a streak of white light shot toward her breast from D’s left hand. In fact, it was a foot-long needle he’d taken out at some point and thrown faster than the naked eye could follow. It was made of wood. As it traveled at that unfathomable speed, the needle burned from the friction of the air, and the white light was from those flames.

The flames had come to a stop in front of D’s chest. Not that the needle he’d thrown had simply stopped there. The instant it was about to sink into Larmica’s breast, it had turned around and come back, and D had stopped it with his bare hand. Or to be more accurate, Larmica had caught the needle with superhuman speed and thrown it back just as quickly. The average person wouldn’t even have seen her hand move.

“If the servant is no more than a servant, still the master is a master. Well done,” D murmured, heedless of the flaming needle in his hand or the way it steadily scorched his naked flesh. “For that display of skill you get my name. I’m the Vampire Hunter D. Remember that, should you live.” As he spoke, D sprinted for the young lady without making a sound.

Terror stole into Larmica’s expression. In a twinkling, the distance between them closed to where she was within sword’s length of him, and then—

A ferocious howl shook the night air, and an indigo flash of light shot from the coachman’s perch on the carriage. D dove to the side to dodge it, only able to escape the beam because his superhuman hearing had discerned the sound of the laser cannon on the perch swiveling to bear on him. The beam pierced the

hem of his overcoat, igniting it in pale blue flames. Presumably, the cannon was equipped with voice recognition circuits and an electronic targeting system that responded to Garou’s howls. Avoiding the flashes of blue that flew with unerring accuracy to wherever he’d gone to dodge the last, D had no choice but to keep twisting through the air.

He heard Garou’s voice up in the driver’s seat. There was the sound of a door closing. As D attempted to give chase, another blast from the laser cannon checked his advance, and the carriage swung around and was swallowed by the darkness. “I’ll settle with you another day, wretch, mark my words!” “You’ll not soon forget the wrath of Nobility!”

Whether he was pleased at having staved off the enemy or perturbed he hadn’t managed to put an end to the vampiress, D wore no emotion on his face as he rose expressionless from the bushes, the malice-choked parting words of the pair circling him endlessly.

Or perhaps it might be more accurate to call it a dark age propped up by science. All seven continents are crisscrossed by a web of super-speed highways, and at the center of the system sits a fully automated “cyber-city” known as the Capital, the product of cutting-edge scientific technology. The dozen weather controllers manipulate the climate freely. Interstellar travel is no longer a far-fetched dream. In vast spaceports, hulking matter-conversion rockets and ships propelled by galactic energy stare up at the empyrean vault, and exploration parties have actually left their footprints on a number of planets outside our solar system—Altair and Spica, to name just two.

Take a peek at the grand Capital. A fine dust coats the walls of buildings and minarets constructed from translucent metal crystal; in places you’ll find recent craters large and small from explosives and ultraheat rays. The majority of automated roads and maglev highways are in shambles, and not a single car remains to zip from place to place like a shooting star.

There are people. Tremendous mobs of them. Flooding down the streets in endless numbers. Laughing, shouting, weeping, paying their respects to the Capital, the melting pot of existence,

with a vitality that borders on complete chaos. But their garb isn’t what you’d expect for the masters of a once-proud metropolis. Men don shabby trousers and tunics redolent of the distant Middle Ages, and threadbare cassocks like a member of a religious order might wear. Women dress in dim shades and wear fabric rough to the touch, completely devoid of flamboyance.

Through the milling crowd of men armed with longswords or bows and arrows comes a gasoline-powered car most likely taken from some museum. Trailing black smoke and popping with the firecrackers of backfires the vehicle carries along a group of Iaser-gun toting lawmen.

A dreadful scream rises from one of the buildings and a woman staggers out. From her inhuman cry people instinctively know the cause of her terror, and call out for the sheriff and his men. Before long, they race to the scene, ask the wailing woman where the terror is located, and enter the building in question with faces paler than the bloodless countenance of the witness herself. They ride an independently powered elevator down five hundred stories.

In one of the subterranean passageways—all of which had supposedly been destroyed ages ago—there’s a concealed door, and beyond it a vast graveyard where the Nobility, blood-craving creatures of the night, slumber as in days gone by in wooden coffins filled with damp soil.

The sheriff and his men soon go into action. Fortunately, it seems there are no curses or vicious beasts here, no defense system of lasers or electronic cannons. These Nobles were probably resigned to their fate. The lawmen hold rough wooden stakes and gleaming metal hammers in their hands. Their expressions are a pallid blend of fear and sinfulness. The mob of black silhouettes encircles a coffin, someone’s arm rises toward the heavens then knifes back down. There’s a dull thud. A horrifying scream and the stench of blood fill the graveyard.

The anguished cry grows thinner and dies out, and the group moves on to the next coffin.

When the lawmen leave the graveyard not long after that, their faces are adorned with crimson beads of blood and a shade of sinfulness much deeper than the one they wore before this mission.

Though the Nobility was nearly extinct, the feelings of pride brought on by the awe humanity held toward them had seeped into their very blood over the course of ten long millennia and would not be shaken off so easily. Because they had indeed reigned supreme over the human race. And because the automated city—now populated by people who couldn’t fathom its machinery or receive the tiniest fraction of the benefits it might provide—-and everything else in the world that could be called civilization was something they had left behind. They—the vampires.

This strict stratification of vampires and humanity came about when one day in 1999 mankind’s history as lords of the earth came to an abrupt end. Someone pushed the button and launched the full-scale nuclear war that the human race had been warned about for so long. Thousands of ICBMs and MIRVs flew in disarray, reducing one major city after another to a white-hot inferno, but the immediate fatalities were far outstripped by the wholesale death dealt by radiation more potent than tens of thousands of x-rays.

The theory of a limited nuclear war, where sensible battles would be fought so the winners might later rebuild and rule, was obliterated in a split second by a million degrees of heat and flame.

The survivors barely made it. Their numbers totally insignificant, they shunned the surface world and its toxic atmosphere and were left with no choice but to live in underground shelters for the next few years.

When they finally returned to the surface, their mechanized civilization was in ruins. With no way of contacting survivors in

other countries, any thoughts these isolated pockets of humanity might have had of things returning to the way they’d been before the destruction, or even of rebuilding to the point where it could be called a civilization, were flights of fantasy, and nothing more.

With generation after generation striving merely to survive, memories of the past grew dim. The population increased somewhat after a thousand years, but civilization itself plunged back to the level of the Middle Ages. Dreading the mutant creatures spawned by radiation and cosmic rays, the humans formed small groups and moved into plains and forests that over the years had gradually returned to verdure. In their struggles with the cruel environment, at times they had to kill their newborn babies to keep what little food they had. Other times the infants went toward filling their parents’ empty bellies.

That was the time. In that pitch-black, superstitious world they appeared. How they—the vampires—kept themselves hidden from the eyes of man and lived on in the luxuriant shadows was unclear. However, their life form was almost exactly as described in legend and they seemed the best suited to fill the role of the new masters of history.

Ageless and undying so long as they partook of the blood of other creatures, the vampires remembered a civilization the human race could not, and they knew exactly how to rebuild it. Before the nuclear war, the vampires had contacted others of their kind who lurked in dark places around the globe. They had a hidden super-power source that they’d secretly developed in fallout shelters of their own design, along with the absolute minimum machinery required to reconstruct civilization after the absolute worst came to pass.

But that’s not to say they were the ones who caused the nuclear war. Through cryptesthesia, the black arts, and psychic

abilities mankind never guessed they’d cultivated, the vampires simply knew when the human race would destroy itself and how they, the vampires, could restore order to the world.

How much friction and discord that course created between the two sides was soon apparent. Within two thousand years of stepping onto history’s great stage, the vampires gave the world a sprawling civilization driven by super-science and sorcery, dubbed themselves the “Nobility,” and subjugated humanity. The automated city with its electronic brain and ghostly will, interstellar spaceships, weather controllers, methods of creating endless quantities of materials through matter-conversion—all this came into being through the thoughts and deeds of them and them alone.

However, who could have imagined that within five short millennia of this golden age they would be treading the road to extinction? History didn’t belong to them after all.

As a species, the vampires possessed an underlying spark to live that was far less tenacious than that of humans. Or perhaps it would be better to say that their life held an element that ensured their future destruction. From the end of the fourth millennia A.D., the vampire civilization as a whole started to show a phenomenal decline in energy, and that brought on the start of mankind’s great rebellion. Though they had an expertise in the physiology of the human brain, and had developed the science of psychology to such extremes they could manipulate the human mind in any way they chose, in the end they found it impossible to eradicate the innate urge to rebel that lurked in the depths of the human soul.

Weakened by one great uprising after another, the Nobility entered dozens of armistices with the humans, each of which maintained the peace for short periods. But before long the Nobles faded away, like gallant nihilists who realized their destiny.

Some took their own lives, while others entered a sleep that would last until the end of time. Some even headed off into the depths of space, but their numbers were extremely few; in general the vampires had no wish to establish themselves in extraterrestrial environs.

At any rate, their overall numbers were on the decline; ultimately they scattered before mankind’s pursuit. By the time A.D. 12,090 arrived, the vampires served no purpose beyond terrorizing the humans on the Frontier. Yet, precisely because this was their sole purpose, the humans felt a special terror of them that shook their very souls.

To be honest, it was miraculous that mankind was able to plan and execute a rebellion no matter how utterly desperate they might have been.

The horror all felt for vampires—who slept by day and awoke at night to suck the lifeblood from humans and ensure their own eternal life—became part of the vampire mythology, right along with the ancient legends of transformations into bats and wolves, and their power to control the elements. As a result of clever psychological manipulation that continued throughout this mechanized age, the horror laid roots down into the deepest layers of the human psyche.

It is said that the first time the humans signed an armistice with the vampires—their rulers—all the representatives on the human side save one were shaking so badly their teeth chattered. Even though vampires could no longer be found in the Capital, it had still taken the humans nearly three hundred years to check every street and building.

Given how much strength the vampires had in their favor, why hadn’t they set about exterminating the human race? That is the eternal question. It couldn’t be that they were simply afraid of destroying their source of the blood, since they had mastered a method of perfectly synthesizing human blood in the first stage of their civilization. As far as manual labor went, they had more

than enough robots to bear the load by the time the revolution broke out. In fact, the reason why they allowed humans to continue to exist in the first place, even in their role as subordinates, is a mystery. Most likely it was due to some sort of superiority complex, or out of pity.

Vampires were rarely seen by humans any more, but the fear remained. On very rare occasions, they appeared from the depths of the darkness and left their vile bite on the pale throats of their victims; sometimes a person would seek them out with wooden stake in hand like a man possessed, while at other times the humans would drive the victim out from their midst, earnestly praying they wouldn’t receive another visit from the vampires.

Being nearly indestructible themselves, the vampires weren’t so eager to exterminate the mutant creatures humanity feared so much in the years just after the war. Quite the contrary, the vampires loved the vicious beasts, nurtured them, and even created others like them with their own hands.

Thanks to their unparalleled knowledge of biology and genetic engineering, the vampires unleashed one legendary monster after another into the world of man: werewolves, were-tigers, serpent men, golems, fairies, mer-creatures, goblins, raksas, ghouls, zombies, banshees, fire dragons, salamanders resistant to flames, griffins, krakens, and more. Though their creators neared extinction, the creatures still ran rampant on the plains and in the mountains.

Working the land with the scant machinery the Nobility allowed them, defending themselves with replicas of old-fashioned gunpowder weapons or homemade swords and spears, the humans studied the nature of these artificial monstrosities for generations, learning their powers and their weaknesses. In time, some people came to work exclusively on weapons and ways to kill these things.

Of those people, some specialized in producing more effective weaponry, while those of surpassing strength and agility trained themselves to use those weapons. These exceptional warriors were the first Hunters.

As time went by, Hunters became more narrowly focused, and specialists like the Were-tiger Hunter and Fairy Hunter were born. Of them all, Vampire Hunters were universally recognized as possessing strength and intellect beyond the rest, as well as an ironclad will impervious to the fear their former rulers inspired in others.

The next morning, Doris was awakened by the shrill whinny of a horse. White light speared in through her window, telling her it was a fresh day. She was lying on the bed dressed just as she was when D knocked her out. Actually, D had carried her to the bed when his first skirmish was over. Her nerves had been frayed with worry after her vampire attack, and she was incredibly tense from her search for a Hunter, but when the power of D’s left hand put her to sleep she was totally at peace and had slept soundly till morning.

Instinctively reaching for her throat, Doris recalled what had happened the night before.

What happened while I was asleepI He said we had company, and that had to be him. I wonder how D made out1 As she sprung out of bed in a panic, her expression suddenly grew brighter. She was still a little lethargic, but physically nothing else seemed out of the norm. D had kept her safe. Remembering that she hadn’t even shown him where his room was, she pawed at her sleep -disheveled locks and hurried out of her bedroom.

The heavy shades in the living room were fully drawn; at one end of the murky room sat a sofa with a pair of boots hanging off the end.

“D, you really did it, didn’t you? I knew hiring you was the right thing to do!”

From beneath the traveler’s hat that covered his face came the usual low voice.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Doris said animatedly, checking the clock on the mantle. “It’s only five past seven in the morning. Get some more sleep. I’ll have your breakfast ready in no time. And I’ll make it the best I can.”

“Who the hell would be making such a racket at this hour?” She went over to the window and was about to raise the shade when a sharp “Don’t!” stayed her hand.

When Doris turned to D with a gasp, her face was twisted by the same terror that had contorted it the night before when she tried to escape his approach. She remembered what the gorgeous Hunter really was. And yet she reclaimed her smile soon enough; not only was she stouthearted, but she also had a naturally fair disposition. “Sorry about that. I’ll fix you up a room later. At any rate, get some rest.” As soon as she’d said that she went ahead and grabbed a corner of the shade anyway, but the moment she lifted it and took a look outside, her endearing face quickly became a mass of pure hatred. Returning to her bedroom for her prized whip, she stepped outside indignantly.

Astride a bay in front of the porch was a hulking man of twenty-four or twenty-five. The explosive-firing, ten-banger pistol he was so proud of hung from the leather gun-belt that girt his waist. Below a mop of red hair, his sly eyes crept across every inch of Doris’ frame.

“What’s your business, Greco? I thought I told you not to come around here no more.” Her tone just as commanding as it had been in her search for the Hunter, Doris glared at the man.

For a brief instant, anger and confusion surfaced in his cloudy eyes, but a lewd smile soon spread across the man’s face and he said, “Aw, don’t say that. I come out here all worried about you and this is the thanks I get? Seems you been looking for a Hunter now, haven’t you? Couldn’t be you’ve gone and got attacked by our old lord, could it?”

In a heartbeat, vermilion spread across Doris’ face, the result of the anger and embarrassment she felt at Greco hitting it right on the mark. “Grow up! If you and your trashy friends in town go around spreading wild stories about me just because I won’t have nothing to do with you, I’ll teach you a thing or two!”

“Come on, don’t get so worked up,” Greco said, shrugging his shoulders. Then his gaze became probing as he said, “It’s just, the night before last there was this drifter in the saloon blubbering on about how he got himself challenged to a test of skill out at the hill on the edge of town by a right powerful girl, then got his ass handed to him before he could even draw his sword. So I buy him a drink to hear all the details and it turns out looks-wise and build-wise, the girl sounds like the spitting image of you. The frosting on the cake was he said she’s damn handy with a weird kind of whip, and there ain’t no one in these parts that could be besides you, missy.” Greco’s eyes were trained on the whip Doris had in her right hand.

“Sure, I was out looking for someone. Someone good. You should know as well as anyone how much damage mutants have been causing around town lately. Well, things are no different out here. It’s more than I can take care of all by my lonesome.”

On hearing Doris’ reply, Greco smiled faintly. “In that case, all you’d have had to do was go ask Pops Cushing in town, seeing how he’s in charge of scouting new talent. You know, five days back, one of the hands at our place seen you chasing a lesser dragon toward the lord’s castle right around dusk. Now, on top of that, you’ve got this need for hired help you don’t want anyone in town to know about.” Greco’s tone of voice changed entirely. He threateningly suggested, “Let’s see you take that scarf off your neck.”

“Can’t do it, can you,” he laughed. “I figured as much. I think I’ll go into town and have a few words with ... well, I don’t think I have to tell you the rest. So, what do you say? Just be sensible and give me your okay for what I’ve been asking you to do all along. If we got hitched, you’d be the mayor’s daughter-in-law. Then no one in town could lay a stinkin’ finger on you or—”

Before his vile words were done, a snap rang through the air and the bay reared up with a whinny of pain. Doris’ whip had stung the horse’s flank with lightning speed. In a heartbeat, Greco’s massive frame was thrown out of the saddle and crashed to the ground. Hand pressed to his tail, he groaned in pain. The bay’s hoofbeats echoed loudly as it fled the farm, heartlessly leaving its master behind.

“Serves you right! That’s for all the filthy things you’ve gotten away with by hiding behind your father’s power,” Doris laughed. “I never cared too much for your father or anyone in cahoots with him. And if you got a problem with that, you bring your daddy and your buddies out here any time. I won’t run or hide. Of course, the next time you show that ugly, pockmarked mug of yours around here, you’d better be ready to have me flay the skin right off it!”

Color rose in the big man’s face as words so rough you had to wonder where a beautiful young lady kept them shot at him like flames.

“Bitch, you fucked up real good ...” As he spoke, his right hand went for his ten-banger. Once again, a surge of black split the sunlight-soaked air, and the pistol he’d tried to draw was thrown into the bushes behind him. And he could draw in less than half a second.

“Next time I’ll send your nose or one of your ears flying.” The man knew there was more to her words than empty threats. With no parting quip, Greco scurried off the farm, rubbing his backside and right wrist by turns.

“That scumbag’s nothing without his daddy behind him.” After she spat the words, Doris turned and froze on the spot.

Dan stood in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas and armed with a laser rifle. His big, round eyes were brimming with tears.

The boy nodded mechanically. Greco had been facing toward the house and he hadn’t said anything about Dan, so the boy must’ve stayed behind the door. “Sis ... were you really bit by a Noble?” The boy lived in the wilds of the Frontier. He was well aware of the fate of those with the devil’s kiss on their throat.

The young beauty who had just sent a brute twice her size packing with a crack of her whip was now rooted to the spot, unable to speak.

“No, it can’t be!” The boy suddenly ran over and threw his arms around her. The sorrow and concern he’d been wrestling with surged out in a tidal wave, soaking Doris’ slacks with a flood of hot tears. “You can’t be, you just can’t! I’d be all alone then ... You can’t be!” Though he didn’t want it to be true, he had no idea what he could do about it, and his sorrow sprung from his helplessness.

“It’s okay,” Doris said, patting her brother’s tiny shoulder as she fought back tears of her own. “No lousy Noble’s put the bite on me. These are bug bites I’ve got on my neck. I only hid them because I didn’t want you getting all worried.”

A ray of light streamed into his tear-streaked face. “Really? Really truly?”

Surely the boy had a heart that could shift from low gear to high on the fly if that was all it took to calm him down. “But what’ll we do if the folks in town believe all Greco’s fibbing and come busting in here?”

“You know how good I am in a fight. Plus, I’ve got you here—” “And we’ve got D, too!”

At the boy’s exuberant words, the girl’s face clouded. That was the difference between someone who knew the way Hunters worked and someone who didn’t. In fact, the boy hadn’t been told D was a Hunter.

Before she could stop him, the boy disappeared into the living room. She hurried after him, but was too late.

In a completely trusting tone, Dan addressed the youth on the sofa. “A guy just came out here trying to get my sister to marry him, and he says he gonna spread the worst kind of lies about her. He’ll be back with a bunch of folks from town, I just know it.

Imagining his answer, Doris unconsciously closed her eyes. The problem wasn’t the reply itself, but the effect it would have. A cold, adamant rejection would leave a wound on the boy’s fragile heart that might never heal.

But this is how the Vampire Hunter replied: “Leave it to me. I won’t let anyone lay a finger on your sister.”

From behind him, Doris said, “Well, breakfast will be ready soon. Before we eat, go have a look at the thermo-regulators out in the orchards.”

The boy galloped off like the spirit of life itself. Doris turned to the still prone D and said, “Thank you. I know it’s the iron law of Hunters that they won’t lift a finger for anything but dealing with their prey. I’d be in no position to complain no matter how you turned him down. You did it without hurting him ... and he loves you like a big brother.”

“I know. Aside from your job itself, I won’t ask any more of you-—-what you said to him just now will do fine. I’ll handle my own problems. And the sooner you get your work finished the better.” “Fine.”

As expected, “company” came as the three of them were just finishing a somewhat peculiar breakfast. What made it peculiar was that D only ate half as much as young Dan. The menu consisted of ham and eggs on a colossal scale—mutant-chicken eggs a foot across on an inch-thick slab of light, homemade ham—along with preservative-free black bread hot out of the oven, and juice from massive Gargantua grapes cultivated right on their own farm. Of course, the juice was freshly squeezed and the three large glasses were filled from a single grape. And those were just the main dishes; there was a gigantic bowl of salad and fragrant floral tea, too. Only a farm like the Langs’ could offer a rich menu like this, and the freshness of the ingredients alone should have been enough to make a good-sized man take seconds or thirds on the ham and eggs. The refreshing morning sunlight and giant lavender blossoms that adorned the table were in essence part of a sacred ritual to give all those gathered around it the strength to fight the cruel Frontier for another day.

And yet, D quickly set down his fork and knife and withdrew to the room in the back Doris had just given him.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that.” Though she pretended nothing was wrong, Doris pictured D back in his room now taking his own kind of breakfast, and started to feel ill.

“Not you too, Sis! What’s the matter? I know you like him and all, but don’t get sick just because he does.”

Doris was about to lay into Dan for his teasing remarks when tension suddenly flooded her face.

“Damn it, here they come,” Dan shouted, dashing over to where a laser rifle hung on the wall.

“Let’s see if the two of us can’t handle it first. If that doesn’t work, maybe then ...” But she was perfectly aware that no matter what was going to happen to the two of them, D wouldn’t do anything.

Armed with a whip and a rifle, the pair stepped out onto the porch. She let her little eight-year-old brother join her because the law of the Frontier was that if you and your family didn’t defend your own lives and property, no one else would. If you always relied on others, you wouldn’t last long against the fire dragons and golems.

“Dear me, the cream of local society is out in force. A noaccount little farm like this don’t deserve such distinguished guests.” As Doris greeted them in a calm tone, her eyes were cautiously trained on the men in the second and third ranks. In the foremost rank were prominent villagers like Sheriff Luke Dalton, Dr. Sam Ferringo, and Mayor Rohman—this last was Greco’s father, whose face was unusually oily for a man nearing sixty. There was no reason to worry about any of those three suddenly trying anything funny, but behind them was a mob of brutal hooligans just itching to make a statement with the Magnum guns and battered heat-rays they wore on their hips should the opportunity arise. They were all hired hands from Mayor Rohman’s ranch. Doris glared at each of them in turn without a trace of fear until she came across a familiar face at the

very tail of the mob, and her gaze became one of pure contempt. When it looked like trouble was brewing, it was just like Greco to shut his big mouth, find the safest possible place, and try to look like he didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.

Apparently by mutual consent, Mayor Rohman spoke first. “As if you don’t know. We’re out here on account of the marks you’ve got under that scarf. You show them to Doc Ferringo now, and if they’re nothing then fine. But if they’re ... well then, unfortunately we’ll have to put you in the asylum.” Doris snorted in derision. “So you believe the nonsense that damn fool son of yours been talking? He’s been out here five time asking me to marry him and I’ve turned him down every time, so he’s stuck with some pretty damn sour grapes. That’s why he’s spreading these stories when they ain’t true. You keep spouting that filth and you won’t like what happens, mayor or not.”

The bluff rolled from her so fluently the mayor couldn’t get a word in edgewise. His bovine countenance flushed with rage.

“That’s right! My sister ain’t been bit by no vampire! So hit the road, you old pervert,” Dan shouted from his sister’s side, pushing the mayor over the edge.

“What do you mean by calling me an old pervert? Why, you ... you little bastard! To say something like that about the mayor even in jest... A pervert of all things! I’ll have you know ... ”

The old man had lost all control. He might hold all the real power in town, but he was still just the mayor of one tiny village. Simply touch on one of his sore spots, and his emotional restraints would burst. In that, he wasn’t so different from the thugs behind him.

From the back, Greco bellowed, “They’re making fools of us! C’mon boys, don’t pay them no nevermind. Let’s grab them and burn the damn house down!”

The rebukes flew from Sheriff Dalton. For a moment, Doris’ expression was placid. Though still under thirty, the sincere and capable sheriff was someone she was willing to trust. The hoodlums stopped moving, too.

“I need you to understand something, Doris. I’ve got a job to uphold as sheriff in this here village. And checking out your neck is part of it. I don’t want things getting out of hand. If it’s nothing, then one peek will do. Take your scarf off and let Doc have a look.”

“He’s right,” Dr. Ferringo said, rising in his saddle. He was about the same age as the mayor, but thanks to his studies of medicine in the Capital, he had the intelligent look of a distinguished old gentleman. Because Doris and Dan’s father had been a student of his at the education center, this good-natured man worried about their welfare on a daily basis. Before him alone, Doris couldn’t hold her head up. “No matter what the result may be, we won’t do wrong by you. You leave it to me and the sheriff.” “No way, she goes to the asylum!” Greco’s spiteful words came from the back. “In this village, we got a rule that anyone that gets bit by a Noble goes to the asylum, no matter who they are. And when we can’t get rid of the Noble ... heh heh ... then we chuck them out as monster bait!”

Greco was shocked into an embarrassed silence, but he drew power from the fact that he was surrounded by his hired hands. “Well, put a badge on you and you get pretty damn tough. Before you give me any more back talk, check out the bitch’s neck.

“What’d you say, boy?” The sheriff’s eyes had a look that could kill. At that same moment, the hoods were going for

“Stop it,” the mayor barked bitterly at the entire company. “What’ll we prove by fighting among ourselves? All we have to do is take a look at the girl’s neck and we’ll be done here.”

The sheriff and the hoods had no choice but to begrudgingly go along with that. “Doris,” the sheriff called out to her in a gruffer tone than before, “you’d best take that scarf off.”

With Greco’s cry, the mounted thugs raced right and left. Doris’ whip uncoiled for action.

“Stop!” the sheriff shouted, but it looked like his commands would no longer do the trick, and just when the battle was about to be joined—

The toughs all stopped moving at once. Or to be more accurate, their mounts had jerked to a halt.

Even a kick from spurred heels couldn’t make the horses budge. If the men could’ve looked into their horses’ eyes, they might have glimpsed a trace of ineffable horror. A trace of overwhelming terror that wouldn’t permit the horses to be coerced any further, or even to flee. And then the eyes of every man focused on the gorgeous youth in black who stood blocking the front door, though no one had any idea when he’d appeared. Even the sunlight seemed to grow sluggish. Suddenly, a gust of wind brushed across the fields and the men turned away, exchanging uneasy looks.

“Who the hell are you?” The mayor tried his level best to sound intimidating, but there was no hiding the quiver in his voice. The youth had about him an air that churned the calm waters of the human soul.

Without a word, D stopped Doris from saying whatever she was about to say and stepped in front of the Langs as if to shield them. His right hand held a longsword. “I’m D. I’ve hired on with these people.”

He looked not at the mayor, but at the sheriff as he spoke. The sheriff gave a little nod. He could tell at a glance what the youth before them really was. “I’m Sheriff Dalton. This here’s Mayor Rohman, and Dr. Ferringo. The rest back there don’t count for much.” After that reasonable introduction, he added, “You’re a Hunter, aren’t you? I see it in your eyes, the way you carry yourself. I seem to recall hearing there was a man of unbelievable skill traveling across the Frontier, and that his name was D. They say his sword is faster than a laser beam or some such thing.” Those words could be taken as fearful or praising, but D was silent.

The sheriff continued in a hard voice. “Only, they say that man’s a Hunter, and he specializes in vampires. And that he’s a dhampir himself.”

“Yes, the girl’s been bitten by a vampire. And I’ve been hired to destroy him.”

“At any rate, the mere fact that she’s been bitten by a vampire is reason enough not to let her remain at large. She goes to the asylum,” the mayor declared.

“Nothing doing,” Doris shot back flatly. “I’m not going anywhere and leaving Dan and the farm unattended. If you’re hellbent on doing it, you’ll have to take me away by force.”

“Okay then,” Greco groaned. The girl’s manner and speech, defiant to the bitter end, reawakened his rancor at being spurned.

He gave a toss of the chin to his thugs, whose eyes burned with the same shadowy fire as a serpent’s.

The rowdies were about to dismount in unison, but at that moment their horses reared up simultaneously. There was nothing they could do. Each gave their own cry of “Oof” or “Ow,” and every last one of them was thrown to the ground. The sunny air was filled with moans of pain and the whinnying of horses.

D returned his gaze to the sheriff. Whether or not the sheriff comprehended that a single glare from the Hunter had put the horses on end was unclear.

“I have a proposal.” At D’s words, the sheriff nodded his assent like he was sleepwalking. “Hold off on doing anything about the girl until I’ve finished my work. If we come out of it okay, that’s fine. If we don’t...”

“You can rest assured I’ll take care of myself. If he’s beaten by the lord, I’ll drive a stake through my own heart.” Doris gave a satisfied nod.

“Don’t let her fool you! This jerk’s in league with the Nobility. You shouldn’t be making deals with him—he’s out to turn every last person in Ransylva into a vampire, I’m sure of it!” Having been thrown to the ground for the second time that day, Greco was still down on all fours, screaming. “Let’s do away with the bitch. No, better yet, give her to the lord. That way, he won’t go after any of the other women.”

With a pffftl a four-inch-wide pillar of flame erupted from the ground right in front of Greco’s face. The earth boiled from a blast of more than twenty thousand degrees, and the flames leapt to Greco’s greasy face, searing his upper lip. He tumbled backwards with a beastly howl of agony.

“Say anything else bad about my sister and your head’ll be next,” Dan threatened, perfectly aligning the barrel of his laser rifle with Greco’s face. Though it’s true the weapon had no kick,

it was still unheard of for a child a good deal shorter than the weapon’s length to be skilled enough to hit a target dead-on.

“As you can see, we have a fierce bodyguard on our side. You could try and plow through us, but a lot of people will probably get hurt unnecessarily. Just wait.”

“Well, some of them could do with a little hurting if you ask me,” said the sheriff, glancing briefly at the hoodlums moaning behind him. “What do you make of this, Doc?”

“Why don’t you ask me?!” the mayor screamed, veins bulging. “You think we can trust this drifter? We should send her to the asylum, just like my boy says! Sheriff, bring her in right this moment!”

“The evaluation of vampire victims falls to me,” Dr. Ferringo said calmly, and then he produced a cigar from one of his inner pockets and put it in his mouth. It wasn’t a cheap one like the local knock-off artists hand rolled with eighty percent garbage. This was a high-class cigar in a cellophane wrapper that bore the stamp of the Capital’s Tobacco Monopoly. These were Dr. Ferringo’s treasure. He gave a little nod to Doris.

“Oof!” The mayor gave an utterly hysterical cry and grabbed his nose. With one slight twist of Doris’ wrist, her whip had taken the cigar from the doctor’s mouth and crammed it up one of the mayor’s nostrils.

Ignoring the mayor, whose entire face was flushed with rage, the doctor declared loudly, “Very well, I find Doris Lang’s infection of vampirism to be of the lowest possible degree. My orders are rest at home for her. Sheriff Dalton and Mayor Rohman, do you concur?”

“Yessir,” the sheriff replied with a nod of satisfaction, but suddenly he looked straight at D with the intimidating expression

of a man sworn to uphold the law. “Under the following conditions. I’ll take the word of a damn-good Hunter and hold off on any further discussion. But let me make one thing crystal clear—I don’t want to have to stake you folks through the heart.

I don’t want to, but if that time should come, I won’t give it a second thought.” And then, throwing the Lang children a look of pathos, he bid them farewell. “I’m looking forward to the day I can enjoy the juice of those Gargantua-breed grapes of yours. All right, you dirty dogs, mount up and make it snappy! And I’m warning you, any of you so much as make a peep about this back in town, I’ll throw you in the electric pokey, mark my words!”

The crowd disappeared over the hill, glancing back now and then with looks of hatred, compassion, and, from some, encouragement. D was about to go into the house when Doris asked him to wait. He turned to her coolly, and then she said, “You sure are strange for a Hunter. You might’ve taken on some work you didn’t have to, and I can’t pay you for it.”

“To your little bodyguard over there,” he said with a toss of his chin. Then, noticing Dan’s stiff expression, he asked, “What’s wrong? You hate me because I’m supposedly ‘in league with the Nobility’?”

As he shook his head, the boy’s face suddenly crumpled in on itself and he started to cry.

The young hero who’d put Greco in his place minutes earlier now returned to being an eight-year-old boy. He blubbered away as he threw his arms around D’s waist. This child had rarely cried since the death of his father three years earlier. As he watched his sister struggling along as a woman on her own, the boy had secretly nurtured his own stores of pride and determination in his little heart. Naturally, life on the Frontier was hard and lonely for

him too. When his youthful heart felt he might be robbed of his only blood relative, he forgot himself and latched onto not his sister, but rather to the man who’d only arrived the day before.

Doris reached for her brother’s shoulder with one hand, but D gently brushed it away. Before long, the boy’s cries started to taper off, and D quietly planted one knee on the wooden floor of the front porch, looking the boy square in his tear-streaked face.

“Listen to me,” he said in a low but distinct voice. Noticing the unmistakable ring of encouragement in his voice, Doris opened her eyes in astonishment.

“I promise you and your sister I’ll kill the Noble. I always keep my word. Now you have to promise me something.”

“From here on out, if you want to scream and cry, that’s your prerogative. Do whatever you like. But whatever you do, don’t make your sister cry. If you think your crying will set her off too, then hold it in. If you’re being selfish and your sister starts to cry, make her smile again. You’re a man, after all. Okay?”

“Okay, then do your big brother a favor and feed his horse. I’ll be heading out on business soon.”

The Vampire Hunter ignored her words, and said simply, “Come inside. Before I head out, I want to put a little protective charm on you.” And then he vanished down the dark and desolate hall.

From the farm he rode hard north by northwest for two hours, until he came to a spot where a massive ashen citadel towering quietly atop a hillock loomed menacingly overhead. This was the castle of the local lord—the home of Count Magnus Lee.

Even the shower of midday sunlight changed color here, and a nauseating miasma seemed to come from the morbid expanse of land surrounding the castle. The grass was green as far as the eye could see, and the trees were laden with succulent fruit, but not a single bird could be heard. Still, as one would expect around noon on a sunny day, there were no signs of life in the vampire’s castle. Constructed to mimic the castles of the distant middle ages, the walls were dotted with countless loopholes. The dungeon and courtyards were surrounded by broad, stone stairways that linked them together, but there was no sign of android sentries on any of them. The castle was, to all appearances, deserted.

But D had already sensed the castle’s bloodied nocturnal form, and the hundreds of electronic eyes and vicious weapons that lay in wait for their next victim.

The surveillance satellite in geo-stationary orbit 22,240 miles above the castle—as well as the uncounted security cameras disguised as fruit or spiders—sent the castle’s mother-computer images so detailed that an observer could count the pores of the intruder’s skin. The photon cannons secreted in the loopholes had their safety locks switched off, and they were drawing a bead on several hundred points all over the intruder’s body.

As the Nobility was fated to live by night alone, electronic protection during the day was an absolute necessity. No matter how much mystic-might the vampires might wield by night, in the light of day they were feeble creatures, easily destroyed by a single thrust of a stake. It was for precisely this reason that the vampires had used all their knowledge of psychology and cerebral biology in their attempts to plant fear in the human mind throughout the six or seven millennia of their reign. The results of this tactic were clear: even after the vampire civilization had long since crumbled—it was rare to catch even a glimpse of one about—they could take residence in the midst of their human “foes” and, like a feudal lord, hold complete mastery over the region.

According to what Doris told D before he set out, the villagers in Ransylva had taken up sword and spear a number of times in the past, endeavoring to drive their lord off their lands. However, as soon as they set foot within the castle grounds, black clouds began swirling in the sky above, the earth was rent wide, lightning raged, and not surprisingly, they were ultimately routed before they even reached the moat.

Not giving in so easily, a group of villagers made a direct appeal to the Capital and succeeded in getting the government’s precious Anti-Gravity Air Corps to execute a bombing mission. Because the government was afraid of depleting its stores of energy or explosives, however, it wouldn’t authorize more than a single bombing run. The defense shields around the castle prevented that single attack from accomplishing much before it was forced to return home. The following day, villagers were found butchered with positively unearthly brutality, and, by the time the villagers had seen the vampires’ vengeance play out, the flames of resistance were utterly snuffed.

Home to the feudal lord who would taste D’s blade, the castle the Hunter approached was the sort of demonic citadel that kept the world in fear of the now largely legendary vampires.

Perhaps that was what brought a haggard touch to D’s visage. No, as a Vampire Hunter he should’ve been quite familiar with the fortifications of the vampires’ castle. As proof, he rode his horse without the slightest trace of trepidation to where the drawbridge was raised. But against the lord and his iron-walled castle, crammed with most advanced electronics, what chance of victory did a lone youth with a sword have?

Blazing-white light could have burnt through his chest at any moment, but a tepid breeze merely stroked his ample black hair, and soon he arrived at the edge of a moat brimming with dark blue water. The moat must have been nearly twenty feet wide. His eyes raced across the walls as he pondered his next move, but when he put his hand to his pendant the drawbridge barring the castle gate amazingly began to descend with a heavy, grating noise. With earth-shaking force, the bridge was laid.

“It is a great pleasure to receive you,” a metallic voice called out from nowhere in particular. It was computer-synthesized speech— the ultimate in personality simulation. “Please proceed into the castle proper. Directions shall be transmitted to the brain of milord’s mount. Please pardon the fact no one was here to greet you.”

Once he’d crossed the bridge, he entered a large courtyard. Behind him came the sounds of the drawbridge being raised again, but he advanced down the cobblestone way toward the palace without a backward glance.

The orderly rows of trees, the marble sculptures glittering in the sunlight, stairways and corridors leading to places that couldn’t be guessed—all gave the feeling of scrupulous upkeep by machines. Though no one could say how many millennia ago they’d been planted or sculpted, they looked as fresh and new as if they’d been placed there only yesterday. But there were no signs

that life went on here. The machines alone lived, and their mechanical eyes and fiery arrows were trained on D.

When his horse halted before the palace gates, D quickly slipped out of the saddle. The thick doors dotted with countless hobnails were already open wide.

“Enter, please.” The same synthesized voice reverberated from the dark corridor.

A hazy darkness bound the interior. Not that the windowpanes were dampening the sunlight—this effect was a result of the artificial lighting. In fact, the windows in the vampire’s palace were no more than ornamentation, impervious to the slightest ray of light.

As he walked down the corridors guided by the voice, D noticed that each and every window was set in a niche in the wall. It would take two or three steps up the scaffolding to climb to the window from the hallway: one couldn’t walk over to the window, but would rather pop up in front of it. The design had been copied from German castles in the middle ages.

The predominant element of vampire civilization was their love of medieval styles. Even in their superiorly advanced, tech-filled Capital, the designs of many of the buildings closely resembled those of medieval Europe. Perhaps something in their DNA cried out for a return to the golden age that lived on in their genetic memory, a time when superstition and legend and all manner of weird creatures prevailed. Maybe that explained why so many detestable monsters and spirits had been resurrected by their super-science.

The voice led D to a splendid door of massive proportions. At the bottom of the door there was an opening large enough for a cat to come and go as it pleased. This door opened without a sound as well, and D set foot into a world of even deeper darkness. His haggard air was gone in an instant. His nerves, his muscles, his circulation—every part of him told him the time he had known had suddenly changed. The instant he smelled the thick perfume

wafting throughout the room—which appeared to be a hall—D knew the cause. Time-Bewitching Incense. I’ve heard rumors about this stuff. When he sighted the pair of silhouettes hazily sketched by wispy flames at the far end of the vast hall, his suspicion became conviction.

The silhouettes gave off a ghastly aura that made even D’s peerless features stiffen with tension. Beside a slender form—which he knew at a glance to be female—stood a figure of remarkable grandeur dressed in black. “We’ve been waiting for you. You are the first human to ever make it this far in one piece.” From the corners of the vermilion lips that loosed this solemn voice poked a pair of white fangs. “As our guest, you deserve an introduction. I am the lord of this castle and administrator of the Tenth Frontier Sector, Count Magnus Lee.”

Time-Be witching Incense could be called the ultimate chemical compound born of the vampires’ physiological needs.

For the most part, the information and rumors people passed along about the physiology of these fiends—the various stories told since time immemorial—were essentially true. Outlandish tales about transforming into bats, turning themselves into fog and billowing away, and so on—stories that there were vampires who could do such things and others who couldn’t were taken as fact. Just as in human society ability varied according to an individual’s disposition, so too among the vampires there were some demons who freely controlled the weather, while other fiends had mastery over lower animals.

Many aspects of the vampire’s fantastic physiology, however, remained shrouded in mystery.

For example, the reason why they slept by day but awoke at night remained unclear. Even enveloped by darkness in a secret chamber that blocked out all possible light, a vampire’s body grew rigid with the coming of that unseen dawn, their heart alone continuing to beat as they fell into death’s breathless slumber.

Despite a concerted effort at explanation spanning thousands of years and investing the essence of every possible field of science—ecology, biology, cerebral physiology, psychology, and even super-psychology—the damned couldn’t shed a bit of light on the true cause of their sleep. As if to say, those who dwelt in the darkness were denied even the rays of hope.

Born of the vampires’ desperate research, Time-Bewitching Incense was one means of overcoming their limitations.

Wherever its scent hung, the time would become night. Or rather, appear to be night. In a manner of speaking, normal temporal effects were so altered by this chemical compound, the incense made time itself seem hypnotized. In the glistening sunlight of early afternoon, the night-blooming moonlight grass would open its gorgeous white flowers, people would doze off and remain asleep indefinitely, and the eyes of vampires would shine with a piercing light. Due to the extreme difficulty of finding and combining the components, the incense was very hard to come by, but rumors spread to every corner of the Frontier about Hunters who forced their way into a vampire resting place when the sun was high only to be brutally ambushed by Nobles who just happened to have some on hand.

“Did you come here expecting to find us asleep, foolish one? As you managed to stop my daughter, I believed you to be a more stalwart opponent than the usual insects, and I allowed you this meeting. But, where you sauntered into the blackest hell without even suspecting the danger awaiting you, I may have erred gravely in my assessment.”

“No,” said a voice he’d heard before. The figure at the Count’s side was Larmica. “This man doesn’t exhibit the least trace of fear. He’s a thoroughly exasperating and deliciously impudent fellow. Judging by the skill he demonstrated this past evening when dealing Garou a grievous wound, he could be nothing save a dhampir.”

“Human or dhampir, he remains a traitor. A bastard spawned by one of our kind and a mere human. Tell me, bastard, are you a man or a vampire?”

To this scornful query, D gave a different answer. “I’m a Vampire Hunter. I came here because the walls opened up for me. Are you the fiend that attacked the girl from the farm? If so, I’ll slay you here and now.”

For a moment, the Count was left speechless by the gleaming eyes that bored through the darkness at him, but an instant later he seemed indignant. He laughed loudly. “Slay me? You forget your place. Do you not realize the sole reason I allowed you to come this far is because my daughter said it would be a shame to kill a man such as yourself, that we should persuade you to join us in the castle and make you one of our kind? I have no idea which of your parents was of our kind, but judging by the speech and conduct of their son, it was obviously a buffoon without an inkling of their own low station. This is a waste of time. Dhampir, shame of our race, prepare to meet your maker.” Having roared these words, the Count raised his right hand to strike, but was stopped by Larmica’s voice.

Fluttering the train of a deep blue dress quite unlike the one she wore the previous night, Larmica stepped between the Count and D.

“You spring from the same noble blood as our family. Regardless of what Father said, no son of a humble-born vampire could ever possess such skill. When I caught the missile you hurled at me, I thought my blood would freeze.”

“What say you? Will you not apologize to Father for your boastful speech and join us here in the castle? What reasons have you to dog us? Is being a Hunter a job worth wandering the untamed plains in such shabby apparel? And what of the human wretches you’ve protected—what manner of treatment have you received from the humans who should be grateful to you? Have they accepted you as their fellow man?”

In the unknowably deep twilight of the hall, the voice of the beautiful young woman flowed without hesitation. Her haughty and domineering mien was unchanged from the night before, but one had to wonder if D noticed the faint shadows of entreaty and desire that clung to her.

Dhampir—a child born of the union between a vampire and a human. There could be no existence more lonely or hateful than that. Normally, dhampirs were no different from humans, relatively free to work by the light of day. When angered, however, they lashed out with the unholy power of a vampire, killing and maiming at will. Most detestable of all were the vampire urges they inherited from one of their parents.

Based on their innate and intimate knowledge of vampires’ strengths and weaknesses, many chose to become Vampire Hunters in order to make a living in human society. The fact was, they demonstrated a level of ability head and shoulders above merely human Hunters, but outside of hunting, they were nearly completely ostracized by humanity and kept their distance. Occasionally, their vampire nature would awaken so powerfully they themselves couldn’t suppress it, causing them to crave the blood of the very people that depended on them.

As soon as a dhampir finished a job, the people who barely tolerated him while he went about his mission would chase him off with stones, their gaze full of malice and contempt. With both the cruelly aristocratic blood of the Nobility and the brutally vulgar blood of the humans, dhampirs were tormented by the dual destinies of darkness and light; one side called them traitors while the other labeled them devils. Truly, the dhampirs—like the Flying Dutchman cursed to wander the seven seas for all eternity—led an abominable existence.

And yet, Larmica was saying all she could to get him to join them. Still she spoke.

“You can’t possibly have a single pleasant reminiscence from your life as a Hunter. Of late, the insects in the village have been rather boisterous. At some point they will no doubt send in an assassin like yourself. If Father and I were to have a stalwart individual like you acting as a sort of guard when they do, we would feel most secure. What say you? If you are so inclined, we may even make you truly one of us.”

The Count was ready to explode with rage at the words his daughter—gazing with sleepy, painfully lustful eyes at motionless D—had said. But before he could, he heard a low voice.

Larmica laughed charmingly. “Do not overreach your bounds. The woman shall soon belong to Father, soul and all.” And then, staring fixedly at her father with a cutting and highly ironic gaze, she said, “I believe Father wishes to make her one of his concubines, but I cannot allow it. I shall drain her of her very last drop of blood, then leave her for the human worms to rip apart and put to the torch.” Her words suddenly stopped. The Count’s eyes gave off blood light. The fearsome night-stalking father and daughter surmised through their supernaturally attuned senses that the trivial opponent before them—the youth who was trapped like the proverbial rat—was rapidly transforming. That he was becoming the same thing they were!

“Still you fail to comprehend this,” Larmica scolded. “What can come of this obligation you have toward the human worms? Those menials spared no pains in exterminating each and every living creature on the face of the earth besides themselves, and managed to nearly wipe themselves out through their own carelessness. They only continued living through the charity of our kind, yet the first time our power waned, the insurgents were all too happy to fly the flags of revolt. They, not we, are the creatures that should be expunged from this planet and from all of space.” At that moment, the Count thought he’d heard a certain phrase, and his brow knit. The muttered words had clearly come from the young man before him, but he promptly dredged the same phrase from the depths of distant, half-forgotten memories. Reason denied the possibility of such a thing.

Impossible, he thought. Those are the very words I heard from his highness. From the great one, the Sacred Ancestor of our species. That filthy whelp couldn’t possibly know such things.

The screams of both father and daughter resounded through the vast chamber. Negotiations had fallen through. The Count’s lips warped into a cold-blooded and confident grin. He gave a crisp snap of the fingers on his right hand, but a rush of consternation came into his pale visage a few seconds later when he realized the countless electronic weapons mounted throughout the hall weren’t operating.

“I don’t know what you have up your sleeve, but the weapons of the Nobility don’t work against me.” Leaving only his words there, D kicked off the ground. Lightning fast, there would be no escaping him. Drawing his sword in midair, he pulled it to his right side. Just as he landed, his deadly thrust became a flash of silver that sank into the Count’s chest.

For the first time, a look of surprise surfaced in D’s handsome but normally expressionless countenance. His longsword was stopped dead, caught between the Count’s palms about eight inches from the tip. Moreover, from their respective stances, D was in a far better position to exert more force upon the sword, but though he put all his might behind it, the blade wouldn’t budge an inch, just as if it was wedged in a wall.

The Count bared his fangs and laughed. “What do you make of that, traitor? Unlike your vulgar swordplay, this is a skill worthy

of a true Noble. When you get to hell, tell them how surprised you were!” As he said that, the figure in black made a bold move to the right. Perhaps it was some secret trick the Count employed in the timing, or the way he put his strength into the move, but for whatever reason, D was unable to take his hand off the hilt. He was thrown along with the sword into the center of the hall.

The Count quite unexpectedly found his breath taken away. There were no crunching bones to be heard; the youth somersaulted in midair like a cat about to land feetfirst on the floor with the hem of his coat billowing out around him. Or rather, he was ready to land there. With no floor beneath his feet, D kept right on going, falling into the pitch-black maw that opened suddenly beneath him.

As he heard the creaking of trapdoors to either side of the massive thirty by thirty-foot pit swinging back up into place, the Count turned his gaze to the darkness behind him. Larmica appeared from it. “It’s a primitive trap, but it was fortunate for us we had it put there, was it not, Father? When all your vaunted atomic armaments were useless, a pitfall of cogs and springs rid us of that nuisance.”

At her charming laughter, the Count made a sullen face. He had reluctantly allowed this trap to be installed due to Larmica’s entreaties. There’s no way she could have foreseen this day’s events, the Count thought, but this girl, daughter of mine though she may be, seems on occasion to be a creature beyond imagining.

Shaking off his grimace, he said, “At the same instant I hurled him, you pulled the cord on the trapdoor—who but my daughter would be capable of as much? But is this for the best?”

“Last night, when you returned from the farm and spoke of the stripling we just disposed of, the tone of your voice, the manner of your complaints—even I, your own father, cannot recall ever hearing you so indignant, yet your indignation held a feverish

sentiment that was equally new. Could it be you’re smitten with the scoundrel?”

Unanticipated though her father’s words were, Larmica donned a smile that positively defied description. Not only that, she licked her lips as well.

“Do you believe I could let a man I loved drop down there? Father, as its architect you know far better than anyone what a living hell that subterranean region is. Dhampir or not, no one could come out of that benighted pit alive. But ...”

Here Larmica once again made a ghastly smile that even caused Count Lee, her own father, to flinch.

“If he can escape from there with naught but a sword and the power of his own limbs, I shall devote myself to him body and soul. By the eternal life and ten thousand bloody years of the history of the Nobility, I swear I love him—I love the Vampire Hunter D.” Now it was the Count’s turn to smile bitterly. “It is hell for those you despise, and a worse hell for those you desire. Though I don’t believe there is anything in this world that can face the three sisters and live to tell the tale.”

“However,” the Count continued, “should he survive and you meet him again, what will you do should he spurn your affections?”

Larmica responded in a heartbeat. Flames of joy rose from her body. Her eyes glittered wildly but were moist with hot tears, her crimson lips parted slightly, and her slick tongue licked along her lips as if it possessed a will of its own. “In that case, I will deal the deathblow to him without fail. I shall rip out his heart and lop off his head. And then he shall truly be mine. And I shall be his. I will taste the sweet blood as it seeps from his wounds, and after I have kissed his pale and withered lips, I shall tear open my own breast and let the hot blood of the Nobility course down his gaping throat.”

When Larmica had taken her leave, following her incredibly gruesome yet fervent declaration of love, the Count’s expression was a mixture of anger and apprehension, and he turned his gaze to the pit. He pressed one hand against the left side of his chest through his cape. The fabric was soaking wet. With blood. Though he seemed to have masterfully caught D’s blade, more than an inch at the tip had sunken into his immortal flesh. Some trick with the sword may have been involved, for, unlike any wound he’d heretofore taken in battle, the gash still hadn’t closed, and the warm blood that was the fount of his life was flowing out. Now there is a man to be feared. He might even have ...

The Count erased from his mind all thoughts of what might happen should he face the youth again in a battle to the death. Considering the things that awaited the whelp in the subterranean world, D didn’t have one chance in a million of returning to the surface.

Turning his back to the hall, the Count was about to walk back to his dark demesne when the words the youth had whispered flitted through his brain. Words the Count had heard from that august personage. A phrase that could render the faces of every Noble, extinct or still living on, melancholy every time it was recalled. How could that stripling know those words?

CHAPTER 4

Sis, you sure we don’t need more fertilizer than this?” Dan’s |J apprehensive tone as he took the last plastic case and set it down in the bed of their wagon stabbed into Doris’ breast.

This was right about the time D was passing through the gates of the vampires’ castle.

The pair had gone into Ransylva to do their shopping for the month. However, the results were something pitiful. Old Man Whatley, proprietor of a local store, had always been kind enough to bring things out from the storeroom that he didn’t have displayed, but today he coldly refused as he’d never done before. As Doris named off necessities, he replied with apparent regret that they were either sold out or on back order. And yet, behind the counter and in the corner Doris saw he had stacks of them. When asked, however, he fumbled to say that the merchandise was already spoken for.

Doris caught on quickly enough. There was only one person low enough to cause her such grief.

Still, she didn’t have time to waste arguing with Whatley, so she choked back her rage, swung by the home of an acquaintance, and somehow managed to get what she needed for the time being. At present, every minute from sunrise to sunset was as precious as a jewel to Doris. At night, her ghastly life-or-death battle with the demon awaited. No matter what happened, she had to get

home before nightfall—that was the message D had drilled into her before he set out. Well, she knew that, but... Once she’d loaded the last package of dried beef into the wagon bed, Doris gnawed her lip. The uncharacteristically forlorn expression Dan wore back there in the wagon became a smile the second his face turned toward her. The boy was doing all he could to keep her from worrying on his account. Because she understood that, Doris’ heart was filled with a concern, a sorrow, and an anger that would not be checked. One of her hands reached over and unconsciously tightened around the handle of the whip she had tucked in her belt. There was only one place to direct her rage.

“Darn it, I forgot to swing by Doc Ferringo’s place,” she said with feigned agitation. “You wait here. It wouldn’t do to have our goods get swiped, so don’t you leave the wagon.”

Her brother’s word seemed to cling to her, as if he sensed something, but Doris replied, “Hey, a big boy like you should be ashamed to make a face like that. D would laugh if he could see how down in the mouth you look. Stop your worrying. As long as I’m around, everything’ll be fine. Ain’t that the way it’s always been?” Speaking gently but firmly, and giving him no chance to disagree, she quickly set off down the street, thinking, At this hour; I figure those scumbags’ll be in the Black Lagoon or Pandora’s Hotel. I’ll learn them a thing or two!

Her supposition proved correct. The second she opened the batwing doors of the saloon, Greco and his gang smirked and stood up from their table in the back. Quickly counting their number at seven, Doris narrowed her eyes suddenly when she saw what Greco was wearing.

His whole body was sparkling. From the top of his head to the tips of his feet Greco was covered by metallic clothing—actually, a kind of weapon called a combat suit. Doris had never seen one before, but her amazement soon faded, and with a scornful expression that said, looiis like that frivolous fool has jumped a new fashion bandwagon, she laid into him. “You were all hot under the collar about what happened this morning, so you went and leaned on Old Man Whatley so he wouldn’t sell us nothing, didn’t you? And you call yourself a man? You’re the lowest of the low!” “What the hell are you yammering about?” Greco smiled mockingly. “I don’t have to take that off no one who’s about to be some vampire’s fun toy. You should thank your lucky stars we didn’t let that little tidbit out. You’d better get it into your head that it’s gonna be the same thing next month and the month after. Looks like you probably managed to scrape something together today, but how long’ll that pitiful amount keep your orchards going and your cows fed? Maybe two weeks, if you’re lucky. Of course, that’s supposing you’re still walking around and throwing a shadow that long. Well, you’ll be okay because pretty soon you won’t have to eat anything to survive, but what’d you have planned for your poor little brother?”

Before his snide comments had ended, the whip streaked from Doris’ hand. It wrapped around the helmet portion of his combat suit and she channeled her power into toppling him. But her recklessness was bom of her ignorance. Greco—or rather, his combat suit—didn’t budge an inch. He pulled the end of the whip with his right hand, and with one little tug, the whip flew into his hands.

Shocked though she was, Doris was indeed the daughter of a Hunter, and she leapt back almost six feet. As she jumped, eyes that sparkled vulgarly with the light of hatred, lust, and superiority followed her.

“Don’t forget it’s my daddy that runs the show in town. There’s nothing to keep us from seeing to it you and your stupid little brother starve to death.”

Doris was a bit shaken, and it showed on her face—she knew the truth of what he’d just said.